Boundaries Between Product & Engineering - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra Wille
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Where exactly is the boundary between product and engineering—and what happens when it gets blurry?
In this episode, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille dig into a tension many product teams quietly struggle with: product managers taking on responsibility for bugs, tech debt, and even system architecture. What starts as “being helpful” often turns into burnout for PMs and lower-quality outcomes for everyone.
They unpack why this pattern shows up so often, how legacy IT mindsets and the “CEO of the product” myth contribute to the problem, and what healthy product–engineering collaboration actually looks like in modern product teams.
If you’ve ever felt like the middleman for bug status, or like you’re expected to own engineering decisions you don’t have the expertise to make—this episode is for you.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- Why product managers shouldn’t own bug tracking, tech debt, or architecture decisions
- How blurred boundaries between product and engineering lead to burnout and quality issues
- The difference between being responsible for a product and owning another team’s work
- How legacy IT and project-based mindsets still shape modern product orgs
- Why treating engineers as “order takers” breaks down in evergreen product environments
- What strong engineering leadership should own (and why that matters)
- When it does make sense for product to step in—especially around communication and coordination
Key ideas worth calling out:
- The product trio owns the “what”; engineering owns the “how”
- Product managers are not people managers for engineers—and shouldn’t be accountable for engineering quality
- If quality is a problem, the solution is escalating and fixing the system, not managing individual bugs
- Skilled engineering teams naturally push back when boundaries are crossed—and that’s a good thing
- Removing the PM as a middleman creates better flow and clearer ownership
Practical takeaways:
- Create direct paths for stakeholders to get bug status without routing everything through product
- Use dashboards, shared tools, or Slack channels instead of one-off updates
- Escalate systemic quality issues to engineering leadership, not individual contributors
- Advocate for real engineering leadership if your org expects product teams—not IT teams
Resources & Links:
- Follow Teresa Torres: https://ProductTalk.org
- Follow Petra Wille: https://Petra-Wille.com
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