Ask HN: Engineers' hatred toward working at e-commerce startups
I've come across a lot of developers who would tell me that the last startup they want to work at is an e-commerce based one. What are the main reasons for wanting to work at a company like Twitter or Dropbox instead of Gilt or Birchbox?
5 comments
The operational focus. Half the company is working to get the most work out of the blue collar workforce for the lowest price. What do you think they see when an engineer walks through the door. They see another blue collar job that costs five times as much as normal. True or not, that's how management at e-commerce companies want to approach engineering.
Management doesn't even understand software development. E-commerce management is hardwired to expect a simple action-change-reaction cycle that lasts a couple of days. You don't 'develop' software over a few months or years. You make a software 'change' and things start happening immediately with bottom line improvement in a few days or weeks.
Their thinking is "we're going to optimize forklift operator costs by having people work 2 hour shorter shifts and position forklifts differently so costs next week will be $x less." Their equivalent idea of what software development is is "write a program to reduce shifts by 2 hours and reposition forklifts so costs next week will be $x less." The industry is hardwired to think of software as a tactical tool instead of a strategy.
Even if the company doesn't have operations and is just a website, its still 'make a change to increase conversion so that revenue next week is $x more. Again, software is not a strategy, but a mechanical 9-5 type job.
Management doesn't even understand software development. E-commerce management is hardwired to expect a simple action-change-reaction cycle that lasts a couple of days. You don't 'develop' software over a few months or years. You make a software 'change' and things start happening immediately with bottom line improvement in a few days or weeks.
Their thinking is "we're going to optimize forklift operator costs by having people work 2 hour shorter shifts and position forklifts differently so costs next week will be $x less." Their equivalent idea of what software development is is "write a program to reduce shifts by 2 hours and reposition forklifts so costs next week will be $x less." The industry is hardwired to think of software as a tactical tool instead of a strategy.
Even if the company doesn't have operations and is just a website, its still 'make a change to increase conversion so that revenue next week is $x more. Again, software is not a strategy, but a mechanical 9-5 type job.
I'm the Director of Engineering at an e-commerce startup in an industry I know very little about (BaubleBar, fashion jewelry), and our challenges are in a much different realm than a product based startup, and I would say that we attract a different kind of developer.
As far as the business goes, operations and marketing need to scale much faster than our technology. Acquiring customers and efficiently supporting them (building and supporting tools for improved reporting, logistics, order fulfillment) are definitely more important to company growth than building a recommendation engine.
Our work varies a lot more and we get the support a huge variety of different types of projects. We support marketing, creative, customer service, operations and are constantly integrating with a new advertising network, analytics platform or shipping API.
I think engineers want to work on things that are impactful in measurable ways. Some want nerd cred, or really hard technology problems, my team builds cool stuff supporting a (more traditional) business that's growing crazy fast. And for us, that's exciting.
P.S. We're also hiring in NY.
As far as the business goes, operations and marketing need to scale much faster than our technology. Acquiring customers and efficiently supporting them (building and supporting tools for improved reporting, logistics, order fulfillment) are definitely more important to company growth than building a recommendation engine.
Our work varies a lot more and we get the support a huge variety of different types of projects. We support marketing, creative, customer service, operations and are constantly integrating with a new advertising network, analytics platform or shipping API.
I think engineers want to work on things that are impactful in measurable ways. Some want nerd cred, or really hard technology problems, my team builds cool stuff supporting a (more traditional) business that's growing crazy fast. And for us, that's exciting.
P.S. We're also hiring in NY.
Well a techie with a tool box for a tech skills feels a bit out of place in the e-commerce space where technology is done the boring way and where innovation happens in the business, marketing and sales departments.
How about utilizing latest machine learning technology and improving latency as business scales while trying to include higher quality pics and videos? Providing a superior recommendations engine specific for your business and better ui/ux for your various customers so it doesn't suck like amazon's? How about growth hacks built into email customer retention funnels and understanding how data, marketing, and technology translates in real-time to improved metrics in various parts of the customer acquisition funnel? What about logistics and technologies built to bridge outside in in-house logistics (the other half of the business) and making sure it's integrated seamlessly and efficiently for that period (knowing that systems will be altered / upgraded every few years and processes have to be constantly fine-tuned at various points within the e-commerce company's life). What about dealing with robotics and algorithms on shipping and fulfillment that shaves off costs by the millions, fine tunes labor productivity, reduces injury rates, etc. that can make or break the business because margins are thin and building scalable tech solutions is a core value prop.
Wouldn't engineers be interested in doing all of these things or most SF techies just want to be building and deployment code?
Wouldn't engineers be interested in doing all of these things or most SF techies just want to be building and deployment code?
Well for one I'm quite interested in logistics but I don't consider that a subset of the e-commerce business.
Recommendation engines are definitely interesting though.
I don't pretend to speak for every techie on HN but I think the qualifier for startup guys is whether there are going to be hard problems to solve as opposed to just doing routine stuff.
Recommendation engines are definitely interesting though.
I don't pretend to speak for every techie on HN but I think the qualifier for startup guys is whether there are going to be hard problems to solve as opposed to just doing routine stuff.
Scale. Twitter and Dropbox are dealing with problems in a completely different realm than Gilt or Birchbox. Shopify would be a more interesting comparison; it's an e-commerce platform, rather than an e-commerce site, which undoubtedly deals with a lot of issues Twitter and Dropbox had to in their earlier days.
Good point. But do you think that an average engineer few years out of college working at twitter / dropbox is working on projects that enables one to see the big scaling solutions or are they just working on one little side project that no one really cares about; whereas at Gilt, they may have a much smaller engineering team so each engineer has a broader set of responsibilities. I think if you are like a VP level person, yeah I completely agree with you, but wondering if that experience is similar at the junior level.
Both Amazon and Etsy are ecommerce players that attract plenty of good developers.