The Product Engineer
essays.davidchouinard.com
The Product Engineer
1–10 of 85 posts
Re: The Product Engineer
#2This really hit home for me. I was recently looking for a job so these ideas are fresh on my mind.
What I have been trying to figure out, is it better to work for a company that has a good product strategy, or an other wise good company without a product strategy? At the time, my thoughts were to find a company that needs a product minded developer. A company that has everything else figured out but product.
Re: The Product Engineer
#3Nice.
For me it always seemed as if there are consulting engineers and product engineers.
A few of my friends are devs at agencies, who worked at different projects for many clients, those were the consulting engineers to me.
I always worked for companies who sold software products, so I considered myself a product engineer.
Re: The Product Engineer
#4This really hit home for me. I was recently looking for a job so these ideas are fresh on my mind. What I have been trying to figure out, is it better to work for a company that has a good product strategy, or an other wise good company without a product strategy? At the time, my thoughts were to find a company that needs a product minded developer. A company that has everything else figured out but product.
A solid product with a sketchy tech team will result in a solid company that needs some internal work to truly take off.
A solid tech company without a product is just some devs congratulating themselves on how smart they all are while they pour money out.
Re: The Product Engineer
#5Product Engineering as a role is also critical in hardware companies, where discipline-focused engineers such as mechanical, electrical, firmware, etc. need to implement the features of the product. Many times, they fall into the trap of making an impressive feature set work and then thinking they can start selling the product.
What is missed are critical design elements such as:
- Cost of materials/assembly
- Power consumption and distribution
- Reliability of the system
- Durability of the system
- Supply chain integrity and robustness
- ...
It seems that a lot of the new robotics companies and many KickStarter projects fall into this trap: under-budget the product development, both in time and resourcing, and release their product prematurely.
This is all quite obvious to people who have participated in successful consumer or enterprise hardware companies, but young companies are still vulnerable. Advice would be to get it all working as a prototype, then, expect another major project of turning it into a Product before releasing.
Re: The Product Engineer
#6[deleted]
Re: The Product Engineer
#7Product Engineering as a role is also critical in hardware companies, where discipline-focused engineers such as mechanical, electrical, firmware, etc. need to implement the features of the product. Many times, they fall into the trap of making an impressive feature set work and then thinking they can start selling the product. What is missed are critical design elements such as: - Cost of materials/assembly - Power…
Hardware teams have been explicit about this role for a long time. I wish I had first-hand experience of hardware product engineering, but it's certainly an inspiration for this essay.
Re: The Product Engineer
#8Kudos on hitting the ethos behind product first engineers who build w/ code for the love of creating things rather than just the code. Code is the tool you wield to build great things, not the only source of beauty.
Re: The Product Engineer
#9Was hoping this would be about hiring, because I've been thinking a lot recently about how shitty hiring is for these people.
I've been interviewed for a lot of these ostensibly "product" positions this year. A lot of it has to do with the company not even understanding what they're hiring for. Initial screeners would be all about product, product, product, but then they'd give me a new grad programming trivia test about rearranging chars in a string. Such a weird mismatch of aspirations vs. reality on the interviewer's part, and, most importantly, I've never come away from these interviews feeling the interviewer has a solid understanding of what I might bring to the table.
I'd push more for it before leaving the interview, but by that point the interview itself has soured me on the company overall.
I think this is exacerbated in the startup world in particular, because even "straight technological" roles in a sub-10 person team will inevitably include a ton of product decisions throughout the course of fast-paced development, and I worry too many startups focus on these type of algorithmic hiring tests being some sort of qualifier for these people when it's not.
Re: The Product Engineer
#10Was hoping this would be about hiring, because I've been thinking a lot recently about how shitty hiring is for these people. I've been interviewed for a lot of these ostensibly "product" positions this year. A lot of it has to do with the company not even understanding what they're hiring for. Initial screeners would be all about product, product, product, but then they'd give me a new grad programming trivia test a…
What should we be asking/looking for/testing?