Lessons learned, observations and conclusions

When I started working in a software house (👋 Tooploox people) I wrote code and developed software for many startups of different sizes. From “just an idea” to the well-known unicorns or industry giants we jumped in either to the existing team or formed a new one. We planned, we designed architecture and we delivered, usually quite successfully. Since agency work was my actual first software engineer experience I’ve seen those startup guys and gals and was usually thinking - “I want to be one of them”. And I am not mentioning only founders with all the fame and glory but also engineers and managers - everyone “owning” part of the startup. By owning I am not necessarily thinking shares but more ideas and development.

So it happened that in 2021, already as a senior(-ish) engineer I embarked on a startup/product engineer path (👋 PeakData people). In this post, I am sharing my observations, learnings, and differences about working for a product company. Stating the obvious - everything is subjective. My experience and the company I work for might be pretty standard or could be a total outlier.