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I am an engineer by trade, but I would argue product is more important than engineering. WHAT you work on is ultimately more important than HOW it is achieved f

by Nemi 4y ago

I am an engineer by trade, but I would argue product is more important than engineering. WHAT you work on is ultimately more important than HOW it is achieved from my experience. Yes, bad engineering will ruin a product, but it is all moot if you are not working on the right thing. So many companies I have worked with are working on the wrong thing. Another way to put it is, a company with a great product that has bad engineering will outperform a company that has great engineering but a bad product. Product/market fit rules all. Once I understood this I was able to work with the product team better.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
^ and this attitude is _exactly_ why so many companies can't get anything done and why I explicitly pointed out that software developers tend to be smarter than your product people. So lets be very clear on what I was saying. software developers can do the job of product, product cannot do the job of software developers It kills me how many people seem to think the doers are the least important part of it. Gamedev gets this right with the insistence that the idea guy is worthless. I work as a software architect and I see this all the time.
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  There are several things you might not see. Folks who have done both jobs will say this.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    It's not a job, it's a role, one that senior developers take on all the time. It gets turned into a job and the result is business people constantly bitching about why everything is slow and what DOES get done is never what they wanted. The phone game is real.
    - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
      It's a job of many roles and it's a crazy difficult job to do well at. I'd never do it again. Engineering feels like a cake walk in comparison.
      - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        The reason you found it so hard is because you weren't doing the implementation, which is why software developers should be taking on that role. At that point you're a glorified translator hoping that both sides are understanding each other perfectly. And what's worse is they both speak English!
        danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        Translating between who? I don't think we share the same experiences with companies, roles etc, so we might be talking past each other. Product is a pretty ill-defined role.
        P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        between business needs and how it gets implemented. Companies that do this took 3 roles and smashed them into 1. - marketing fit - business analyst (aka domain experts) - technical implementation The reason you see people talking about how hard it is for product is because product gets to interface with the business and has an understanding of the problems and the proposed solutions. They try to tell technical to implement with no real understanding of both, due the reality of the phone game it's never implemented as they want, and they get frustrated. The solution is to stop trying to make technical the tech equivalent of ditch diggers. Yes, if you want a ditch dug it's relatively easy to communicate that to someone. Software aint ditches. So while product couldn't begin to start implementing themselves, technical can absolutely be having those conversations with business.
        danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        I can see what you are saying if one is the environment you describe. I've never worked somewhere where eng was treated like ditch diggers. But I've also never worked anywhere where this "business analyst" actually existed. If you build products for many customers there is no such person, because different customers need slightly different things and you have to pick a position v competitors. Maybe try changing environments? Not everywhere works as you describe.
- wittycardio 4y ago
  Yeah product managers have a very high opinion of themselves lol. While a handful might be really valuable most are worse than worthless
wittycardio 4y ago
Yeah I mean I work at a place that thankfully has no "product" team. That was a valuable thing at a certain place but it's been replicated needlessly and most product managers are glorified project managers with no power or responsibility.
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  Does your company sell software products/services? Or you are building internal software/consulting?

by Nemi 4y ago

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

^ and this attitude is _exactly_ why so many companies can't get anything done and why I explicitly pointed out that software developers tend to be smarter than your product people. So lets be very clear on what I was saying. software developers can do the job of product, product cannot do the job of software developers It kills me how many people seem to think the doers are the least important part of it. Gamedev gets this right with the insistence that the idea guy is worthless. I work as a software architect and I see this all the time.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
There are several things you might not see. Folks who have done both jobs will say this.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  It's not a job, it's a role, one that senior developers take on all the time. It gets turned into a job and the result is business people constantly bitching about why everything is slow and what DOES get done is never what they wanted. The phone game is real.
  - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    It's a job of many roles and it's a crazy difficult job to do well at. I'd never do it again. Engineering feels like a cake walk in comparison.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      The reason you found it so hard is because you weren't doing the implementation, which is why software developers should be taking on that role. At that point you're a glorified translator hoping that both sides are understanding each other perfectly. And what's worse is they both speak English!
      - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        Translating between who? I don't think we share the same experiences with companies, roles etc, so we might be talking past each other. Product is a pretty ill-defined role.
        P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        between business needs and how it gets implemented. Companies that do this took 3 roles and smashed them into 1. - marketing fit - business analyst (aka domain experts) - technical implementation The reason you see people talking about how hard it is for product is because product gets to interface with the business and has an understanding of the problems and the proposed solutions. They try to tell technical to implement with no real understanding of both, due the reality of the phone game it's never implemented as they want, and they get frustrated. The solution is to stop trying to make technical the tech equivalent of ditch diggers. Yes, if you want a ditch dug it's relatively easy to communicate that to someone. Software aint ditches. So while product couldn't begin to start implementing themselves, technical can absolutely be having those conversations with business.
        danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        I can see what you are saying if one is the environment you describe. I've never worked somewhere where eng was treated like ditch diggers. But I've also never worked anywhere where this "business analyst" actually existed. If you build products for many customers there is no such person, because different customers need slightly different things and you have to pick a position v competitors. Maybe try changing environments? Not everywhere works as you describe.
wittycardio 4y ago
Yeah product managers have a very high opinion of themselves lol. While a handful might be really valuable most are worse than worthless

wittycardio 4y ago

Yeah I mean I work at a place that thankfully has no "product" team. That was a valuable thing at a certain place but it's been replicated needlessly and most product managers are glorified project managers with no power or responsibility.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
Does your company sell software products/services? Or you are building internal software/consulting?