👨🎨 Rise of the Product Engineer
A different type of unicorn
It’s a weird time to be a startup.
Let’s face it, 2023 has been anything but ordinary for technology startups. Companies you’ve looked up to are laying off vast chunks of their workforce. Your corporate bank goes up in flames in a weekend. And it’s harder than ever to put together a round of fundraising.
In the words of Ben Horowitz, this is War Time, where companies “are fending off an imminent existential threat.” There’s no shortage of imminent existential threats these days…
With that in mind, startups have had to adapt. They need to be leaner and more agile than ever before. Wartime CEOs are asking more from everyone, especially their engineers.
I’ve been fortunate to work with and advise several great startups and personally met many great engineers. Maybe you’ve heard of the mythical “10x” engineer, a single software engineer who can output the work of 10 “regular” engineers. They indeed exist, but the most impactful engineers I’ve met at early-stage startups have been Product Engineers.
Product Engineers
Product Engineers are generalists, but not all generalists are Product Engineers. Sometimes they’re called “Designers who code”, but it’s a classic chicken and egg situation. These “engineers” possess more than just full-stack development chops and can pinch-hit on product and design. Achieving this is easier said than done.
My co-founder at Stream Club, Jun Ho Hong, is the perfect example of a talented Product Engineer. Whenever we needed to build a feature, he could take a concept from Figma (design) to production (code). Jun recently joked with me that if ChatGPT would have existed back then, he probably would have replaced me. At least I thought it was a joke…
You cannot train Product Engineers; instead, you must find them. Sometimes, they’re disguised as front-end engineers because the front end (where the UI lives) has most of the design and product decisions. Product engineers enjoy working at startups with a lot of autonomy, so they can own features end-to-end and operate with an agency.
Reinforcements are coming
If you want to hire Product Engineers, I have good news. Several key trends have empowered the creation of more product engineers.
An abundance of developer tools: The wealth of tools and services available to product engineers has made outsourcing parts of their engineering tasks easier. Automation, rapid prototyping tools, and third-party services allow Product Engineers to focus on the bigger picture and be more effective in their roles.
Access to extensive information on building good software: It’s easier than ever to learn how to build a good checkout flow, or where to strategically add upsells to your SaaS application. Aspiring Product Engineers have no shortage of content to figure out the best practices needed to build great products.
AI: Large language models will give Product Engineers super powers. With AI-powered code generation, they can extend themselves in ways they might not have been able to before, and produce better-quality software in less time.
Final Thoughts
The days of hiring a team of engineers before product-market-fit are well behind us. Early-stage startups will need to do a lot with little, which means hiring Product Engineers.
With their unique skill set, bridging the gap between design, product, and engineering, they can be force multipliers in startups' continued growth and success. And with advancing tools, resources, and AI technologies, we can expect the influence and impact of Product Engineers to grow, pushing down the size of early-stage engineering teams even more.
In this new era of Wartime startups, it's clear that Product Engineers are invaluable allies, ensuring companies stay agile, efficient, and future-ready.
This is very interesting. Awesome. I’ve actually been seeing my role & skillset slowly drift to product engineering. I think it make sense. This is an awesome piece!