Great article. Here are some examples of how you know if you have a software engineer or product engineer at your startup (real experiences from me):
CEO: We need to add a product search to our website so customers can easier find the products which they like.
SE: Ok - and walks off and builds a search box into website.
PE: Ok - walks off and builds a search box into the website. Also logs all search queries with zero results into a big table to give the startup a better insight into products which customers want, but couldn't find.
Another example...
CEO: We need some real time messaging into our communication channel (Slack) when a customer order couldn't be fullfilled during packaging, so customer support can pro-actively reach out to the customer and notify them about whatever the problem was.
SE: Goes away for a few days and builds a complex real time notifications API which needs to hold state about which notifications it has already sent and which not. Uses latest fanciest tech for that.
PE: Starts asking critical questions. Why does it have to be real time? What time are most orders being packed? What time does customer support staff start actually working? Turns out after 10 minutes of asking the right questions that a real time messaging service is overkill if most CS staff only starts working after all the packaging is already done. A simple stateless daily report being sent once to the Slack channel is completely sufficient and does the job just as good if not better than a real time solution. PE walks off and implements this in a couple hours and has the majority of the week still free to do more impactful work.
EDIT:
Product engineers with a real "get shit done" mindset are invaluable not only to startups but even well established companies. They are the ones who really drive success through good communication, great understanding of the business, all the different parties and the tech which they have to their availability to find the best solution for any given problem.
CEO: We need to add a product search to our website so customers can easier find the products which they like.
SE: Ok - and walks off and builds a search box into website.
PE: Ok - walks off and builds a search box into the website. Also logs all search queries with zero results into a big table to give the startup a better insight into products which customers want, but couldn't find.
Another example...
CEO: We need some real time messaging into our communication channel (Slack) when a customer order couldn't be fullfilled during packaging, so customer support can pro-actively reach out to the customer and notify them about whatever the problem was.
SE: Goes away for a few days and builds a complex real time notifications API which needs to hold state about which notifications it has already sent and which not. Uses latest fanciest tech for that.
PE: Starts asking critical questions. Why does it have to be real time? What time are most orders being packed? What time does customer support staff start actually working? Turns out after 10 minutes of asking the right questions that a real time messaging service is overkill if most CS staff only starts working after all the packaging is already done. A simple stateless daily report being sent once to the Slack channel is completely sufficient and does the job just as good if not better than a real time solution. PE walks off and implements this in a couple hours and has the majority of the week still free to do more impactful work.
EDIT: Product engineers with a real "get shit done" mindset are invaluable not only to startups but even well established companies. They are the ones who really drive success through good communication, great understanding of the business, all the different parties and the tech which they have to their availability to find the best solution for any given problem.