This was a liberating read. As an engineer who some times thinks of pivoting to product management because I love getting user feedback, making improvements to features, and enjoy build products. It's liberating to see that I may not need to pivot, I could still enjoy being an engineer and keep learning how to build better products, and there are companies looking for traits like these.
I'm happy to hear that, there definitely are. From some other research I've done, there seems to be a bunch of companies looking for product engineers with traits like these.
It's amazing that everything is public, all the goals and work each team member in each team is doing. This probably feels liberating.
The 'What to look for' sections are also useful, but I'm not sure I know someone who would have fit in all of them :)
You mentioned that it's hard but worth it, so I guess it did come up, I just wonder if it's sustainable for the long term, or if you'll need to compromise for some qualities.
For example the 'have an eye for UX and design' part is hard, as it's not a skill that's easily trainable. I would have guessed it's enough to have 1-2 such people in each area.
What qualities we value _the most_ definitely vary based on the role and current composition of the team they'll be joining. Like you say, people who hit all these points perfectly are vanishingly small, so there's always a judgement to be made.
In the long term, it feels sustainable for us at our current scale. Our intent is very much to retain a small, high-performing team rather than hiring 100+ engineers in the next year. That makes being selective, and looking for these harder to find qualities, more important to us.
At a very high-level, we want to keep the company very efficient because since it's easier to stay efficient than to _become_ efficient.
Being a product-minded engineer really is a super power. It’s key if you ever want to work at a startup.
I loved the example of one of your engineers building out that analytics product. I’ve done similar for the company I work at.
Product minded engineers have the unique ability to produce massive value as they have the engineering mindset to build something, and the user mindset to know where to spend their time to make a 10x impact for customers.
Just want to say, frequently changing jobs is not always a bad sign. It would definitely concern me to see a candidate who moved around a lot, but I’ve had 4 jobs in the last 5 years, and I intended to stay long term at every one of those jobs, but there were very good reasons for me to move on. I’ve never moved for money, but I have moved because of unrealistic or unfair expectations, my manager leaving, my whole team leaving, relocation issues, being forced into the office or toxic management politics. Does that make me a red flag? There are always two sides to a story. Luckily the company I’m joining next week was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and could see my passion for quality and value and collaboration. They weighed me up on face value, and frankly that is the kind of company I want to work for
You contradict yourself: in point 5, you commend Paul & co for researching and planning to better understand the broader scope of their feature, but in point 4, you denounce researching and planning in favor of building.
Fair point, building is our primary focus. Sometimes building the right thing requires planning and research. We look for people who can do both, even if it is a bit of a contradiction.
This was a liberating read. As an engineer who some times thinks of pivoting to product management because I love getting user feedback, making improvements to features, and enjoy build products. It's liberating to see that I may not need to pivot, I could still enjoy being an engineer and keep learning how to build better products, and there are companies looking for traits like these.
I'm happy to hear that, there definitely are. From some other research I've done, there seems to be a bunch of companies looking for product engineers with traits like these.
Hi Ian, would you be able to share examples of companies with this approach to engineering? Loved the article btw!
Appreciate it. I included some companies in my original article on product engineers (https://posthog.com/blog/what-is-a-product-engineer), but some examples include:
- Y Combinator
- Humanloop
- Buildspace
- Replit
- Ghost
- Incident.io
- Fly.io
- Replicate
- Ghost
- Porter
This was a fantastic read - I'm definitely taking a couple of points here and pulling it into our hiring handbook. Always great articles!!
Thanks Ve!
It's amazing that everything is public, all the goals and work each team member in each team is doing. This probably feels liberating.
The 'What to look for' sections are also useful, but I'm not sure I know someone who would have fit in all of them :)
You mentioned that it's hard but worth it, so I guess it did come up, I just wonder if it's sustainable for the long term, or if you'll need to compromise for some qualities.
For example the 'have an eye for UX and design' part is hard, as it's not a skill that's easily trainable. I would have guessed it's enough to have 1-2 such people in each area.
What qualities we value _the most_ definitely vary based on the role and current composition of the team they'll be joining. Like you say, people who hit all these points perfectly are vanishingly small, so there's always a judgement to be made.
In the long term, it feels sustainable for us at our current scale. Our intent is very much to retain a small, high-performing team rather than hiring 100+ engineers in the next year. That makes being selective, and looking for these harder to find qualities, more important to us.
At a very high-level, we want to keep the company very efficient because since it's easier to stay efficient than to _become_ efficient.
Good points, thanks.
Really enjoyed this read.
Being a product-minded engineer really is a super power. It’s key if you ever want to work at a startup.
I loved the example of one of your engineers building out that analytics product. I’ve done similar for the company I work at.
Product minded engineers have the unique ability to produce massive value as they have the engineering mindset to build something, and the user mindset to know where to spend their time to make a 10x impact for customers.
Just want to say, frequently changing jobs is not always a bad sign. It would definitely concern me to see a candidate who moved around a lot, but I’ve had 4 jobs in the last 5 years, and I intended to stay long term at every one of those jobs, but there were very good reasons for me to move on. I’ve never moved for money, but I have moved because of unrealistic or unfair expectations, my manager leaving, my whole team leaving, relocation issues, being forced into the office or toxic management politics. Does that make me a red flag? There are always two sides to a story. Luckily the company I’m joining next week was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and could see my passion for quality and value and collaboration. They weighed me up on face value, and frankly that is the kind of company I want to work for
You contradict yourself: in point 5, you commend Paul & co for researching and planning to better understand the broader scope of their feature, but in point 4, you denounce researching and planning in favor of building.
Fair point, building is our primary focus. Sometimes building the right thing requires planning and research. We look for people who can do both, even if it is a bit of a contradiction.