| I'm an engineer and I'm fascinated by the advertising space. In fact, one of the things on my side project list that's been there for the past four years is creating a mobile advertising network. I know its a big job and the technical challenges are one of the reasons I haven't done it. If I were looking to work for other people, the primary reason I would likely not work for any of the advertising companies or startups I've looked at is not the engineering challenges they face, nor any irrational hatred of advertising, but the fact that ad companies are run by ad men. Maybe a better word would be "MBA Types". There is a culture/group/whatever of people who are different from me, who in many ways I have trouble relating to and who seem to make decisions, in my experience, that are bad for engineering and bad for the product, but good for short term business wins. I'm not saying they are wrong or bad or that I irrationally hate them, just that I long ago added to the list of things I look for in an employer a very senior person (CTO for instance) who is an engineer. And then I look to make sure that engineer is the one who has final say on engineering decisions. Looking at most add startups "Team" pages, there are no engineers there at all. Certainly there is a cultural segment of people who really seem to hate the idea of marketing, advertising, SEO, etc. There's overlap with engineers, but I don't think this perspective is intrinsic to engineers. |