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‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups

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

#101

Post by mothsonasloth »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #22
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…

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.

Public transport, the London "bubble" which people get trapped in, drinking culture which I don't like, high income / high expenditure lifestyle.

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

#102

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

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…

Why does a product engineer go toward dinosaur tech? Moreover, what does that have to do with anything?

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

#103

Post by reallydude »

cameronbrown wrote: post #54
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.

I wouldn't build anything beyond what the server logs, which I do by default in the server config.

Having an access log and error log is sufficient, until you know what you want to query. Writing a script to do some custom query is a few minutes of work and can run over all the files created...ever. Then the person who wanted the query will just as likely realize the question they had is impossible to answer right now or doesn't want to expose the answer, or any other of a myriad of results that aren't "this adds business value".

Stop building more than you need. Get back to the work.

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

#104

Post by checktheorder »

mikekchar wrote: post #31
checktheorder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian with a lot of iron rings in the family, it's always so weird to see the phrase "software engineer". It just doesn't feel like it's been earned.

As a fellow Canadian I avoid the title. What's wrong with software developer? I don't do engineering, from the perspective of a P.Eng. I've only worked with one P.Eng to my knowledge and he couldn't do software engineering either (he wasn't even a particularly good software developer). I've heard of people doing things that sound like real engineering wrt software, but I've never actually met anyone who did it. I don…

True, I didn't mean to imply officially-sanctioned engineers are better than developers in all things, or that one can't be both, or that glacially slow and careful programming is the right approach in all circumstances. I just have issues with developers in companies with "move fast and break things" cultures calling what they do "engineering".

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

#105

Post by notyourday »

sterileopinions wrote: post #89
taneq wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> 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.

Unless the software developers are paid to wax poetically about those unsavory features rather than affect whatever gets the $$ in the door to pay the software developers salaries "Lolz, lookz at PHPz stupid." is irrelevant.

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

#106

Post by scarface74 »

silveroriole wrote: post #100
scarface74 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

Yes. And I loved the second job. I left my permanent position for the contract to perm position (got health benefits through my wife’s job) . Billed them an average of 60-70 hours a week, paid off some debt the first six months, negotiated a decent market pay and a title bump to put on my resume and by the time I was made perm, I had a large enough team in place and processes so I was down to a manageable 45 hours a week.

But, I made it clear at the interview that my first steps would be to build up the department, develop processes and training. They already had a barely working 20 year old PowerBuilder implementation where the various offices were forced to use Citrix terminals to access the system. They needed some tighter web and mobile integrations they couldn’t currently do.

I found out the real money was in cloud consulting. They hired a few consultants to “move us to the cloud” (a bunch of no nothing “lift and shifters”). I found out that’s where the real money was.

Left there after a year and half with a better resume, self demoted (responsibility not pay) to my current job and I’m getting a chance to fill in some resume gaps to become a more well rounded (and paid) consultant in a couple of years.

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

#107

Post by sterileopinions »

notyourday wrote: post #105
sterileopinions wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> 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. Unless the software developers are paid to wax poetically about those unsavory features rather than affect whatever gets the $$ in the door to pay the software developers salaries "Lolz, lookz at PHPz stupid." is irrelevant.

Most people don't get paid to post opinions on the internet, or any kind of public forum.

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

#108

Post by C1sc0cat »

anilakar wrote: post #63
C1sc0cat wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So... instead of Product Engineer and Software Engineer, the titles should be Software Engineer and Programmer, respectively.

Possibly but that grade inflation boat has sailed a long time ago.

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

#110

Post by sterileopinions »

notyourday wrote: post #83
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 want…

That's a really big claim based on a single post that was whining into the void about someone else making a joke about a language.

It even says "(JOKING)" in the article.

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