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The Product-Minded Software Engineer (2019)

89 points by absolute100 6y ago

absolute100 6y ago
6 minutes read. Gergely Orosz with a blog post that I'm going to use as a reference when people ask me for advice on "how can I increase my impact as an employee?". Whether your customers are internal or external, we all want to build useful products/tools that are being used and provide real value. Share it with other engineers in your organization and have a discussion. Who's doing it exceptionally well today? Are you investing enough time with them to see how they do it?
- diegoperini 6y ago
  > 6 minutes read. Here is a browser extension idea: inject this disclaimer into the article by estimating it from the length. How can we achieve this without the ugly Access your data for all websites Access browser tabs permissions?
  - tiborsaas 6y ago
    Build a scraper / content extractor service. But you still can't inject anything without those permissions.
    - bananaface 6y ago
      It would be nice if Firefox provided an API that only exposed the static HTML of sites you're visiting. I don't care if an extension wants that data, it's nowhere near as sensitive. I guess this doesn't solve injection, but there must be other ways to solve "display some additional data."
      - tiborsaas 6y ago
        Great idea, after all it's impossible to render sensitive data server side :)
        bananaface 6y ago
        I said it's less sensitive.
        tiborsaas 6y ago
        Does it matter? Btw here is your API: document.body.innerHTML
        bananaface 6y ago
        And which permission do I take to access that?
        tiborsaas 6y ago
        As a bookmarklet, none :) That's the best you can get.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - bananaface 6y ago
    Firefox already has this. Click reader view, it also gives you a time estimate.
    - hyperpallium2 6y ago
      yep, 11-14 minutes for TFA.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Agingcoder 6y ago
To some extent, I'm finding very difficult to work on something with no understanding of who is going to use it, how it's going to be used, and why it's needed. It makes engineering decisions very difficult, maintenance work horrible since you don't know the impact, and new features difficult to 'bound' (do I really need to handle all these extra corner cases, or can I just say it's not supported?). Basically, understanding context is key to high impact work in many cases. So, while I agree with OP about the qualities of 'product-minded engineers' (they're good qualities), I believe they should be part of the default skillset of any senior engineer, and especially so since 'product' can be a library shipped internally, and doesn't have to be the final product shipped to clients outside the company.
g051051 6y ago
Ugh. If I have to do all of that, in addition to all of the development work, then what purpose do all the other managers, designers, PMs, POs, etc. serve? Again, devs have to do everyone else's jobs including their own. In the same sense they should rely on me for technical things, I rely on them for the non-technical things.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  Depends on the size of your organization. For example in smaller shops the whole manager/PM/PO is rolled into one individual, if that person even exists. At the shop I worked at we didn't have PMs, so for each client one developer was declared the "Product-minded SE" for that project who had the extra level of organizational responsibility for that project.
- caturopath 6y ago
  Because serving your customers is the entire point of the organization?
  - stepbeek 6y ago
    This is the point I was hoping for. Your job probably isn’t “write code”. It’s probably something like “build the payment processor “. Code is just an incredibly enjoyable implementation detail.
    - ignoramous 6y ago
      Reminds me of "what do staff engineers do?" https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes So, when one is indeed expected to do such work, they better be compensated like staff engs in that case.
    - g051051 6y ago
      I can do their jobs, but no one else can do mine.
- occz 6y ago
hippira 6y ago
The article mentioned a very nice point that I find is true for my experience: you can make product trade-off in favour of engineering if you know your product well. Being able to explain business people why a certain feature is crap made my day job a lot easier than it could have been.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

89 points by absolute100 6y ago

6 minutes read. Gergely Orosz with a blog post that I'm going to use as a reference when people ask me for advice on "how can I increase my impact as an employee?". Whether your customers are internal or external, we all want to build useful products/tools that are being used and provide real value. Share it with other engineers in your organization and have a discussion. Who's doing it exceptionally well today? Are you investing enough time with them to see how they do it?

diegoperini 6y ago
> 6 minutes read. Here is a browser extension idea: inject this disclaimer into the article by estimating it from the length. How can we achieve this without the ugly Access your data for all websites Access browser tabs permissions?
- tiborsaas 6y ago
  Build a scraper / content extractor service. But you still can't inject anything without those permissions.
  - bananaface 6y ago
    It would be nice if Firefox provided an API that only exposed the static HTML of sites you're visiting. I don't care if an extension wants that data, it's nowhere near as sensitive. I guess this doesn't solve injection, but there must be other ways to solve "display some additional data."
    - tiborsaas 6y ago
      Great idea, after all it's impossible to render sensitive data server side :)
      - bananaface 6y ago
        I said it's less sensitive.
        tiborsaas 6y ago
        Does it matter? Btw here is your API: document.body.innerHTML
        bananaface 6y ago
        And which permission do I take to access that?
        tiborsaas 6y ago
        As a bookmarklet, none :) That's the best you can get.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- bananaface 6y ago
  Firefox already has this. Click reader view, it also gives you a time estimate.
  - hyperpallium2 6y ago
    yep, 11-14 minutes for TFA.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Agingcoder 6y ago

To some extent, I'm finding very difficult to work on something with no understanding of who is going to use it, how it's going to be used, and why it's needed. It makes engineering decisions very difficult, maintenance work horrible since you don't know the impact, and new features difficult to 'bound' (do I really need to handle all these extra corner cases, or can I just say it's not supported?). Basically, understanding context is key to high impact work in many cases. So, while I agree with OP about the qualities of 'product-minded engineers' (they're good qualities), I believe they should be part of the default skillset of any senior engineer, and especially so since 'product' can be a library shipped internally, and doesn't have to be the final product shipped to clients outside the company.

g051051 6y ago

Ugh. If I have to do all of that, in addition to all of the development work, then what purpose do all the other managers, designers, PMs, POs, etc. serve? Again, devs have to do everyone else's jobs including their own. In the same sense they should rely on me for technical things, I rely on them for the non-technical things.

blacktriangle 6y ago
Depends on the size of your organization. For example in smaller shops the whole manager/PM/PO is rolled into one individual, if that person even exists. At the shop I worked at we didn't have PMs, so for each client one developer was declared the "Product-minded SE" for that project who had the extra level of organizational responsibility for that project.
caturopath 6y ago
Because serving your customers is the entire point of the organization?
- stepbeek 6y ago
  This is the point I was hoping for. Your job probably isn’t “write code”. It’s probably something like “build the payment processor “. Code is just an incredibly enjoyable implementation detail.
  - ignoramous 6y ago
    Reminds me of "what do staff engineers do?" https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes So, when one is indeed expected to do such work, they better be compensated like staff engs in that case.
  - g051051 6y ago
    I can do their jobs, but no one else can do mine.
occz 6y ago

hippira 6y ago

The article mentioned a very nice point that I find is true for my experience: you can make product trade-off in favour of engineering if you know your product well. Being able to explain business people why a certain feature is crap made my day job a lot easier than it could have been.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]