[eduardordm]

inDinero is seeking for, what they call, Lead Software Engineer for months now. I remember this because I would want to work there but they are seeking more than one person.

What went through my head when I read the job ad.

"Are you self-motivated? Do you strive to be the best? Do you want to be an integral part of our explosive growth?"

- Yes, yes, but I don't like explosive things.

"you'll have to be super smart, well-versed in CS concepts and studies""

- They are probably going to ask me to implement sorting algorithms on a board, from their website their product seems simple, no need to back to my old algorithms book, who knows.

"Both founders (Andy and Jessica) studied computer science before starting the company, and they wrote most of the initial code until product launch."

- Ok, I will be dealing with a lot technical debt.

"...you will communicate across our accounting and sales teams to discover what will make our clients super happy and what will help us increase sales in new verticals..."

- I'm sorry, this is not what a lead engineer does. No serious engineer would want to do that, I would be busy enough dealing with technical debt, implementing new features and actually leading a team of engineers.

"Looking to the long-term, you will also need to upgrade Rails, make sure our servers will scale, ensure high-security, and modularize key parts of the code base. We know that even if you're leading a team you'll probably still want to spend time coding, so this role also affords the time to do hands-on programming."

- See, you want more than one person. And you clearly don't really understand the role of a lead engineer. You are asking for a CTO/Product designer/Engineer.

This is why I didn't even consider applying.

[pork]

> "Both founders (Andy and Jessica) studied computer science before starting the company, and they wrote most of the initial code until product launch." > - Ok, I will be dealing with a lot technical debt.

This made me laugh, because although the intention was well-meaning (you're dealing with technical co-founders), an experienced programmer will instantly realize that the probable case is what you pointed out.

I also agree that calling this position a "lead engineer" is horribly misleading. My take is they want a combination of a DevOps person and a Product Manager. Unless the product is trivial, this is seriously a terrible gig -- jack of all trades, master of none.

[stock_toaster]

I almost sprayed coffee on my screen when I read that part about technical debt, and instead managed to somehow laugh around the mouthful.

[skrebbel]

"...you will communicate across our accounting and sales teams to discover what will make our clients super happy and what will help us increase sales in new verticals..." - I'm sorry, this is not what a lead engineer does. No serious engineer would want to do that, I would be busy enough dealing with technical debt, implementing new features and actually leading a team of engineers.

Wait. Did you just claim that a lead engineer doesn't communicate with non-engineers or think about how tech can improve the business? If not that, what does a lead engineer do? Isn't the whole point of being in the lead that you have an ability to set a direction? How are you going to do that without looking outside the field of engineering itself?

In decent companies, management is done because someone's gotta do it. They ask for a lead engineer, not for 'the team's best engineer'. There's no need for the lead to also be the genius. In fact,I'd have the genius focus fulltime on doing what he does best, which a good lead engineer can enable.

[eduardordm]

Lead engineers work close to product managers, product designers and the engineers. Your comment is awfully agressive unnecessarily, by the way.

A nice description of a lead engineer role:

http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/tokyo/ops-support...

[fencepost]

I just pointed them at this discussion along with sending along some feedback of my own, but my take is that anyone who can be the distributed cat herder, manager, designer, admin, developer single body that they want is going to be one or more of (heavily poached, highly paid, demanding equity, burned out).

And having to go to their site to find the greyed out ("color: rgb(204,204,204)") asterisked note that they're in San Francisco rubbed me wrong as well.

[freework]

Thats a problem with a lot of startups. They'd rather hire two people who are both mediocre programmers and mediocre salesmen, than hire one really great salesman, and one really great programmer.

I've never seen a startup post a ad for a lead engineer job where you woul be doing actual engineering full time.