4 ms·
Unless you're interviewing at a three-person startup, the company doesn't need your business experience, sales knowledge, or whatever else. That's what managers
by loeber 10y ago
Unless you're interviewing at a three-person startup, the company doesn't need your business experience, sales knowledge, or whatever else. That's what managers are hired for. $BIGCO gives you a whiteboarding interview because they're hiring you for your engineering skills, nothing else. The managers are usually better than you at corporate strategy and big-picture thinking. If not, why are you applying to be an engineer?
It took me a long time to understand this, too. It might be true that you're e.g. a good designer, but you're being hired as an engineer, so they want you to focus specifically on engineering. Why? Because that's the domain in which you offer the greatest marginal returns to the company. There's a virtually limitless amount of engineering to be done, and a limited number of hours in the day. Priorities.
- ryandrake 10y agoExactly. I also used to think that rounding out my technical skills with business knowledge, basic design skills, project management skills, etc. would make me more "marketable". Unfortunately, the reality is that companies by and large look to hire extremely specialized cogs, and your value to your employer is your ability to execute within the narrow constraints of your job title. You could be a self-taught product design genius, but if you're hired as 3rd software engineer from the left, your company expects you to sit there and code away. They aren't going to listen to your design thoughts. You could be the ex-founder of a billion dollar startup, but once you take $ROLE_X in $COMPANY_Y, your broad set of skills will not be appreciated. You're going to be judged by how well you do $ROLE_X only.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jbooth 10y agoUnless you're being micromanaged to an incredible degree, there's still a lot of room for an engineer's discretion on how things are implemented. That's where "getting it" can play into making better decisions. I'm not talking about moonlighting doing the design or PM work, I'm talking about bringing an understanding of the business to your engineering work. And yes, you don't want to go complete cowboy, major decisions should be run up the chain, but you do need to know what and why the major decisions are.
- aorloff 10y agoActually, at a 3-person startup sales knowledge is probably exactly what they need from #4.
- zenlikethat 10y agoThis is wrong and a common fantasy among engineers (that they get hired exclusively to engineer), or at least it should be for healthy orgs. Businesses do not hire to have an employee who codes all day. They hire an employee who is expected to deliver value through a certain set of skills. Business acumen tied to their core competency is far more desirable in every employee than arbitrary skills (you mentioned design above) because knowing how to prioritize and drive value to the business is what counts at the end of the day.
- r_smart 10y agoI think one of the big differences between a traditional engineering degree and computer science is that in the traditional engineering education you get some insight into this expectation. I was required to take courses in public speaking and economics, because it's expected that you have some level of business acumen, and use that to make engineering decisions. I think this is because engineering is understood to be the practical application of the principles revealed by academic science / research for the sake of building things and making money. Comp sci doesn't seem to have this analog as of yet, despite many programmers referring to themselves as engineers.
- tedmiston 10y agoI dunno. Working at a ~30–35 person startup as an engineer (post Series B), I still have plenty of voice in the product and features.