The Balance Between Product and Technical Leadership - ProductFTW #52

There has been a lot of discussion about whether strong technology leaders or experienced developers can replace product managers, so much so that Zach and Todd both covered the topic last year. I wanted to give my take. While I do believe that a strong technical leader can take on many responsibilities of a product manager, there are limitations to this approach. Product managers are not supposed to dictate how to deliver technology. Their role is to define what needs to be built and why it matters. A technical leader, on the other hand, fills in the how.

That is not to say product managers should not be technical. They absolutely should understand enough to challenge their technical counterparts, ask the right questions, and call out issues that seem misaligned with common sense. But they should not attempt to drive technical solutions in a way that compromises scalability, security, or the integrity of the overall architecture.

When Technical Leaders Take on Too Much of the Product Role

I have worked with several technical leaders who took on too much of the product role, and every time the outcome was the same. When a product requirement was complex from a solution standpoint, the technical leader often decided it was not worth it and pared down or reduced the feature. While this approach might have made sense from a development or efficiency perspective, it ultimately hurt the user experience.

One particular instance that stands out was when we were developing a feature that required integrating with a third-party tool. From a product perspective, we needed to collect and store a set of user data points to make the integration seamless. However, because the integration was complex and required additional development effort, our tech lead decided to reduce the scope significantly, removing key user inputs. The result was a streamlined backend solution, but a far worse user experience. Users had to manually enter data multiple times instead of having it prefilled from our system.

Many technical leaders believe that product managers sometimes create overly complex requirements that do not align with technical constraints. While that can be true, it is not always the case. Every time I have seen a technical leader take over the product role, they tend to focus on efficiency and what makes sense for the technologies they already know, rather than considering whether better solutions exist beyond their purview.

This is where a strong product and technical partnership becomes essential. A product manager pushes for what is best for the user, while a technical leader ensures that the solution is scalable and maintainable. If one role overtakes the other, you either end up with a highly efficient but suboptimal user experience, or an ambitious feature that does not account for technical constraints.

When Product Managers Are Forced to Make Technical Decisions

On the flip side, I have often found myself in situations where I had to make technical decisions I was not qualified to make. I work with a lot of outsourced teams and startups, where strong technical leadership is not always present. In these cases, I am often asked technical questions that require research and guesswork on my part.

A perfect example of this came up recently when I was working on an API. I understand how APIs work, and I felt confident in defining the requirements for authentication. From my perspective, it needed to be simple, secure, well-documented, and follow industry best practices. However, my technical counterpart knew that our existing software stack had specific authentication parameters that we needed to abide by. While I might have suggested generating an API key as the best approach, they knew that it would not align with how authentication works across the rest of our system. Without their guidance, I could have introduced inconsistencies or security gaps simply because I lacked the full technical picture.

The biggest impact of this is twofold. First, I am not the right person to make certain technical decisions, which increases the risk of poor implementation. Second, it takes me away from my core responsibilities as a product manager, which include defining user needs, ensuring a great experience, and guiding the overall vision. When I spend too much time trying to figure out technical feasibility without the right support, I am less effective in driving the product forward.

I still dream about the strong partnerships I had at CreditCards.com and Red Ventures, as well as when I started a company with individuals who deeply understood both technology and product. Two of the best examples of this were Zach and Mitchell, who had an incredible awareness of product and how to solve problems. They understood the importance of product requirements and how to think about the larger picture and strategy.

Zach and Mitchell had the ability to take product requirements and see them through a technical lens, bringing solutions to the table without sacrificing time, security, or overcomplicating the build. Working with them was an ideal partnership. I could talk to them as a product manager, explain user and business needs, and they would listen, understand, and translate that into a technical solution. They would then distill it back to me in a way that ensured I was comfortable with the approach, and together we would guide the developers.

That is the type of partnership I strive to find in every role, because when you have a technical leader who works with you instead of without you, everything runs more smoothly. You do not have to worry about whether the API is implemented correctly or whether edge cases have been accounted for. You have a partner who ensures it is handled properly while keeping the bigger picture in mind.

How Product Managers and Tech Leaders Can Communicate Effectively

To avoid friction, product managers and technical leaders need to communicate constantly. They should align on requirements early, discuss trade-offs, and work together to define both the product and technical approach before handing anything off to the team.

A great collaboration looks like this:

• The product manager defines what the feature needs to do, why it is important, and how success will be measured.
• The technical leader provides insight into how it can be built, what constraints exist, and what trade-offs need to be considered.
• Together, they refine the solution before presenting it to the engineering team, ensuring a shared understanding of both user needs and technical feasibility.

The development team should not be expected to define the entire solution on their own. While they should have input and flexibility to solve problems in the best way, it is up to the product manager and technical leader to guide them toward the right approach.

A Real-World Example of Collaboration

One example of this collaboration is when I was recently building onboarding for a consumer credit program. During the onboarding process, there are specific fields that must be collected to determine if a person passes Know Your Customer (KYC) checks or credit underwriting.

From the product perspective, it is my job to define the following:

• What fields need to be collected
• What the underwriting criteria should be
• What the user experience and flows should look like

On the technical side, the tech lead must determine:

• How to integrate with a KYC and underwriting provider, such as Alloy
• What security measures need to be in place
• How to structure the backend to handle application submissions efficiently

In this scenario, neither role can operate effectively in isolation. If I, as the product manager, dictated how the integration should be done without understanding the technical constraints, I could create a requirement that is unrealistic or unscalable. If the technical leader dictated the onboarding experience based purely on what is easiest to build, we might end up with an experience that does not meet regulatory requirements or user expectations.

By working together, we ensure that both the product and technical perspectives are accounted for, leading to a secure, scalable, and user-friendly solution.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, product managers and technology leaders bring different, complementary skills to the table. One without the other creates imbalance. A strong product manager ensures that the team is solving the right problems for the right users in the right way. A strong technical leader ensures that the solution is scalable, maintainable, and technically sound.

The best products happen when both roles are in sync, respecting each other’s expertise while collaborating toward a common goal. Without this balance, you either end up with a product that is well-architected but not user-friendly or a product that is user-focused but technically flawed.

The strongest teams are the ones where product and technical leadership work in true partnership, ensuring that what gets built is not only functional and efficient but also meaningful and impactful for users.

About ProductFTW

ProductFTW is a weekly newsletter about product management, with a focus on real-life experiences in startups. We want to help product leaders be successful by giving realistic approaches that aren’t for giant tech companies. We know you don’t have a full-time product designer on each team. We know your software probably hasn’t been used by millions of people worldwide–yet. We’re here to bridge the content gap from building your product and team to scaling it.

Part of the Product Management Leadership & Career Guide — ProductFTW's collected essays on the PM role, leading without authority, hiring, and getting hired.