Product Knowledge

At Level 3, you're a partner in shaping the product. You think strategically about how features serve the broader product vision, and you help translate high-level goals into practical, valuable experiences. You contribute to product decisions, spot gaps in functionality or consistency, and propose enhancements that reflect both user needs and business priorities. Your product understanding is nuanced—and it informs both what you build and how you build it.

Key Behaviors

  • Participates in product planning with useful insights and feedback
  • Identifies gaps or friction points in existing workflows and proposes improvements
  • Anticipates edge cases or user confusion before they become bugs or support issues
  • Aligns engineering decisions with long-term product direction
  • Bridges the gap between product intent and engineering implementation

Common Struggles

  • May over-focus on user needs without balancing business goals
  • Can be overly attached to individual features or solutions
  • Might struggle to scale product input across different areas or teams

Success Indicators

You know you're successful when you:

  • Add strategic value to product planning, not just feature execution
  • Help identify missing functionality, inconsistent behaviors, or unnecessary complexity
  • Communicate tradeoffs clearly and advocate for product clarity and cohesion
  • Influence how teams think about and prioritize user needs

Mindset Shift

From:

"I give helpful product feedback."

To:

"I help ensure we're building the right product for the right reasons."

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • Are we solving the right problems in the right sequence?
  • What's the cost of building this—and of *not* building it?
  • How does this fit into the product's long-term purpose?

Build These Habits

  • 1
    Stay close to users through support channels, usage data, or user research
  • 2
    Map product work to business outcomes and strategy
  • 3
    Challenge assumptions and advocate for product simplicity

Seek Feedback

  • "Is this solution as clear and useful as it could be?"
  • "How does this feature tie into our overall user journey?"
  • "Are there simpler alternatives that serve the same goal?"

Signals You're Ready to Level Up

  • PMs and designers seek your input early in the process
  • You identify and help solve product challenges proactively
  • You think and speak fluently in the language of user goals and product value

Focus Summary

  • Zoom out
  • Connect the dots
  • Build with purpose

At Level 3, you stop reacting to product direction—you help shape it. You build things that matter because you understand what matters.