How to be true partners: Product and Engineering

Natalie Mandriko
3 min readJul 10, 2021

Elevating product leaders to be equal partners with Engineering and Business requires data fluency, alignment, and persuasion skills.

15 years ago I have started my career as a software engineer and over time grew into management. A few years ago, I had switched from the engineering department to product. And at the same time, I have switched from consulting to in-house product work.

These past few years taught me a lot about product management and leadership and what we need to do to ensure great products.

I deeply care about people and how digital products help people in their lives — by using the product, or by building the products that matter.

This post is less about me, but more about product people — what we need to do to ensure we indeed build great digital products that matter.

Product leaders need to work on elevating their roles in the organizations

Early in 2021, I have hosted (through the Miro DC chapter, that I am leading) — a series of book club sessions on the book “Empowered” by Marty Cagan and with Chris Jones from Silicon Valley Product Group.

One of the topics that the community of product leaders had touched on was — the role of product…

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Natalie Mandriko

I talk about #product #growth, #environment and #climate