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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 n

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 zero results into a big table to give the startup a better insight into products which customers want, but couldn't find. Another example... CEO: We need some real time messaging into our communication channel (Slack) when a customer order couldn't be fullfilled during packaging, so customer support can pro-actively reach out to the customer and notify them about whatever the problem was. SE: Goes away for a few days and builds a complex real time notifications API which needs to hold state about which notifications it has already sent and which not. Uses latest fanciest tech for that. PE: Starts asking critical questions. Why does it have to be real time? What time are most orders being packed? What time does customer support staff start actually working? Turns out after 10 minutes of asking the right questions that a real time messaging service is overkill if most CS staff only starts working after all the packaging is already done. A simple stateless daily report being sent once to the Slack channel is completely sufficient and does the job just as good if not better than a real time solution. PE walks off and implements this in a couple hours and has the majority of the week still free to do more impactful work. EDIT: Product engineers with a real "get shit done" mindset are invaluable not only to startups but even well established companies. They are the ones who really drive success through good communication, great understanding of the business, all the different parties and the tech which they have to their availability to find the best solution for any given problem.

cryptozeus 7y ago
So people or companies generally look for product engineers ? For job postings I normally have not seen such role defined.
- scarface74 7y ago
  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 learning C#. What would be your 90 day plan to start the project”. The correct answer started with budget requirements, training requirements, hiring contractors, etc. Guess which job I took? Two years later my complete interview process around the job I took was around making processes more “cloud native” and more highly available as opposed to one I didn’t take where they asked me to write code on a board to generate a Fibonacci sequence. Short version: if they ask you to do coding whiteboard interviews instead of architectural interviews, you’re being hired as a software engineer.
  - philote 7y ago
    There's really no consensus on what some of these job titles mean. IMO if it has "engineer" in the title, you're doing more than just writing algorithms. I'd say that in your example, Company 1 was looking for a developer or programmer, whereas the other company was looking for a software engineer or product engineer. Also, IMO the term "Product Engineer" does not denote that it has to be software-related at all. It could be someone who designs shoes or training seminars or whatever (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_engineering).
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Yet and still the stereotypical “software engineer” jobs at big tech companies focus on your ability to do leetCode style whiteboard coding and “reversing a binary tree”.
    - cryptozeus 7y ago
      I think product engineer is used loosely within the software field same as product manager and product engineer. Not to be taken literally as per Wikipedia definition.
yoz-y 7y ago
So a 'product engineer' is a 'good software engineer'? Unless you are a drone you should always ask the questions of why something needs to be done before implementing it. The engineering part of software development has to be done before you start typing on a keyboard.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  The product engineer is just a software engineer with more experience is the main take away here.
  - anilakar 7y ago
    So... instead of Product Engineer and Software Engineer, the titles should be Software Engineer and Programmer, respectively.
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Possibly but that grade inflation boat has sailed a long time ago.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Product engineer is someone who feels superior to their peers and gives themself a new title. The euphet treadmill took us from programmer to developer to software "engineer" to product "engineer".
cameronbrown 7y ago
> 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.
- hobs 7y ago
  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..."
  - notyourday 7y ago
    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 useless now and will be even more useless tomorrow. And they keep adding data about the data because that's the current koolaid everyone is drinking.
    - hobs 7y ago
      I think based on your experience that's a fair line to take; I've spent a lot of time on the ops side, and seen much of "well we did nothing and we're all out of ideas AND budget" The best answer is somewhere between these two extremes, and I like your approach of starting simple and clear - a file based approach also easily lends itself to centralizing or bootstrapping to another medium - the bigtable approach calls for a migration and potentially even a change in the guarantees made by the underlying system because someone started to repurpose it as not just an audit trail because "of course we can just query it." (ugghgghghgh)
rficcaglia 7y ago
You have more luck than I do since I mostly see 2 variations of this play out: CEO: I want X....and Y, Z, and enhance A-F, all yesterday SE: you outsourced me last month!? PE: I can’t do anything without more specs Or CEO: I want X SE, PE: 3 months later deliver X Sales: Customer doesn’t want X, wants Y and Big Deal deadline is tomorrow CEO: drop everything, R.I.P. out X and build Y and ship it tonight!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
paggle 7y ago
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.
alexandercrohde 7y ago
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."
dhmiller 7y ago
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.
ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
Why does a product engineer go toward dinosaur tech? Moreover, what does that have to do with anything?

cryptozeus 7y ago

So people or companies generally look for product engineers ? For job postings I normally have not seen such role defined.

scarface74 7y ago
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 learning C#. What would be your 90 day plan to start the project”. The correct answer started with budget requirements, training requirements, hiring contractors, etc. Guess which job I took? Two years later my complete interview process around the job I took was around making processes more “cloud native” and more highly available as opposed to one I didn’t take where they asked me to write code on a board to generate a Fibonacci sequence. Short version: if they ask you to do coding whiteboard interviews instead of architectural interviews, you’re being hired as a software engineer.
- philote 7y ago
  There's really no consensus on what some of these job titles mean. IMO if it has "engineer" in the title, you're doing more than just writing algorithms. I'd say that in your example, Company 1 was looking for a developer or programmer, whereas the other company was looking for a software engineer or product engineer. Also, IMO the term "Product Engineer" does not denote that it has to be software-related at all. It could be someone who designs shoes or training seminars or whatever (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_engineering).
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Yet and still the stereotypical “software engineer” jobs at big tech companies focus on your ability to do leetCode style whiteboard coding and “reversing a binary tree”.
  - cryptozeus 7y ago
    I think product engineer is used loosely within the software field same as product manager and product engineer. Not to be taken literally as per Wikipedia definition.

yoz-y 7y ago

So a 'product engineer' is a 'good software engineer'? Unless you are a drone you should always ask the questions of why something needs to be done before implementing it. The engineering part of software development has to be done before you start typing on a keyboard.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
The product engineer is just a software engineer with more experience is the main take away here.
- anilakar 7y ago
  So... instead of Product Engineer and Software Engineer, the titles should be Software Engineer and Programmer, respectively.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Possibly but that grade inflation boat has sailed a long time ago.
lonelappde 7y ago
Product engineer is someone who feels superior to their peers and gives themself a new title. The euphet treadmill took us from programmer to developer to software "engineer" to product "engineer".

cameronbrown 7y ago

> 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.

hobs 7y ago
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..."
- notyourday 7y ago
  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 useless now and will be even more useless tomorrow. And they keep adding data about the data because that's the current koolaid everyone is drinking.
  - hobs 7y ago
    I think based on your experience that's a fair line to take; I've spent a lot of time on the ops side, and seen much of "well we did nothing and we're all out of ideas AND budget" The best answer is somewhere between these two extremes, and I like your approach of starting simple and clear - a file based approach also easily lends itself to centralizing or bootstrapping to another medium - the bigtable approach calls for a migration and potentially even a change in the guarantees made by the underlying system because someone started to repurpose it as not just an audit trail because "of course we can just query it." (ugghgghghgh)

rficcaglia 7y ago

You have more luck than I do since I mostly see 2 variations of this play out: CEO: I want X....and Y, Z, and enhance A-F, all yesterday SE: you outsourced me last month!? PE: I can’t do anything without more specs Or CEO: I want X SE, PE: 3 months later deliver X Sales: Customer doesn’t want X, wants Y and Big Deal deadline is tomorrow CEO: drop everything, R.I.P. out X and build Y and ship it tonight!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

paggle 7y ago

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.

alexandercrohde 7y ago

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."

dhmiller 7y ago

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.

ulisesrmzroche 7y ago

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