Re:Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend
by kelnos on Tuesday October 04, 2016 @12:24AM
(#12633330)
> The tech is necessary, of course, but so are desks and an accounting department.
> Internalizing that has been difficult for me as an engineer.
After I got over that particular hurdle, I would still think:
Ok, so "build it and they will come" is not a thing, got it. But still, engineering is most important by far. Without sales, support, marketing, or legal, you still have a product, just one that is adopted slower. Without engineering you don't even have a product to sell in the first place.
And that's true. But in the end it's just splitting hairs. It doesn't matter. Over the longer term, no successful, scalable business is ever going to exist solely as an engineering team. Every job function has a purpose[0] and gets you where you want to go faster; in some cases, lack of certain non-engineering job functions will make it impossible to even do certain things.
So sure, you can bootstrap a product with just a few engineers and nothing else, but unless you're ok with it being a niche-market product that you spend all your waking hours working on, an engineering-only org is never going to cut it.
[0] With the obvious exception of those people hired to satisfy the latest management fad du jour, or to give the CEO's deadbeat nephew something to do with his time.
> Internalizing that has been difficult for me as an engineer.
After I got over that particular hurdle, I would still think:
Ok, so "build it and they will come" is not a thing, got it. But still, engineering is most important by far. Without sales, support, marketing, or legal, you still have a product, just one that is adopted slower. Without engineering you don't even have a product to sell in the first place.
And that's true. But in the end it's just splitting hairs. It doesn't matter. Over the longer term, no successful, scalable business is ever going to exist solely as an engineering team. Every job function has a purpose[0] and gets you where you want to go faster; in some cases, lack of certain non-engineering job functions will make it impossible to even do certain things.
So sure, you can bootstrap a product with just a few engineers and nothing else, but unless you're ok with it being a niche-market product that you spend all your waking hours working on, an engineering-only org is never going to cut it.
[0] With the obvious exception of those people hired to satisfy the latest management fad du jour, or to give the CEO's deadbeat nephew something to do with his time.