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‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

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

#81

Post by notyourday »

hobs wrote: post #62
cameronbrown wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes - but people dont. You often get pushback for implementing more the than basic request, you have to defend your decision from someone who didnt think of it, so now they think it cant be good. Logging, auditing, anything that isnt immediately available to solve the next problem is often disregarded until "wow it would have been nice to know..."

I'm in a camp of "do the minimum". The cost of adding some call to a logger to dump data into file/syslog/etc is microscopic. The cost of adding that data into BigTable and building tooling and web interface and reporting around it is probably higher than the cost of the entire project.

In my experience companies are experiencing data overload and data paralysis because they have tons of data that is absolutely useless now and will be even more useless tomorrow. And they keep adding data about the data because that's the current koolaid everyone is drinking.

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

#82

Post by lonelappde »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #28

I agree with the title, but disagree with the article. If you're at all an experienced software engineer, you should avoid working as a "software engineer" at a startup, because you'll most likely be worked to the bone for a pittance in equity. You're much better off either finding a VP or C-level position at a much smaller startup, or doing your own side project. At least when you're working at 3am, because the only…

There are good employers and bad employers. I hear software engineering at AAA game companies is no picnic either.

HN is flush of people who did quite well on startup equity.

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

#83

Post by notyourday »

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.

> 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

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is whom you should hire as your tech leadership. He will get your product shipped in a reasonable amount of time, rather than rewrite an app that is making you $2 million a month in Go because some new log ingestion framework wants protobufs so you can query "what are the new browser agents that we have never seen before".

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

#84

Post by lonelappde »

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.

Product engineer is someone who feels superior to their peers and gives themself a new title.

The euphet treadmill took us from programmer to developer to software "engineer" to product "engineer".

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

sterileopinions wrote: post #35
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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by hobs »

notyourday wrote: post #81
hobs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - but people dont. You often get pushback for implementing more the than basic request, you have to defend your decision from someone who didnt think of it, so now they think it cant be good. Logging, auditing, anything that isnt immediately available to solve the next problem is often disregarded until "wow it would have been nice to know..."

I'm in a camp of "do the minimum". The cost of adding some call to a logger to dump data into file/syslog/etc is microscopic. The cost of adding that data into BigTable and building tooling and web interface and reporting around it is probably higher than the cost of the entire project. In my experience companies are experiencing data overload and data paralysis because they have tons of data that is absolutely usele…

I think based on your experience that's a fair line to take; I've spent a lot of time on the ops side, and seen much of "well we did nothing and we're all out of ideas AND budget"

The best answer is somewhere between these two extremes, and I like your approach of starting simple and clear - a file based approach also easily lends itself to centralizing or bootstrapping to another medium - the bigtable approach calls for a migration and potentially even a change in the guarantees made by the underlying system because someone started to repurpose it as not just an audit trail because "of course we can just query it." (ugghgghghgh)

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

#87

Post by sterileopinions »

dangerface wrote: post #80
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.

Every language has valid criticism, you use the right tool for the right job. When you single out one of your tools as "bad" it just highlights that you don't understand what job the tool is for. learn your tools.

You're assuming the criticisms between different languages are equatable. It's important to understand that there is a reputation and perception that PHP has because of its colored history.

Invoking platitudes like "the right tool for the job" is irrelevant and isn't going to make that history go away suddenly.

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

#88

Post by longnguyen »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #3

But what if I want to join a startup so I can build out the stack of my dreams while accomplishing whatever business goals are set? I’m assuming if you _join_ a startup, rather then creating or co-founding one, there’s already a product person on board.

In early stage startup, CEO usually is company's product person

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

#89

Post by sterileopinions »

taneq wrote: post #48
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.

A lot of the criticisms were perfectly valid security concerns (some of the old default behaviour was insecure by design). Fortunately the language has evolved a lot and is nowhere near as bad as it once was. Also a lot of the criticisms were based on PHP being an easy "beginner language" and so being used by a lot of people who had no idea what they were doing. If people have valid criticisms of modern PHP then by a…

> but don't go ragging on the language in 2019 for problems with PHP written in 2004.

Reputations can be unfair. But there are many characteristics that many developers still find unsavory about PHP, a lot of them fundamental to the language.

It's a bit silly to put a time cap on those characteristics that just aren't going to change. It's really silly to assume people are going to change their tune on a tech stack many actively choose to avoid and have no way of caring or seeing what's changed within the last 3 or so years.

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

#90

Post by 5trokerac3 »

lonelappde wrote: post #82
5trokerac3 wrote: post #28

I agree with the title, but disagree with the article. If you're at all an experienced software engineer, you should avoid working as a "software engineer" at a startup, because you'll most likely be worked to the bone for a pittance in equity. You're much better off either finding a VP or C-level position at a much smaller startup, or doing your own side project. At least when you're working at 3am, because the only…

There are good employers and bad employers. I hear software engineering at AAA game companies is no picnic either. HN is flush of people who did quite well on startup equity.

I've been around both industries and the main thing they survive on is convincing engineers to stay in crap conditions because of how "cool" everything is. I'm lucky enough that the game company I worked for was run by great people, but I've heard horror stories from friends that moved on.

The equity piece is just percentages. If I go to a "startup" in series D and get 0.01% of the company, it better be a frickin' unicorn, because it'd have to sell for $1B for me to make $100k, at best. If I'm a cofounder and have 25% of the company, it only needs to sell for $400k for me to make the same amount.

Never mind that you'd make that $100k difference within a few years, being paid market rate at an established company, and probably get to go home at 5. Now imagine what happens if you put that extra $25-30k you're making into the company's matching 401k, because they actually have one. And you get real raises instead of more stock options that may wind up worthless. And if things go sour you just go to another company, because your investments aren't based on the success of the dysfunctional company you're currently working for.

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