Empowering Engineers in Product Decisions

Applied learning from Stripe’s approach

The wall between engineering and product isn’t just an organizational challenge—it’s costing you innovation, speed, and market advantage. So, companies have to enable their engineers to think like product leaders and product managers to understand technical constraints if they want to win the race to market. This is just one of the critical insights that emerged during our Q&A session with Horia Coman, Site Lead & Director of Engineering at Stripe, from How to Web Conference 2024.

Horia tackled the questions that keep tech leaders awake at night: How do we empower engineers to participate in product decisions? How do we use data effectively across departments? And most importantly, how can we build a culture where technical and business perspectives merge seamlessly to create extraordinary products?

We all know by now that breaking down silos between engineering and product can transform organizational effectiveness. But how do you foster this collaborative environment when traditional structures often keep these functions separate? Let’s explore these practical approaches that won’t disrupt your workflows but will generate value and better products.

Data Transparency Is The Foundation of Cross-Functional Decision-Making

For tech leaders still figuring out how to balance decision-making between engineering and product teams, the journey begins with a fundamental question: Is your data accessible to everyone who needs it to make informed decisions?

Before diving into complex organizational restructuring, you need to establish if your engineering teams have the same visibility into metrics as your product teams. At Stripe, the approach is refreshingly straightforward—they maintain a rather open data policy.

The key insight from Horia is that “Engineers are typically the ones who define and instrument the data collection systems, so it’s only natural for them to have access to and utilize that data.” This perspective is crucial because it recognizes engineers’ unique position in the data pipeline. 

Engineers don’t just consume data—they create the systems that generate it. They write the code that tracks user actions, build the logging infrastructure that captures performance metrics, and design the data models that determine what information is available for analysis.

When engineers have full access to the data they’ve helped instrument, several benefits emerge:

• Better data quality: Engineers who understand how the data will be used make more informed decisions about what to track and how to structure it
• Faster iteration cycles: Direct access to data means engineers can quickly validate their hypotheses without waiting for product teams to process and share insights
• Deeper technical insights: Engineers can identify patterns and anomalies that might not be apparent to non-technical stakeholders
• More invested stakeholders: When engineers see the direct impact of their work through data, they become more invested in business outcomes

At Stripe, this data transparency creates a virtuous cycle: engineers are empowered to make data-driven decisions, leading to better instrumentation, which in turn produces more valuable data.

Focus on Team-Level Metrics, Not Just Global KPIs

Stripe tracks two distinct types of metrics:

• Global company metrics, such as revenue, income, and usage, that are difficult to influence through individual projects
• Team-specific metrics with custom instrumentation

This dual approach allows teams to have meaningful discussions about how their work impacts specific measurements that matter to them, rather than always trying to tie everything back to high-level business metrics that may feel distant from day-to-day work.

A practical example Horia shared involves customer support operations: “When examining support operations, we look at specific metrics like ticket resolution rates. This helps us understand why faster ticket resolution matters to the company as a whole, identify key friction points, and make decisions based on concrete measurements rather than assumptions.”

This targeted approach enables engineers to create well-founded hypotheses for improvements that connect directly to observable business outcomes.

Engineering Initiatives – Believable Projects Win Support

When discussing how engineering proposals make it onto product roadmaps, Horia identified two types of engineering initiatives:

1. Engineering-focused initiatives – Technical improvements like code refactoring or system migrations
2. Believable projects – Ideas that resonate with both the project team and the broader company

The second category is where the real magic happens. As Horia explains, “You need to have a compelling story — identify something the company truly cares about and clearly articulate your approach to improving it.”

The process matters, too: “First, take time to understand the problem thoroughly before jumping into implementation. Start with projects that are important from your team’s perspective, then verify if they make business sense. We prioritize listening and understanding before implementing solutions.”

A healthy balance is key. In Horia’s view, “It’s great if from a team of 10 people you have 2-3 projects initiated by engineers. It’s not great if you have none.” This benchmark provides a practical goal for organizations looking to increase engineering involvement in product direction.

The Startup Advantage: Proximity to Customers

Startups have a unique opportunity to develop product-minded engineering teams. As Horia points out, “Start-up = the best scenario to be in a product mindset because you are in close contact with the customers.”

This proximity allows engineers to test ideas and engage directly with users, fostering deeper product understanding. The challenge is encouraging this mindset, especially among senior engineers who may be more comfortable focusing purely on technical challenges.

Horia’s advice is refreshingly practical: explain to engineers that “they are here to build the right thing and not just to build stuff.” 

Preventing Overengineering 

One of the most valuable insights from Horia’s experience is how customer interaction actually prevents over-engineering – a common problem in tech organizations.

“You are preventing engineers from overengineering stuff by sharing their time and bandwidth with customer interactions and real problem solving,” Horia explains. Finding people who can absorb the full context and become partners in the development process is crucial, he adds.

His most striking thought prioritizes quality over quantity: “It’s more valuable to spend three hours understanding customer needs and building one impactful feature than spending six hours building something that misses the mark.”

Applied Learning in Practice

For organizations looking to implement Stripe’s approach, consider these practical steps:

1. Start with data access: Ensure engineers can access the same metrics and data as product teams
2. Develop team-level metrics: Create measurements that teams can directly influence
3. Encourage “believable projects”: Coach engineers on connecting their ideas to company priorities
4. Allocate time for customer interaction: Build customer conversations into engineering workflows
5. Measure the right balance: Aim for 20-30% of projects being engineer-initiated

Final Thoughts

Building better technology isn’t just about technical excellence—it’s about ensuring that what you build solves real problems for real users. Fostering data transparency, encouraging believable projects, and prioritizing customer understanding turn engineering teams into true partners in product development.

Remember that the goal isn’t perfect alignment between engineering and product; it’s building sufficient shared context to make better decisions than your competitors. Begin with small steps, prioritize data access and team-level metrics, and maintain open communication channels between engineering and product teams. Your customers will benefit from the resulting products—and your engineers will find greater satisfaction in their work.

Join us at the How to Web Conference 2025 to discover fresh perspectives. We can experiment together—join the movement: https://www.howtoweb.co/tickets/