Why you should work for a product company — Part 2
As much as product-market fit is vital to make a product truly successful, organization-individual fit is just as important. People spend most of their active time working, way more than what they spend on their hobbies or families. This is why choosing the right working environment is critical.
When it comes to organizational culture, product companies share a lot of characteristics that makes working for a product team a unique experience.
In the chapter of our series, we’d like to give you a tour of the hip working culture of product teams through the example of Devmads company and show you how much the type of the company can affect office vibes. Let’s dive right in!
Change or stability
In a service-based company, the team and people may change around you with every project. If you enjoy seeing new faces all the time and you find change rather energising, you should definitely consider services companies.
As for product companies, changes on the team are much less frequent. It takes time to build a great, successful product, therefore the primary mission is to build a cohesive team with lots of chemistry.
If you find that adapting to constant change requires a lot of energy you’d rather spend on perfecting a single product, well … you know where to find us.
The steep learning curve pays off
If continuous response to change alone would not be enough, it is also a common characteristic of the team that we try to fail fast and redesign as quickly as possible! To do our job well we need to know what we can’t know, admit what we don’t know. Product teams embrace the motto ‘fail fast, fail early’ in hope of getting the MVP on the market before competitors do and accessorising it with features that empower their users the most to do what their product is meant to do. That might sound a bit complicated, so let us tell you a story about StoriesOnBoard as an example.
If you’ve explored the app before, you may have come across the beta version of our ‘Feedback management’ module. By the time the beta was available, we had a lot of design iterations behind us. Actually, the result is quite different from the initial idea that kept changing as we conducted more and more research. The next big wakeup call usually comes from user testing, which also made us reconsider some features, but the most important is that we keep learning from our mistakes, we listen to our users carefully and we keep making the app better with every passing day.
Adapt or die — that is the question
We believe in creating a culture of transparency. Our colleagues are encouraged to try their hand at different things, attempt to solve problems in different ways. This way, not only will they learn and develop professionally, but our organizational shared knowledge also becomes broader. At DevMads we involve the whole team in the planning and review process to find the best solution for our users.
Product companies have to adapt to a contantly changing environment: user expectations and competition create new challenges every day. We don’t have a stable, strong and long-term plan, commonly referred to as a waterfall model; we embrace the agile method, working in in short sprints. In most cases, it is quite uncertain how we’ll improve the product until we get to implementation because we constantly learn along the way. To be honest, this can cause frustration and uncertainty for some people who need clear frameworks and solutions. However, if you are a person who loves varied and complex challenges, a product company could be the best place for you!
A common goal builds true team spirit
At a product company, we have one principle and constant goal: we need to find solutions that work, by that we mean that it is valuable, usable, feasible and viable.
valuable: valuable enough that target customers will actually choose it, try it, buy it
usable: users can actually experience that value
feasible: we can actually deliver that solution
viable: the rest of our company can effectively market, sell and support the solution.
- Marty Cagan, Chris Jones: Empowered
The beauty of product teams is that you get to build much deeper relationships because you’re working towards the same goal, sharing the same long-term mission. Building something together and combating various challenges gives meaning to your professional life. So after a while, a product team can feel like your second family. This strong intrinsic motivation and feeling of belonging keeps a lot of product teams going and accomplish their goals.
We use a technique called OKR to help everyone work in a focused, collaborative way.
Quality over deadlines becomes the motto
The greatest enemy of services companies is the deadline, their resting heart rate is probably close to double that of product people. As they deal with the stress of delivering the scope on time to meet financial goals, they experience high stress levels with every project.
“Work usually is not hectic, except for project deadlines. That can be quite tedious, to be honest.” — senior developer at a services-based company
Product companies, however, are usually more chill about deadlines, as their main goal is to deliver the very best solutions to users. Serving users well and sometimes even exceeding their expectations pays off equally well, without experiencing constant pressure to meet the targets. Quality response to customer needs, value creation, is paramount. It is not the primary consideration to complete a project at all costs.
“If you ask 10 people what they would choose between a service based company and a product based company, all 10 of them would go for product based companies. ” — a senior DevOps engineer
Chill vibes & work-life balance are not only space fillers in job ads
As for working hours, product companies tend to be much less rigid because they want the team to build something great — not build something by a certain deadline. Working schedule is usually not set in stone, unlike at service-based companies where every passing hour can make a huge difference.
Given that product teams work on a product in the long run, product companies are eager to create an employee-friendly environment, combat burnout and be more empathetic towards employees. Having bad days, being tired or just feeling spiritless in your current role can happen to everyone. We’re in it to cross the finish line of a marathon, so the team is always standing by to give you a much-needed refreshment.
On the contrary, the deadline approaches in a service-based company no matter if you have a bad day. They value and reward performance above all, which can be highly motivating — especially for young people at the beginning of their career when the main motivation is financial gain. Later, however, people find much less meaning in buying another new gadget.
More effort to get hired equals to working with the bests
Here comes the cold hard truth: it takes significantly more effort to get hired by a product company as they usually conduct more interviews, have some professional challenges so that applicants can get a taste of their organizational cultures and see how they would fit into the team. As the composition of teams does not change rapidly, good chemistry among coworkers is vital. Service based companies, on the other hand, look for people who have outstanding communication and interpersonal skills.
“At DevMads, we always place great emphasis on both professional and personal aspects during the selection process. Because of this, the process may seem lengthy, but anyone who is truly motivated sees the challenge and the opportunity to learn. And we are looking for such people!” — Dóra, HR
This post has been written by DevMads, the creator of StoriesOnBoard.
