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‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

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

#91

Post by paggle »

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 PM and software engineer in a single body. In an organization with actual PMs the CEO doesn’t tell this to a software engineer they tell it to a PM. The PM interviews the CEO, customer support team, and engineering team (since the spec depends on whether the real time solution is 10% or 10x more expensive than the daily digest) and produces a spec. As the engineers iterate they uncover holes in the spec which the PM fills in.

Sometimes the old school methods are better than whatever modern crap has the CEO making feature requests to engineering.

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

#92

Post by dnate »

new_here wrote: post #65
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.

Haven't worked in NYC but I've worked in London for 3.5 years and am in the process of leaving/going remote because I don't rate the quality of life here at all and I'm exhausted from it. Things that take its toll for me: 1. Too. Many. People. You can barely book a restaurant or get a seat anywhere. 2. Nothing works. Trains, airports and mobile network reception. 3. Commuting. Rush hour is crowded, the tubes are disg…

shh berlin sucks don't go there

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

#93

Post by taurath »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #90
lonelappde wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' un…

> convincing engineers to stay in crap conditions because of how "cool" everything is

Games are "cool" and they certainly talk about it, but its also that this is your one shot, and there's 1000 people beating down the door to take your job who will gladly take any mount of pay. There's a lot of "life goals" tied up there.

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

#94

Post by dustinmoris »

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…

Spreadsheets work with BigTable out of the box in the G-Suite. I love dumping stuff in BigTable for analytics so other non engineering people can easily interact with that data and run all sorts of complex and non complex queries against it with tooling which they are already know, Out-Of-The-Box! This is as cheap as it gets when it comes to building a "web interface and reporting" and the cost is zero.

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

#95

Post by notyourday »

dustinmoris wrote: post #94
notyourday wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Spreadsheets work with BigTable out of the box in the G-Suite. I love dumping stuff in BigTable for analytics so other non engineering people can easily interact with that data and run all sorts of complex and non complex queries against it with tooling which they are already know, Out-Of-The-Box! This is as cheap as it gets when it comes to building a "web interface and reporting" and the cost is zero.

Does your app handle all the errors that insert into a bigtable could trigger? Does it do retries? Does it queue messages for those retries via a separate queue manager? Does it synchronize the state of the transaction and the state of the transaction inside of the big table? If one succeeded and one failed, what do you do?

That's the extra complexity. If dumps into data lake are that important, then it becomes its own special beast that needs to be fed. If the dumps into the data lake aren't important, then the question to ask "Do I need the data lake at all or am I doing it because everyone else is doing it?" If the answer is "yes" then absolutely build that functionality. If the answer is "Eh" the question becomes much murkier.

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

#96

Post by C1sc0cat »

leoedin wrote: post #66
C1sc0cat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's plenty of affordable areas in zone 2 and 3 which have average rents considerably less than SV (a 1 bed flat might be £1100-£1400/month). Annual travel within zone 3 is £1648. It's really not comparable, especially since the pound dropped 20% after the Brexit referendum.

I would imagine the original commenter moving from NYC to London isn't going to be interested in renting some tiny one bed studio flat and living on ramen.

I was talking about buying - why throw rent money away.

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

#97

Post by C1sc0cat »

new_here wrote: post #65
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.

Haven't worked in NYC but I've worked in London for 3.5 years and am in the process of leaving/going remote because I don't rate the quality of life here at all and I'm exhausted from it. Things that take its toll for me: 1. Too. Many. People. You can barely book a restaurant or get a seat anywhere. 2. Nothing works. Trains, airports and mobile network reception. 3. Commuting. Rush hour is crowded, the tubes are disg…

Never had a problem getting a set in a restaurant in London - and Compared to NYC the Tube is heaven.

Typical Londoner complains that they have to wait up to 10 minutes for a bus - compared to the rest of the UK where you might get two busses an hour and they stop running after 6:30.

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

#98

Post by alexandercrohde »

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…

Uh... aren't you leaving out product managers? Is a "product engineer" just a glorified term to get an engineer to do two jobs at once?

CEO: "We need a search box"

Product Owner: "Okay, let me do some research and build out a design. Here are all the metrics we'll track and quantify the success of the project on"

Engineer: "Okay I've implemented your design, and put in all the essential logging to power those dashboards"

Product owner: "Great, after our search box, sales went up 7% for these items. This means $75,000 a year. Success"

CEO: "K."

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

#99

Post by dhmiller »

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…

What you describe as a Product Engineer, I call a Senior Engineer/Developer/Programmer/etc.

Your examples essentially differentiate between 1) a person who accomplishes an assigned task because it was assigned to them and 2) a person who knows that there is more to completing a task than meeting the defined requirements.

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

#100

Post by silveroriole »

scarface74 wrote: post #55
cryptozeus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 learn…

Both of these interview questions sound awful though. Are we supposed to think company 2 sounds like a good, high profile ‘product engineer’ job, rather than an indication that you will be expected to fulfill about five radically different different job roles (engineer, interviewer, project manager, mentor, customer manager, etc)?
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