What I Brought From Engineering Into Product
What I Brought From Engineering Into Product
I started my career as an applications developer at Oracle, working on Primavera Unifier, a cloud based project lifecycle management product. After close to four years there and a PGP at the Indian School of Business, I moved into product management. The engineering years still shape how I work.
Debugging teaches you to ask why
Handling critical issues and delivering code fixes taught me to keep asking why until I found the real cause. Product problems work the same way. A feature request or a complaint is usually a symptom. Finding the underlying need takes the same patience as tracking down a bug.
Automation starts with noticing repetition
One of the most satisfying things I built at Oracle was a tool to automate database management work the team did by hand. It began with noticing how much of our time went into the same steps. That habit of looking for repeated effort is just as useful in product work, where repeated manual steps for users are often the best opportunities.
Engineers are partners, not order takers
Having written code, I know how much a vague requirement costs. I try to give engineering teams the problem, the constraints and the reason it matters, and then involve them early in shaping the solution. The best ideas often come from the people who know the system best.
Learn the business side deliberately
The move into product needed skills I did not have as a developer: positioning, go to market and strategy. My time at ISB, with a focus on strategy, leadership and marketing, was a deliberate step to build those. Both halves are needed to make good product decisions.
Back to building
The Curious PM cohort brought me back to building with my own hands, this time with AI tools. It was a reminder that product managers who can prototype ideas themselves can test them much faster.
Spandana skipped presentations and built real AI products.
Spandana Kintali was part of the August 2026 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 24 other talented participants.