From Mid-Level to Senior: Why I Built a Product Thinking Simulator

🚀 The Journey from Mid-Level to Senior

Tanya shares her personal experience of feeling stuck in her engineering career—shipping features and meeting deadlines, yet not truly influencing the product. While peers advanced to senior and principal roles, she realized the missing ingredient wasn’t technical skill alone—it was product thinking.

💡 What Is Product Thinking?

It’s the mindset of asking deeper questions:

• Why are we building this?

• Who is it for?

• How will we know it’s working?

This shift in perspective, she argues, is what separates mid-level engineers from senior ones.

🧪 The Simulator

To bridge this gap, Tanya created a Product Thinking Simulator—a playful, comic-style tool that presents real-world dilemmas engineers face:

• Shipping fast vs. building right

• Hacking vs. scaling

• UX polish vs. technical debt

It’s still in beta, and she’s actively seeking feedback to improve it.

❤️ Call to Action

Tanya invites readers to try the simulator and share thoughts:

• Would you use something like this?

• What dilemmas should be added?

• Is product thinking the real leap to seniority?

It’s a refreshingly honest and practical take on career growth.