Are You a Screwdriver?
summary
Argues that technical skill alone doesn’t prevent engineers from being treated as a “screwdriver” by company processes; product requests like “CSV to Excel” often mask the real problem and workshops can fail to produce outcomes. Recommends concrete tactics: ask “what problem?”, meet the client, create press-release/FAQ artifacts, negotiate mandate levels, prioritize trust and vertical slices, and gives examples from JVM tuning, Kafka, event sourcing and when to accept or push back.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 4:18Product engineer role
- 7:27Screwdriver daily work
- 13:51XY Problem techniques
- 20:59Business vs tech conflict
- 25:10Programming theory loss
- 30:30Team mandates responsibility
- 36:15UI mockups pitfalls
- 43:18Good user stories
- 46:17Tech manager resistance
- 55:06Is product engineering worth it?
- 57:12Q&A
related talks
15mIt Works on My Machine: Why Engineers Are Misunderstood (and What They Can Do About It)
06mEngineering You
41mNobody Likes Working With You
36mThe Exceptions We Don't Catch in Technical Conversations
34mYou're a problem solver
40mCorporate Success: The Unwritten Curriculum
42mThe Art of Engineering Diplomacy - Driving Significant Changes in Large Org.
57mHow to be a problem solver?