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The Product Engineer

essays.davidchouinard.com

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Re: The Product Engineer

#51

Post by kovacs »

guelo wrote: post #40

Everyone that walks around with a touch screen computer in their pocket thinks they are a genius of product design. But if you actually want to design products the first step is to become an expert in the code. So stop day dreaming that you're the new Steve Jobs and get coding.

Everyone that has a car thinks they're a great race car driver. But if you actually want to be a great race car driver the first step is to become an expert in building the car. So stop day dreaming that you're the new Mario Andretti and grab a wrench.

That sounds as silly to me as your assertion. And yes I can code and have for a very long time.

I'll take the person that can figure out what will resonate with users and doesn't know a line of code over a guy that can code but isn't good with products. The skill sets are orthogonal in many products. Sometimes being able to code may give you important insights that a non-coding product person won't have, but I wouldn't count on it as a sustainable advantage for all but the most complex of products (e.g. enterprise/plumbing software), and even then a great product person will figure out what they need in order to arrive at the salient product decisions.

Sometimes having the ability to code is a hinderance to building a great product.

Re: The Product Engineer

#52

Post by wellpast »

> And the technical interview falls flat. The product engineer isn't intrisincally interested in software — programming is merely the tool for maximal leverage on the world.

Yes... but we can't let you off the hook too much. I consider myself a Product Engineer as well, but to be able to creatively evolve a product you need to have some serious professional tools under your belt and many of these are technical, I'm afraid.

To use his analogy: "Song designers are musicians first." I wouldn't trust a song designer that couldn't answer some of the relevant technical questions.

There is a very real question as to how to recruit and interview well. This self-proclaimed "Product Engineer" claims "I'm the test case you want to turn green," but the real question is: how can we tell he's the real deal from the next guy? (Hint: it isn't JUST take his word for it.)

Re: The Product Engineer

#53

Post by AznHisoka »

gonyea wrote: post #50

Bingo. I'm a product engineer as well. I build products in 1/4 the time of an entire team, with unit/integration tests. It's also technically correct--that is, as technically correct as it needs to be to ship, scale, and see if it gains traction. Waste my time white boarding a sorting algorithm and I'll turn down the job (well, unless the money is insane). But designing the flow/architecture of a new product idea? Th…

So... isn't that an architect, or UX guy (if front end)? Why do we have to invent a new job title?

Re: The Product Engineer

#54

Post by gomox »

AznHisoka wrote: post #53
gonyea wrote: post #50

Bingo. I'm a product engineer as well. I build products in 1/4 the time of an entire team, with unit/integration tests. It's also technically correct--that is, as technically correct as it needs to be to ship, scale, and see if it gains traction. Waste my time white boarding a sorting algorithm and I'll turn down the job (well, unless the money is insane). But designing the flow/architecture of a new product idea? Th…

So... isn't that an architect, or UX guy (if front end)? Why do we have to invent a new job title?

Software Architect in general implies a high-level (in terms of abstraction) technical position within an engineering team. This person is usually in charge of the design of the software, as in "use a queue here instead of a database", "this data should not go to the UI, but instead be requested on demand", "here's what the API should be for these 2 components to interact". You wouldn't expect a software architect to be particularly knowledgeable about business needs and users.

UX positions are usually design centric (people in these positions usually hold HCI or Design degrees). These people usually lack the engineering knowledge to be able to quickly assess the viability and cost of the solutions they propose, and therefore work very frequently with people that have complementary skills.

I am one of those types with a mixed business/engineering skillset and work in Product Management these days.

The "Product Engineer" as described in the article seems like a great position for a small company, or for a small team within a company. It's what a founding CTO would usually do at the early stages of a company.

In my experience, as companies grow, it's hard to know both the customers, the users, and the technical details in intimate detail, so the position seems slightly doomed unless the product is very technical (say, mostly an API).

That being said, broad skillsets can be a blessing when things need to move rapidly.

Re: The Product Engineer

#55

Post by zeeshanm »

I wholeheartedly feel product engineers are best suited to start their own companies. I literally do not know any company that can give them the kind of experience they seek.

Re: The Product Engineer

#56

Post by jorgecurio »

I've had plenty of product based experience but found the person interviewing doesn't seem to realize that he should be pitching why I need to be there.

As an illustration of how clueless these recruiters are they start off by asking technical interview questions. I just say 'im sorry didn't know you relied on rote memorization to build your product'

Re: The Product Engineer

#57

Post by gomox »

palakchokshi wrote: post #41
reverius42 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UX is not about polish. UX is the product -- literally, from the user's perspective. I don't think there is a meaningful difference between Product Engineer and UX Engineer.

The X in UX is Experience so indeed a UX Engineer's role would be to improve the user's experience of the product not necessarily define what the product should be. It's unfortunate that UX is being confused with Product. Let me illustrate with an example: Consider a product with 20 features, 10 of which will be helpful to the user once they have been using the product for a while. The UX engineer's job is to identif…

In terms of conventional job titles, that's the job of the Product Manager.

Re: The Product Engineer

#58

Post by matrix »

The core point of the essay, that product design is a different skill to software development, is obviously true, but to me this feels a bit like the title "Software Architect" was 10 years ago; i.e. people who want to design software products without the pesky whole writing software part.

Like being a dev manager, defining the vision, design, etc requires a different set of skills from development. However, a person can do those jobs much better if they have spent time in the trenches. They understand costs and tradeoffs better, can better sell the ideas to the team, and so on.

Re: The Product Engineer

#59

Post by palakchokshi »

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #43
palakchokshi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A technical Product Manager would be a Product Engineer but the inverse might not be true. In my mind a good Product Manager is also responsible for guiding the product roadmap in the direction that addresses user's wants rather than features that are cool to implement but don't really address a user's wants or needs.

Yep, definitely. As a really bad analogy, if you are in the ice cream business and ask a customer, they will recommend you changes in flavors, but if there was, say, a huge chance in a new kind of popsicle, they'd never tell you about that. There's also a dichotomy between the things they'll ask for and what you need to get them to stay with you, or get other users sold. You can make an existing user really really ha…

Your article is spot on. I agreed with all the different product management strategies. I was going to make the argument that building what the users tell you they love is great when that thing is making you money. However you made the point much more eloquently in your article. That's a nice read. Thanks for the link.

Re: The Product Engineer

#60

Post by palakchokshi »

gomox wrote: post #57
palakchokshi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The X in UX is Experience so indeed a UX Engineer's role would be to improve the user's experience of the product not necessarily define what the product should be. It's unfortunate that UX is being confused with Product. Let me illustrate with an example: Consider a product with 20 features, 10 of which will be helpful to the user once they have been using the product for a while. The UX engineer's job is to identif…

In terms of conventional job titles, that's the job of the Product Manager.

True. And I mentioned in a comment above that a technical Product Manager would be a Product Engineer. However a non-technical Product Manager would not be.
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