Why we don’t hire “software engineers” at Attio

At Attio, we don't hire software engineers. Instead, our engineering team consists entirely of "product engineers".

A product engineer is more than an engineer working on a user-facing product. They have product at their core. Not only do they have deep technical expertise in how to build software, but they're also world-class at determining what to build.

Product engineers embody a unique combination of strengths. They are exceptional communicators, both internally with colleagues and externally with customers. They're strategic thinkers, who are able to see not just the ticket in front of them, but also how their work forms a stepping stone towards a successful IPO. Most of all, product engineers ship. They design, develop and validate their work to ensure new features get in customer's hands as quickly as possible.

Product engineering is not about compromising design and product skills for technical ones. Attio's product engineers build powerful, scalable systems to an incredibly high standard. Yet, they are also able to take gather feedback on their work from customers, close a sales deal and articulate the importance of their work to the rest of the company.

Instead of compromise, product engineering is about aggressively removing communication overhead. When your team can work as small, focused units, you have fewer meetings, more decisions and fewer feedback loops. Furthermore, without additional layers of communication, product quality improves. When engineers lack context and decision making ability, decisions either don't get made or are made poorly. At Attio, product engineers are empowered with context and can make good decisions on the fly.

Ensuring our engineers are skilled generalists has also allowed Attio to postpone hiring for product management roles, instead focusing resources into engineering and design. In their early days, GitHub and Stripe also eschewed the product management role, instead hiring engineers who simply knew how to get shit done.

As tech catches onto the importance of this skillset, I suspect we'll see the meaning of this role diluted, much like the industry shift from "front-end developer" to "front-end engineer" a few years ago. Putting trends aside, however, it’s clear that this is a crucial role to hire for in a fast-growing startup. Attio couldn’t have succeeded without it.