[holman]

Was hoping this would be about hiring, because I've been thinking a lot recently about how shitty hiring is for these people.

I've been interviewed for a lot of these ostensibly "product" positions this year. A lot of it has to do with the company not even understanding what they're hiring for. Initial screeners would be all about product, product, product, but then they'd give me a new grad programming trivia test about rearranging chars in a string. Such a weird mismatch of aspirations vs. reality on the interviewer's part, and, most importantly, I've never come away from these interviews feeling the interviewer has a solid understanding of what I might bring to the table.

I'd push more for it before leaving the interview, but by that point the interview itself has soured me on the company overall.

I think this is exacerbated in the startup world in particular, because even "straight technological" roles in a sub-10 person team will inevitably include a ton of product decisions throughout the course of fast-paced development, and I worry too many startups focus on these type of algorithmic hiring tests being some sort of qualifier for these people when it's not.

[DavidChouinard]

This is a very strong feeling of mine and early reviewers of the essay railed at that frustration. It's striking how much the hiring dance feels full of misplaced energy.

There's no doubt hiring for product engineers is horribly broken, and in a way that holds back the entire ecosystem.

The essay is not about interviewing, because I don't have strong alternatives to suggest.

First we need vocabulary, then we'll need process. I'm in a quest to understand how to hire for this role: I'll write a new essay once I understand it.

[tokipin]

When it comes to these things people are going to reinvent a vocabulary that already exists: Jung's psychological functions.

What Jung called extraverted intuition (Ne) is going to be the main "product" function in tech, with extraverted sensing not as common in the industry. Ne appears in Ti-Ne/Fi-Ne/Ne-Ti/Ne-Fi (what MBTI calls resp. INTP/INFP/ENTP/ENFP). In other words, the xxxP types are going to correlate with being product people. Steve Jobs was practically raw Ne.

The stereotyped "Silicon Valley Programmer" that every company wants to hire is introverted intuition primary and extraverted thinking secondary (Ni-Te, what MBTI calls INTJ). This archetype is quick-witted and naturally good at verbal/logic challenges.

To really, really, really simplify things, with xxxJ vs xxxP, you essentially have a dichotomy between speed on the one hand and (external) depth on the other. External depth being advantageous because the world itself is external. The current standard for interviews is essentially to judge speed, so of course this has the appropriate consequences. Which, by the nature of the particular elements involved, rapidly runaway.

Speed is quite easy to see and understand. Depth on the other hand is harder to pin down. But it is depth, and the vision that often carries it, that can render fine details onto a product. Those details can be so small that most people don't see them, so general appreciation of this power is rarer, and by its nature harder to test on top of it requiring a longer time horizon to work in.

Many people will think that you can get both qualities in a single person, but it doesn't work that way. Evolution would have done that long ago if it was possible. Instead, what we're dealing with are fundamentally different brain topologies/strategies, essentially characteristics that species can min-max in individuals because of the survivability allowances afforded by their ancestors having been social. Or who knows. Regardless, these are the same types of trade offs you have in data structures/algorithms.

[hosh]

I remember reading that stuff as a teenager -- and afterwards, I was able to make the MBTI tests say anything I want it to say.

My later experiences with vipassana/insight meditation showed me just how much hot air those personality indicators are. You can switch among them if you know how. These are not as hardwired as people would like to think they are.

Nice try, it's a good framework, but it is fairly limited when it comes to describing the spectrum of human consciousness. Jung is interesting in that, he was a scientist having mystical experiences that he tried to scientifically analyze. Was he successful? I don't know, but I doubt he was able to capture all that he experienced.

[derefr]

Personality factors aren't like IQ, in that they don't try to be measures of extent, but rather tendency. Saying someone is "Thinking-primary" doesn't mean they always think, or never feel; it doesn't even mean they enjoy thinking more than they enjoy feeling. It means they fall back on thinking; or, more precisely, they think of themselves as being the kind of person who falls back on thinking rather than feeling. (Which usually amounts to the same thing; the box you slot yourself into circumscribes the habits you'll form, and then things that become habitual feel more "natural.")

Everyone on HN is pretty familiar with the introvert/extrovert distinction, and also how carefully it has to be explained lest it be confused with "outgoing" vs. "shy." The real distinction, as the 'common wisdom' goes, is about how you "recharge."

I personally think it's clearer to phrase it in terms of the contrapositive: introversion/extroversion is about what you reject when you're out of willpower. Whatever comes more naturally to you—whatever's more habitual—will "cost" less to keep on with.

And, I would say, other "personality factors" can best be described similarly. They're not how people are on average; they're what people tend toward when not awake/aware/energized enough to be engaging both complementary faculties at 100% as needed (as mindfulness meditation, or a zeroed-out sleep debt, can allow.)

And do note that most of the MBTI factors do occur separately in other personality-trait assessments, that were not created by mystics. :)

[hosh]

>It means they fall back on thinking; or, more precisely, they think of themselves as being the kind of person who falls back on thinking rather than feeling.

Yes, and that tendency is mutable too.

> the box you slot yourself into circumscribes the habits you'll form, and then things that become habitual feel more "natural."

You mean they feel more comfortable, and sometimes that will be conflated with feeling "natural". Habits of the mind are just that: ruts and tracks that have deepened over time with repeated actions. They can be changed, like anything else in the phenomenal universe.

> Everyone on HN is pretty familiar with the introvert/extrovert distinction, and also how carefully it has to be explained lest it be confused with "outgoing" vs. "shy." The real distinction, as the 'common wisdom' goes, is about how you "recharge."

That might be the common wisdom, but that was not how Jung or even MBTI defines introversion and extroversion.

> I personally think it's clearer to phrase it in terms of the contrapositive: introversion/extroversion is about what you reject when you're out of willpower. Whatever comes more naturally to you—whatever's more habitual—will "cost" less to keep on with.

I've been talking with my meditation buddies about this on and off for the past year. Some of them are (or were) software engineers and some of them are not. Over the past year, I've been finding that idea of introversion and extroversion is BS, but I have not looked into it deeply enough to find any good insight.

It smells like BS to me because it seems like a truism that hasn't been thoroughly examined.

> And do note that most of the MBTI factors do occur separately in other personality-trait assessments, that were not created by mystics. :)

They appear in other personality-trait assessments because Jung and the mother-daughter team of Meyers and Briggs were credible enough scientists/speakers that people forgot where it came from. I didn't say Jung was a mystic. I said Jung had mystical experiences. He had been trained as a scientist, then out of the blue, he started having experiences for ten years. He went with it and started observing it, making theories about it, much like a cultural anthropologist would when they immerse themselves into a different culture. Where did you think Jung got his ideas of archetypes and collective unconscious from? He observed them directly and called them such. It's really funny to me how "mysticism" has become such a dirty word and used for name calling :-D

[tacon]

This is a really interesting analysis. Has it been expanded into more detail anywhere? Can you suggest references that map onto programmers, founders, product engineers, etc.?

[tokipin]

Not to my knowledge. It's very easy to fall into twisted Escher boxes and ego traps when talking about these things so I try to only entertain them lightly (says my ego), and I don't know if this kind of thing is discussed in "official" psychology/sociology.

At its core it is about raw physical "existential modes" and not the more superficial label of "personalities", and it's very hard to appreciate what that means even in the case where you think you know what it means. Like if you're a trained psychologist. Certain drugs might be windows into our fellow humans' worlds. Other than that, strokes and other forms of brain damage are the only cases I know of people that have experienced multiple "existential modes". For example[1].

I think in terms of hiring, the broad strokes are useful but I wouldn't dilly dally with the specifics too much since they can be misused easily, nevermind all of the other variables in play. And as far as I know there isn't really a central place on the internet that describes the scheme as a whole. Dilly dallying through MBTI forums was one of my pastimes in ages long past and that might be the way to make sense of it today, keeping in mind how slippery things get when everyone's self is involved.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_strok...

[bsimpson]

I interviewed at many of the large tech firms this fall, and I've found that Google's UX Engineer ladder did the best job of asking questions I should reasonably be expected to know without getting too hung up on an "algorithms" or "CS fundamentals" screening.

[BillinghamJ]

What should we be asking/looking for/testing?

[noir_lord]

I'd hand them a piece of paper and ask them to sketch out a profile page that's user friendly.

Then I'd ask them how they'd design the schema for that.

Then I'd ask them to sketch out the admin interface for managing users and how they'd implement that.

If they start asking questions about permissions and roles and such I'd be really impressed.

Essentially I'd act like a client/end user who kinda knows what they want to see if they can ask the right questions.

I'm not looking for a UX expert but more someone who thinks about the process and end result as well as a nice way to implement the code side.

I'd ask programming related questions as well but if (when) I hire I want someone who thinks about the end user experience while they are developing, I don't live in a world where a job comes with a 400 page spec and neither would they.

I take the view that I'd rather have someone who can think about how the end system will work than someone who knows ever single API for whatever language I'm hiring for, one of those you can find on google in 30 seconds the other not so much.

[lucaspiller]

This is the first time I've come across 'product engineer'. How is this different from a 'full stack engineer'?

[DavidChouinard]

Full stack engineers are generalist engineers who are motivated by technical problems. Product engineers are motivated by building impactful tools. They learnt programming somewhere along the way as a necessity to show the world their ideas.

Product engineers generally pick mainstream languages and tools. They talk about users, strategy and product.

[hosh]

That's an interesting way to distinguish them, though I've seen people change from one to another. Motivations can change in a person.

I'm currently in the process of teaching one of the agency devs we hired on contract how to think with the end-user in mind. At the same time, I've tried to teach other how to reason through things from a purely technical perspective.

"Product engineers generally pick mainstream languages and tools." <-- going by that characterization, a "product engineer" will miss out some strategic advantages that comes from learning non-mainstream languages and tools. This is coming from the idea that, say, there are powerful abstractions and concepts that can be applied broadly, including UX.

For example: Promise Theory is a formal language for describing intentions and a powerful framework for creating cooperating agents in the context of uncertainty. It is typically applied to configuration management, infrastructure and microservices, but it can be applied broadly to human-to-human and human-to-machine interfaces -- literally, UX. For example, knowing that humans will typically assess trust in an iterative way, you can pick apart the entire user flow in terms of the perceived (implied or explicit) promises (user expectations) the product makes. It starts from the advertising (signaling), through user signup, through onboarding, and any useful impact that product makes. It extends through into support and infrastructure scaling, and back to the user signaling to other users that, hey, this is a useful too.

Another huge aspect that conception of the product engineer misses is strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is the art of making decisions in face of uncertainty. Engineers typically don't think strategically, usually thinking in terms of relative advantages instead of strategic advantages.

[derefr]

What differentiates a "product engineer" from an entrepreneur†? Lack of ambition?

Insofar as I fit all the criteria you're listing, those traits are all things that push me to want to work on a small, independent product where I can dictate the vision for it. If I'm willing to "learn programming somewhere along the way as a necessity" to express that vision, there's no reason I won't also decide to learn how to start and run a business "along the way, as a necessity."

To put it another way: in the games industry, the "product engineers" there are called "game designers." Game designers don't generally work as freelance consultants, or put themselves on the market as employees for companies like EA or Sony to snatch up. Instead, if you have the actual vision required to come up with a decent game, you'll make it—and sell it—yourself, either as a one-man show, or by starting your own small games company.

The only game designers working for the big games companies are the ones that grew into that role from whatever they got hired to do (usually either programming or art)—and, even then, only embraced their roles once the company decided to start letting them come up with products "from scratch" that they could basically run as their own little ventures, rather than just stewarding along some existing product of the company's.

---

† I say "entrepreneur", but not in the typical HN meaning of the term. Most "startup founders" I ever hear about seem to be either pure-engineering types who just think about cool tech all day, or pure-business types who think about what'll be profitable all day and follow trends. Entrepreneurialism seems to actually be much more common outside Silicon Valley in regular-old small businesses, where someone with a "product vision" like "feeding people really weird pizza" will get a loan and set up a pizza place to fulfill that vision.)

[DavidChouinard]

Product engineers are entrepreneurs in waiting who have yet to find product-market fit with an idea of their own. They've typically tried a few times, but haven't yet won at the startup roulette.

Product engineers and entrepreneurs get along so well because they're the same breed of people. Great entrepreneurs are often product engineers.

[sanderjd]

And what of those who are motivated by technical problems and by user needs and business strategy? Is it impossible to learn programming because of an interest in computer science or in the challenge of programming for its own sake, but learn product and strategy as a way to put those skills to impactful use?

I don't like this sort of pigeon-holing; most developers I know straddle this divide.

[taurath]

The definition for generalist engineers is relatively new. I consider myself a full stack engineer motivated by product problems.

[6a68]

I think of it like this, roughly:

"Full-stack engineer" describes a person's technical knowledge: comfortable doing front-end or server work, maybe comfortable designing whole things from scratch.

"Product engineer" describes a person's motivations: primarily interested in writing code as a means to making a product, or improving a product.

Lots of engineers are primarily motivated by writing high quality code, or very performant code, or prefer to write tools (libraries/frameworks) over writing products using those tools.

[system_32]

The product engineer wouldn't necessarily (or rather, shouldn't) implement the functionality. That would be left to the full stack engineer.

[dasil003]

If the product engineer doesn't implement, why is engineer in their title? Is it just a rebranded UX Designer? Is it a glorified Software Architect?

[NetStrikeForce]

She engineers the product, but doesn't lay the bricks. The product is not just the software.

[Drdrdrq]

Wow. Just wow. This hiring process is so refreshing it actually makes me want to work for you, and I'm only half kidding. Are you hiring? ;)

[noir_lord]

Unfortunately not in the near-term but nice of you to say anyway :).

[Drdrdrq]

Well, nice of you to give me hope that some people appreciate and even seek what I think I'm good at. :) I am quite happy where I am now anyway. Wish you luck!

[holman]

It depends on the company, but I'm a big fan of pairing with a developer on something they're working on for an hour or so. The dynamics of the interview completely changes from "I need to figure out hidden knowledge that the interviewer knows already" to "I need to work with this person to find out a solution together", which I think is quite a bit less stressful. You're also working on real problems that — though they might not be a glamorous interview question — will be much closer to what "real" work at the company will be.

Put another way: I've probably done a dozen or two product interviews this year, and have still never seen a full stack web request. I mean, I haven't seen a controller action, or a view, or even a model for that matter. And that's the area that's my entire job, really: I build screens and hook things together and make things work for users. As much as feasible, I'd like to be able to demonstrate those types of talents in the interview process.

[DavidChouinard]

In general, anything that moves the interview from adversarial to collaborative is a big win. In many ways, interviewing is a lot less about assessing skill and a lot more about creating affection between two strangers.

[hosh]

That fits -- it's difficult enough to recruit people, let alone people that you can work with, or building out a gelled team that can work through on a lot of challenging things (and not all those challenges are technical).

[vdnkh]

I had one of these "pair" things by a startup touting how different their process was. It consisted of two developers doing work while I solved a thinly-veiled CS101 interview question alone, on a setup I wasn't familiar with, in an editor I couldn't change. I tried to ask questions but the typical answer is "we really cant help you". I'll take the whiteboard, thanks.

[ricardolopes]

Completely agree with pairing. If possible, with more than one developer, to avoid possible biases.

In addition to those reasons, I also like pairing because it also reveals what kind of team player you are, and going to be if you're hired (are you just redirecting blame, are you taking any initiative, what kind of questions do you ask...). Which is one of the most underrated skills when hiring, IMO.