Chats with Kent C. Dodds

Dillon's path runs from internal insurance tools to Vercel Domains to Cloudflare's agent and dashboard work-always with the same through-line: care about the user, get real feedback, and invest in primitives so delighters don't collapse under bad foundations. This episode covers metrics and paging as a product habit, learning from customer escalations, scoping small when AI speeds up coding, and building cross-functional relationships (support, sales, finance) as part of engineering judgment.

You'll hear practical parallels with episodes on delighters and onboarding tension, plus why reviewing agent-written code still matters for system intuition when things break at 2 a.m.

Homework

Try hard and care a lot; more practically, focus on foundations and primitives.

Put good feedback systems in place so you know what's going on with your product and where it doesn't feel good-alerting and metrics, customer journey signals, or customer interviews.

If you have a customer support team, sit with them and watch them triage cases for your product; get to know support-they're sitting on a gold mine of product signal-and empathize with them like you do with users.

Kent's shorthand for the mindset Dillon agreed with: make pain painful-if your users are hurting, you should feel it too.

Resources

Cloudflare - Developers

Cloudflare Agents

Dillon Mulroy - site

Dillon Mulroy - GitHub

Guest: Dillon Mulroy

Company: Cloudflare

GitHub: @dmmulroy

X: @dillon_mulroy

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com

X: @kentcdodds

GitHub: @kentcdodds

Youtube: Kent C. Dodds

Video

Watch this episode on YouTube

Wayne blends delivery and product leadership—his stories range from a flagship-adjacent launch that nobody used to the everyday discipline of listening to customers without waiting two weeks for a meeting. This episode connects feedback-loop thinking (familiar from CI) to product discovery, yes-and conversations when someone is married to a feature idea, and the difference between hygiene features, performance features, and delighters when teams ship faster than users can absorb.

You'll also hear grounded takes on when "move fast" breaks trust, how AI may reshape search-and-listing UIs, and a concrete reading list: The Mom Test and Crossing the Chasm.

Homework

Talk to people, ask good questions, and listen—Wayne says that's the biggest hack that's worked in his career.

Read The Mom Test: ask how people solved this problem in the past instead of whether they like your idea or would use it—you get far more useful insight (Wayne ties this to caring about the problem, not your solution).

Resources

The Mom Test (Rob Fitzpatrick)

Crossing the Chasm (Geoffrey Moore)

Thoughtworks

Wayne Allan — LinkedIn

Guest: Wayne Allan

Company: Thoughtworks

𝕏: @xWayfinder

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com

𝕏: @kentcdodds

GitHub: @kentcdodds

Youtube: Kent C. Dodds

Video

Watch this episode on YouTube

Dax has spent years building tools developers actually use; on OpenCode he's thinking hard about product process while the space moves at breakneck speed. This episode is a practical look at product deterioration (not just code rot), bottom-up adoption for dev tools, and how coding agents change who decides what gets built—without replacing the need for taste, restraint, and clarity about what problem you're solving.

You'll hear concrete examples from OpenCode's terminal UI and onboarding, parallels to Kent's Epic Workshop app, and a grounded take on inference pricing, hype, and when "ship messy and fix later" does and doesn't hold up.

Homework

Convince yourself that getting good at product really matters—Dax says there's a lot in the culture that tries to tell you it doesn't, and you need that commitment because the belief will be challenged.

If you don't already believe it, figure out how to make yourself believe it matters (Kent's recap of the guest's action).

Resources

OpenCode

OpenCode docs

Dax Raad (site)

Kent C. Dodds — blog

Guest: Dax Raad

Company: OpenCode

GitHub: @thdxr

X: @thdxr

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com

X: @kentcdodds

GitHub: @kentcdodds

Youtube: Kent C. Dodds

Video

Watch this episode on YouTube

Software keeps changing, and a lot of the spotlight is on AI—but the shift Kent cares about is bigger than models and agents. Implementation is increasingly delegated to tools that will keep improving; quality, review, and craft still matter, but the gap that won’t go away is product: understanding users, clarifying problems, and shipping what actually helps.

This season is a deliberate tour of product engineering: conversations with people who blend product judgment with technical depth—including PMs and engineers who’ve crossed that line. The goal is the same as it’s always been for Kent’s teaching: give you durable skills. Right now, that means leveling up how you think about product, not just how you type code.

Homework

Write down one product decision you influenced (or wish you had) in the last month—what would you validate earlier next time?

Pick an app you use weekly: what problem is it really solving for you, and where does it feel like the team lost the plot?

Subscribe or follow Chats with Kent so you don’t miss the guest episodes in season 7.

Resources

Chats with Kent on kentcdodds.com

Video

Watch this on YouTube

Kent says goodbye at the end of another season of the "Chats with Kent" podcast, which featured interviews with speakers for the upcoming Epic Web Comp 2025 conference in Salt Lake City. The host, Kent C. Dodds, expresses excitement about the lineup of speakers and encourages listeners to attend the conference in March 2025. He also mentions that the talks will be available on the EpicWeb.dev platform for those who miss the live event.

Meet at Epic Web Conf.

Guest: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com

𝕏: @kentcdodds

GitHub: @kentcdodds

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com

𝕏: @kentcdodds

GitHub: @kentcdodds

YouTube: Kent C. Dodds

Epic Web: epicweb.dev