Inside Zenjob: Product & Engineering Culture I
What it means to be a product company rather than a tech company
Sharing our internal Engineering Culture: our VP of Products David Schara sets out, what Engineering Culture at Zenjob means to him:
Q. How do you define the difference between product and tech companies?
A. Many businesses and startups like to define themselves as tech companies, with CEOs, managers, and journalists off-handedly using “tech company” as a synonym for any IT business that is transforming the digital landscape with new products. A tech company, however, is defined solely as a business focused on technology. This is then reflected in its culture and work practices, as everything is designed around this core of technology.
At Zenjob, we work as a product company. We focus on developing products, which users value in their everyday lives and serve their needs and provide an exemplary user experience.
Q. What are Zenjob’s internal development processes for products?
A. I like to compare our product development process to my backpacking experience in student days. There is a supposed destination for the trip, and how and when we get there is decided somewhere along the way. Along a roughly sketched route through a continent — through countries and cities — we met people with various ideas and perspectives. “Locals” have helped me with their “insights”, to either find my way, or they have showed me new and interesting paths to take.
Product development works in the same way. While a general idea of the end product exists, the development process to that product is a journey. In our last project, for example, we developed an app in-house with sales, design, customer care, and finance. Our goal, as always, was to understand underlying problems and needs. We worked together with our users to see what they thought and what they would want. Alongside user feedback, we consulted internal statistics to substantiate certain statements and assumptions. From there, we selected from these possibilities and ideas to create the form of the app. The challenge was to weigh, which of these myriad features would be most valuable to our users. We constantly asked ourselves: how can this or that feature improve our users’ everyday lives?
For us, it’s not about creating the product with the best technology but delivering the product with the best user experience.
Q. Startups vs. big businesses: who creates the better products?
A. My personal experience is that startups have a special “drive”. Startups usually know the needs of users better than big businesses do and are ready to react quickly. Startups invest huge amounts of time in researching what users care about in their products. Larger companies have much greater resources, but they are often slow and unable to adjust quickly. They trust in their expertise and results from past testing rather than asking new questions. Startups think products anew.
Q. What is your personal definition of product engineering culture?
A. Product engineering is not a one-man show; it is important to think about the customer as well as all relevant stakeholders. This applies not just to the product engineering department. Product engineering culture is all about creating a specific culture with a collaborative spirit. This communicative, overarching approach has long been missing from IT departments. At Zenjob, however, I see what it means to live a product engineering culture. The tech department is incredibly open and communicative, which allows us to test our hypotheses quickly and to implement shortcuts in our development processes. This culture makes for short feedback loops, allows for greater interdepartmental collaboration, and creates an office transparency because of our clear processes. Structured communication and the right values lead to better results, and our collaborative, cross-departmental teams drive our company’s vision onwards and upwards.
