Finding and Fostering Great Product Sense | Hacker News Reader

Finding and Fostering Great Product Sense

staysaasy.com

52 pointszdw18 comments

I often wonder how valuable/prized such traits are if you are a coder working for a company ? In another life I was employed as coder (at senior level, if that makes a difference). But I never felt ideas or "product-guys" skills was something to look out for or hire for.

Background: I've been freelancing and have one or two micro-SaaS on the side for the last few years.

Nothing makes you sit up and take notice of the value of shipping code and iterate as fast as you can than working for yourself. It's definitely business-first and zen-perfect-code later.

Now I should stress it's not like I do my code with a crayon while drunk, but definitely not "oh wow this is elegant" vibes. I can also say from the 101(obv made up number) things I have tried business and SaaS wise. I can't think of anyone that failed because of my code wasn't "fantastic" and "the right way" the ones that failed usually failed because of product-market-fit and the reverse is of course also true.

Since working for myself, gone are the endless debates about "doing it the right way". Sure I am happy to do it "the right way" as soon as someone can exactly point-out to me what is "the right way to code xyz" and there are 100 people that agrees. Until then I'd be here shipping code and trying 101 things (product wise).

While working as a coder for a company, I had way to much value caught up in "trying to write the perfect code", good-enough code works 9/10 just as well as almost perfect code.

TL;DR: Product-Thinking pays the bills right now, Perfect-Code is like studying on the job, Useful for yourself and maybe later, but doesn't pay the bills right now

My2Cents / YmmV

Funny enough I never got too caught up with perfect code at a job. Although it needs to be good enough to pass code review but that tends to mean not a complete pile of shit and works without obvious bugs. It might mean more tests than an indie hacker is used to though.

If you're a coder churning out tickets with zero input, probably not much value in product sense as nobody is looking for your opinions on it.

If you're an engineer at a company that makes it a point to give them a seat at the table and expects them to deliver solutions that drive business impact, it's quite valuable.

People this good surely cannot be hired? I would class the description given as genius, and not any genius, but genius at business. Why would they work for anyone else? They are basically Steve Jobs.

Because being a genius does not mean you get given the opportunities of one.

Man got to eat.

But this is not a maths or music genius, this is someone who is specifically good at the startup secret sauce. They would find it hard not to make money.

Wat?

Are you joking? Do you really think that just because you have these qualities VC and Startups will magically find you and give you opportunities?

Do we live in the same world?

If anything it is the opposite. Noone fund this kind of person.

You don’t need VCs and startups if you are this good. An entire multibillion market research industry, and you can end run that with your intuition. You are Midas!

... you really consider that all these things are accessible?

Sorry I don’t understand this question

Let's imagine a situation. I live in the middle of nowhere in france. I have dependents, so cannot move easily. I do not fit the pattern expected by most company in term of expectations for my career and skillset. But i have all the qualities above.

Do you really think i will get a way to enough money and free time and people giving me a chance to achieve all this stuff? Do you think anyone would even realise i am worth anything?

No. We have solid evidence that no.

(Author here) There are a lot of reasons that people like this might be looking for roles at your company. Not everyone wants to start a business or be an exec at every given moment, if you want evidence look at how former business operators become VCs.

There's a lot that goes into the road to becoming Steve Jobs. Fundraising, politics, employee issues, lawsuits. Sometimes people just don't need that in their lives. I touch on what to do towards the end of the post.

You'll find that most people with this kind of skill are far more interested in finding and solving interesting problems. Day-to-day execution of solved problems is what most businesses are engaged in, which is the antithesis of what people with that skillset find interesting or challenging.

Contrary to what some may think, running a company mostly involves executing on well-known, albeit sometimes difficult, problems and duties. Novelty is pretty damned rare.

> I define high-quality product sense as the ability to [generate good product ideas and intuit product success] without having extensive data (i.e. without running lengthy research upfront)

Finding these people is possible at the point of hire, but it's a function of previous extensive research, not some inborn talent. Heuristics about whether a product will be successful come from somewhere. You have to understand your market before you can understand if a product fits the market.

What you're talking about is hiring people who already have that market understanding from past experience (which you allude to in the last section of the blog), or who have understanding in an adjacent market that is transferable. They've done their initial guess-and-check somewhere else, and you get to hire them after they've refined their skills.

Steve Jobs had to make the Lisa and the Newton before he could make the iMac and iPad. There are no born product geniuses.

Steve Jobs had nothing to do with the Newton other than killing it when he returned to Apple.

I agree with the rest of your comment.

I didn't know that! thanks for the correction.

I've had a few conversations with some managers about hiring and I really like the way this article highlights desirable traits and what to look for.

Thanks for the post, going to share this with some folks.

Author here, thanks for reading and very glad you found it helpful. I know that we didn't talk as much about hiring specifically in this post so that could be an interesting topic for the future.

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