Product for Engineers is now build mode
Same team, same posts. New brand, new focus.
We’re rebranding Product for Engineers as build mode to better cover everything it takes to build successful products from now into the future. Here’s why.
We accomplished our original goal
We started Product for Engineers to challenge the idea that engineers only care about code.
We showed that engineers can flex their product muscle, talk to users directly, be opinionated about what to work on, work autonomously to ship features, and figure out if they are successful. The tens of thousands of subscribers we amassed, the rise in popularity of the product engineer role, and 100+ YC startups hiring them now are proof we accomplished this.
Along the way, we learned product engineers care about more than just product. They care about building a successful company and career more broadly. After all, great products come from the people and companies who build them.
Following the advice to “build write something people want,” we wrote about everything from finding a job to scaling a startup to marketing to collaboration.
But every post like this pulled us away from the “product” framing in our name. Helping people build more successful products meant a lot more than just helping engineers do product.
AI changes engineering and the meaning of “engineer”
The other part of our name has also seen huge changes because of AI.
First, people are building AI-powered products and using AI to do so. Last week, PostHog saw 3.5M MCP tool calls, nearly 100K PostHog AI chats, and 40% of experiments created through our MCP. Our AI observability product grew 17x in the last year. Building the best products now requires building for agents, writing loops, and making full use of AI coding tools.
Second, AI has made it possible for anyone to build. The engineeringification of everything is real. Salespeople ship features, product managers fix bugs, marketers build video games. Our posts are relevant to a new group who don’t exclusively label themselves as engineers.
PostHog as a company is changing to reflect this. Beyond building more for AI, our ICP has changed from engineers at high growth startups to the people building products in AI-pilled software teams at any scale. Our newsletter should reflect this change too.
The Product for Engineers brand wasn’t resonating for us or our readers, so we’re changing it and going build mode.
What is build mode?
The tools, tactics, and taste builders need to build successful products, companies, and careers like:
How to build AI-native products (and agents) successfully
How to leverage AI to build more successful products and careers
Lessons from the frontlines of doing all of the above at PostHog
build mode is a reflection of what's happening now and what we think matters to builders going forward. Our upcoming posts will cover what we think the future of software looks like, writing agent skills, and an explainer on effort levels.
It turns out that when code is cheap, the product skills we wrote about become even more important. AI enables more people to build and takes them further, faster, but it still needs the guidance, judgement, and taste only you can provide. Build mode aims to help you with this as best as we can.
Go build mode.
Words by Ian Vanagas who will miss our mascot Swolehog.