Product Engineering vs. the Feature Factory
Shipping fast and building the right thing aren't the same skill. Here's how product-minded engineering teams avoid the feature factory trap.
A feature factory measures success by tickets closed. A product engineering team measures success by outcomes changed. The difference isn't speed — feature factories can move very fast — it's what happens before code gets written.
Product-minded engineering teams push back on vague requirements, ask what problem a feature is actually solving, and are willing to propose a smaller, sharper version of what was asked for. That takes more time upfront and less time in rework and unused features later.
The organizational signal to watch for is whether engineers are in the room when priorities are being decided, or only when priorities have already been decided for them. Teams that only receive fully-formed tickets tend to drift into feature-factory mode regardless of individual skill.
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