The Struggle of a Product-Driven Engineer in Sales-First Companies
Working in a sales-driven company as a product-minded engineer is tiring. Most decisions are about growth, investors, and closing deals. Product quality and customer satisfaction matter, but they rarely drive the conversation.
The pressure is real. Nine out of ten startups fail, and not because the engineers wrote bad code. They fail because of bad product-market fit, weak marketing, or money running out. None of that is under your control.
What is under your control is what you build. When the strategy is vague and the metrics don't exist, the only honest move is to ask: how will we measure success? What impact are we aiming for?
If the answer stays fuzzy, you're in opinion territory. People will decide based on taste, not evidence. At that point, fighting every battle is a waste of energy. I choose the ones that matter, build what I can, and let the rest go.
Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is keep shipping good work while the chaos sorts itself out.