Indeed. I'm not close to product development anymore in my dayjob but when I was I used to be very product focused, often even more so than the product manager

Indeed. I'm not close to product development anymore in my dayjob but when I was I used to be very product focused, often even more so than the product managers I've worked with. There often was no spec, no clear vision, and definitely a lack of understanding of the product details. So, when you are an engineer who cares about the product/company what do you do? You fill in the blanks, you do the scoping, you do the project management, you write the documents to explain everything to other teams. And of course during that time you engage with the product manager to get signoff. In the end though you are doing a lot more in total and a lot more work the product manager should have been doing. And it's not easy because you come to other teams/stakeholder from a position of less influence than a product manager. In the end it's still the product manager who reaps a lot of the reward and ownership for the product. The benefits of the product focused engineer for product managers and the company are obvious but what are the benefits for the engineers? Do they get more compensation? The article mentions they get to become team leads eventually, but it's not a given that product focused engineers want that.