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‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

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Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#51

Post by lucb1e »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #7

I worked at a startup as the first Dev, it was a shock for me having to now consider things like: * What company laptops to buy? * Assess the merits of AWS and GCP and make a decision. * Divine an architecture that will get the product to the customers ASAP but will last at least a year with growth before needing a major rethink. * Present to customers, board members and potential investors about the tech. Eventually…

That's exactly the kind of thing I'd expect to do in a technical position in a small company.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#52

Post by lolc »

arpa wrote: post #23

Would people please stop shitting on php. It's no better nor worse than let's say, ruby. It gets shit done. It is a valid tool very widely used in the wild.

The best thing about PHP is that it often serves as a good model of how not to solve technical problems. A lot of people have experience with it so taking examples from PHP resonates with them. PHP is getting worse in this regard because the current implementation fixes quite a few things.

Unfixable things remain though and PHP will keep serving as a bad example in the future.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#53

Post by C1sc0cat »

yoz-y wrote: post #50
dustinmoris wrote: post #26

Great article. Here are some examples of how you know if you have a software engineer or product engineer at your startup (real experiences from me): CEO: We need to add a product search to our website so customers can easier find the products which they like. SE: Ok - and walks off and builds a search box into website. PE: Ok - walks off and builds a search box into the website. Also logs all search queries with zer…

So a 'product engineer' is a 'good software engineer'? Unless you are a drone you should always ask the questions of why something needs to be done before implementing it. The engineering part of software development has to be done before you start typing on a keyboard.

The product engineer is just a software engineer with more experience is the main take away here.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#54

Post by cameronbrown »

dustinmoris wrote: post #26

Great article. Here are some examples of how you know if you have a software engineer or product engineer at your startup (real experiences from me): CEO: We need to add a product search to our website so customers can easier find the products which they like. SE: Ok - and walks off and builds a search box into website. PE: Ok - walks off and builds a search box into the website. Also logs all search queries with zer…

> PE: Ok - walks off and builds a search box into the website. Also logs all search queries with zero results into a big table to give the startup a better insight into products which customers want, but couldn't find.

This one confused me. Shouldn't you be logging as much as possible anyway? There's going to be so many things you can't predict ahead of time with this kind of stuff.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#55

Post by scarface74 »

cryptozeus wrote: post #47
dustinmoris wrote: post #26

Great article. Here are some examples of how you know if you have a software engineer or product engineer at your startup (real experiences from me): CEO: We need to add a product search to our website so customers can easier find the products which they like. SE: Ok - and walks off and builds a search box into website. PE: Ok - walks off and builds a search box into the website. Also logs all search queries with zer…

So people or companies generally look for product engineers ? For job postings I normally have not seen such role defined.

I can usually tell by the interview process. Three years ago I interviewed (and received offers) from two companies paying about the same.

Company 1: First question was to do a merge sort on the board. Second question was to do some sql statements.

Company 2: “We are starting a new greenfield project and all we have are two developers who have been writing PowerBuilder code, stored procedures, and they are just learning C#. What would be your 90 day plan to start the project”. The correct answer started with budget requirements, training requirements, hiring contractors, etc.

Guess which job I took?

Two years later my complete interview process around the job I took was around making processes more “cloud native” and more highly available as opposed to one I didn’t take where they asked me to write code on a board to generate a Fibonacci sequence.

Short version: if they ask you to do coding whiteboard interviews instead of architectural interviews, you’re being hired as a software engineer.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#56

Post by sterileopinions »

mrunkel wrote: post #49
sterileopinions wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are decades of history behind every criticism of PHP? Do you just want people to ignore them? PHP can be a bit of a punching bag, even when it's not topical. But it's not exactly unwarranted.

Those decades of history are largely talking about a PHP that doesn't exist any more. Yes, the language has it's warts, but if you think $language doesn't, you're just new to it. There are many large PHP projects that generate tons of revenue. New frameworks like Laravel and Symfony 4 make whipping out MVPs that can scale pretty damn easy.

>There are many large PHP projects that generate tons of revenue.

Okay, but that doesn't negate any of the criticisms about PHP nor does it suddenly wipe out decades of built up reputation.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#57

Post by sterileopinions »

mobilemidget wrote: post #46
sterileopinions wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are decades of history behind every criticism of PHP? Do you just want people to ignore them? PHP can be a bit of a punching bag, even when it's not topical. But it's not exactly unwarranted.

You almost imply as if there is a scripting or programming language that is perfect and free of any criticism or disadvantage?

Where do I do that?

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#58

Post by C1sc0cat »

dastx wrote: post #45
jermaustin1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about London took its toll? I've been contemplating a switch from NYC to London. I know it will be a 30-50% pay cut, but I've been told by other's who have lived and worked in both that it is worth it for the better work/life balance.

Londoner here. I've never worked in NYC but having been there for pleasure I can tell you things like commuting will be a lot easier (possibly even cheaper? Weekly tickets will set you back 35 quid if you commute from zone 1 and 2). My wife is American and recently quit her job with Delta (she's done both office jobs there and she's also flown as an FA). And based on her experience I can tell you you'll have a much b…

More typically you will be commuting from further out Zones 1 and 2 properties are SV levels of expensive - your looking at £4k to 5k year for a season ticket from an affordable area.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#59

Post by explorigin »

ck425 wrote: post #37

Shouldn't all 'software engineers' be 'product engineers'? I don't really get his point, all he's describing is what any good engineer should be doing anyway.

In short, it would be wrong to expect all software engineers to be product engineers. It takes more than code-monkey experience to foresee markets needs and develop to them. In some ways it's the difference between a mechanical engineer and an industrial engineer. One makes machines, the other optimizes processes.

Re: ‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

#60

Post by nateburke »

One dynamic that is not discussed explicitly here concerns junior/mid-level engineers who perhaps didn't get the offer at Google/fb the first go-around and are working at your startup as a fallback. They probably don't care about executing strongly on your startup's mission in year one as much as they care about their own careers/CVs. As they should. Things they might talk about implementing that probably won't help your new business:

-distributed systems

-hand-rolled ML

-react

-hiring dedicated QA professionals so that they can focus on coding algorithms

If you say no to all of this and tell them to go write another rails view for the admin dashboard, they will simply quit. The challenge is to find the right balance between "product engineer" tasks and tasks that will show the engineer that you genuinely care about their career outside of the next BD stunt.

Having some sort of secondary bottom line helps enormously with this tension, in my experience.

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