Agreed. Most organizations I've been involved in will reward engineers for creating 20k lines of code that don't solve a relevant problem over the Product Engi

Agreed. Most organizations I've been involved in will reward engineers for creating 20k lines of code that don't solve a relevant problem over the Product Engineer who creates 5k lines that solves valuable problems. The Product Engineer Genba'd out of the building to see what was needed and created the right thing, but since engineering management is often myopically focused on metrics disconnected from value the Product Engineer is significantly undervalued. Combining ability with domain knowledge is extremely valuable, and a significant portion of domain knowledge is gained by stepping away from the keyboard. Lean borrows the Japanese word Genba to describe this, which means 'actual place' or 'scene of the crime' and this Product Minded Engineer is somebody who is willing to Genba!