What the devil is a Factory Engineer?!

Kent reacts to Zach Lloyd's Warp memo on "factory engineers" — where the software-factory vision is right, where it misses product context, and why factory work still comes back to users. Better with Kent — durable skills for people who ship software. Warp CEO Zach Lloyd told his team they are now factory engineers, not product engineers. Kent reads the memo aloud and pressure-tests the framing: automated development, cloud software factories, agent workflows, and the metrics that can game you if you forget what users are paying for. He agrees with a lot of the direction — build the system agents work in, measure throughput, tighten the loop — but pushes back on anything that treats the product as optional. Internal tools still have users. Factory efficiency only matters when the right work goes in. And yes, the memo's last word is still product. If you're trying to make sense of agentic engineering without losing product judgment, this is the durable-skills read-through. Links Better with Kent Warp — We are now factory engineers, not product engineers Warp software factory (build.warp.dev) Become an Epic Product Engineer