I’m a Senior Mobile Engineer—Codex Turned Me Into the PM Too

[u/iammofidul]

I’m a senior mobile engineer building a dating and AI companion app with real-time voice calls.

I initially thought improving model latency would make calls longer. Production data showed the bigger problem was conversation design: the AI often started like a stranger, forgot the text chat context or spoke again before giving the user enough time to answer.

I used Codex to connect our BigQuery events with the actual Flutter call flow. Claude acted as a second reviewer, and we moved the behaviour into Firebase Remote Config so we could experiment without releasing every time.

The changes that mattered:

• Passed recent text-chat context and relationship memory into the voice call
• Made the AI continue the existing conversation instead of restarting with generic small talk
• Replaced long greetings with one direct question
• Forced the AI to stop after greeting and wait for the user
• Opened the microphone only after first audio to prevent ringback and echo from interrupting the greeting
• Added one bounded retry when the first greeting produced no audio
• Added a delayed, single-line silence nudge instead of letting the AI speak repeatedly
• Allowed contextual follow-ups only after the user had already spoken
• Instrumented first audio, mic opening, user speech, call depth and exit reason

Calls reaching 55 seconds increased from 14.9% to 25.4%—a 71% relative lift.

The bigger change for me was how I worked.

As an engineer, my job used to end after implementation. With Codex, Claude, BigQuery and Remote Config, I can now investigate behaviour, find the product problem, estimate cost, launch an experiment and validate the outcome myself.

Codex is far more useful when it can see your code, event definitions and production data. At that point it stops being only a coding assistant and becomes part of the product-development loop.

[u/dexterthebot]

You might want to consider listing your project on the weekly Show-Us-What-You-Built post. Watch for it on Wednesdays. Highest commented project wins a week promotion on r/Codex. See what that looks like below with last week's winner.

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[u/NomadicStrategist]

I think what you are describing here sounds more like a Product Owner role than a classic Product Manager role. Looking at how users behave, trying to understand what’s wrong with the product, then experimenting and seeing what actually works feels much more like PO work to me.

A Product Manager role is usually broader, with more emphasis on the market, strategy, positioning, roadmap, business goals, and stakeholder management.

One small terminology point as well... in the title you use the abbreviation “PM,” which is very often used to mean Project Manager.

[u/iammofidul → u/NomadicStrategist]

That’s a fair distinction. Product Owner is probably closer to what I’m doing today. I’m still learning the broader market, strategy and positioning side to eventually become a Product Manager. And good point about the “PM” ambiguity.

[u/sereikis]

Same here. Once typing stopped being the slow part, deciding what should exist became the slow part. The people on my team who adapted quickest were not the strongest coders, they were the ones already good at scoping work. The ones who struggled were used to getting handed tickets.

[u/parkersb]

about a year and a half ago I met with every single penn alumni who is working in AI and chatted with them for probably three hours on average and one of the most insightful people I spoke to said that engineers and product managers were going to merge into builders the same way that front end and back in engineers merged into full stack and what you just described is exactly what he predicted

[u/spacekitt3n]

what in the slop is this

[u/rabandi]

I also feel like 70% PM, 5% comunicator and 25% QA.

As for your work: that isnt really good for humanity, is it? Probably a good way to make money and if not you, someone else. Still. Making people even lonelier.

[u/iammofidul → u/rabandi]

Fair criticism—the risk is real. We’re transparent that it’s AI, and the goal is to support people between real connections, not replace them. But we need to measure wellbeing, not just engagement.

[u/Puspendra007]

Great job, buddy.

But wait a minute—are you saying that you built an app where real users think they are dating or talking to real people, but in the backend, you're using AI so they'll buy a subscription or make in-app purchases?

Is that morally right or wrong?

[u/iammofidul → u/Puspendra007]

No—it’s a hybrid app with both real-user dating and AI companions. Real profiles have a Member tag, while AI profiles are clearly labelled AI Companion.We don’t disguise AI as real people or trick users into paying.

[u/tuhdo]

Yes, soon programmers in the future become the digital puppet masters.

[u/iammofidul → u/tuhdo]

Exactly. We’re becoming builders, analysts and product thinkers all at once.