The Product Engineer
Was hoping this would be about hiring, because I&#x27;ve been thinking a lot recently about how shitty hiring is for these people.<p>I&#x27;ve been interviewed for a lot of these ostensibly &quot;product&quot; positions this year. A lot of it has to do with the company not even understanding what they&#x27;re hiring for. Initial screeners would be all about product, product, product, but then they&#x27;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&#x27;s part, and, most importantly, I&#x27;ve never come away from these interviews feeling the interviewer has a solid understanding of what I might bring to the table.<p>I&#x27;d push more for it before leaving the interview, but by that point the interview itself has soured me on the company overall.<p>I think this is exacerbated in the startup world in particular, because even &quot;straight technological&quot; 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&#x27;s not.