[codingdave]

> Why would someone with those skills and qualifications...

Well, because there is more to building a business than code? I certainly know engineers who can be a one-man wrecking crew to build out an initial product. But I don't know any of them who also want to do sales and marketing, accounting and fundraising, HR and the legal side of things.

As far as why they are called "Founding Engineers"... meh, it is just a title, and trends in titles come and go.

[ciguy]

Sure but this seems a bit hypocritical when YC prefers and recommends having 2 technical founders over 1 technical and one business oriented founder. One of their major premises is that it's easy to teach sales and marketing to an engineer but not easy to teach engineering to a non-technical person. In these cases it seems reversed where the founders are not technical and are hiring someone to build the whole product.