Use the product yourself - empathy, architecture, and PM partnership with Rita Kozlov

The episode begins with Kent C. Dodds introducing Rita Kozlov, VP of Product at Cloudflare. Rita shares her background as a software engineer, and how this experience influences her work in product management, especially in building developer tools like Workers, KV, and Pages. Her engineering background helps her empathize with developers and understand the intricacies of product decisions, making her approach to product management holistic and detail-oriented.

The conversation explores how AI has changed the dynamics between product managers and engineers. AI enables rapid prototyping, which is powerful but can tempt teams to push out prototypes as if they were finished products. Rita emphasizes that ownership and accountability remain crucial; engineers must understand the end-to-end system, not just ship features. The blurring of roles is also related to the iterative nature of modern software development, which allows for more disposable development cycles while maintaining responsibility.

A key theme is the importance of empathy in product and engineering. Rita advocates for engineers to get closer to the customer through direct interaction, such as participating in customer calls, to identify real user problems beyond their assumptions. She introduces the concept of the 'art of the possible,' highlighting that understanding system primitives and limitations can expand what’s feasible in product development. This deeper understanding fosters innovation and better problem-solving.

The episode discusses how teams balance competing demands, such as launching a free tier versus premium features. Rita explains that trade-offs are often influenced by larger company strategies, customer needs, and timing. Early-stage products may justify delaying features to build core relationships, while mature products must carefully manage customization without introducing excessive complexity. Cloudflare’s approach focuses on leveraging primitives and paving paths, which allows flexible, scalable solutions.

Rita emphasizes that engineers should strive to influence upstream decision-making by understanding customer needs, participating in discussions, and conveying implications of their work. Deep involvement helps engineers see beyond their narrow tasks and contribute to shaping the product vision. She encourages engineers to challenge solutions, explore the 'art of the possible,' and bridge the gap between implementation and user experience.

In discussing internal product development, Rita notes that engineers working on foundational systems still impact users because these systems form the interfaces and primitives that customers ultimately interact with. She highlights the importance of understanding the flow from deep systems to end-user experience and how decisions made deep in the stack can ripple outward. Collaboration among diverse roles—like those who understand distributed systems and developer experience—is essential for building impactful products.

The episode’s concluding advice is simple yet powerful: engineers and product teams should actively use and experiment with the products they build, including features just shipped. This hands-on approach reveals unanticipated issues and understanding that cannot be gleaned from specs alone. Rita advocates for a culture of continuous feedback, urging teams to test in various modalities and push their products’ limits to ensure better quality, usability, and ownership.