When engineers drive the roadmap: The risks of building without a product compass

Why engineering-led initiatives often miss the mark. And how to realign teams around user and business value. From an engineer.

Engineers love to build. Give a team some time, a problem space, and a bit of autonomy, and they’ll architect a system that’s elegant, scalable, and future-proof. But sometimes, once the build is complete, a quiet truth emerges: no one’s using it. The problem it was supposed to solve never materialized. And believe me. Having worked on platform initiati…