First thing is engineers are not second class citizens in any startup worth their salt. To the contrary, engineers are absolutely the most important thing, and

First thing is engineers are not second class citizens in any startup worth their salt. To the contrary, engineers are absolutely the most important thing, and if you can put on a bit of a product hat it's a super power that will drive not only your career success but actually impact the trajectory of the company as well. The problem though, is anyone can start a startup, and so you need to be sure you don't fall in with bozos. If you have a 5-person startup, and someone is "Head of Product" and full of their own ideas and talking down to engineers (or otherwise making them feel as you describe) then most likely you have a bozo on your hands, perhaps due to ego inflation during years of successful hoop jumping promoted by our education system & corporate culture. The bottom line is that product management is one of the hardest disciplines, and within tech it's filled with wannabes who schmoozed their way in but don't actually have the chops. This is not the end of the world if they are humble and willing to take input from engineering. The flip side though, is that as an engineer you need to be customer and business-centric in your thinking—not all engineers can/want to do this, but with the structured thinking the discipline requires you at least have a head start. Good luck.