I personally, cannot stand the software for software industry. You, me, we have all built such arbitrary bullshit machines that link together in a web of unnecessary business. We lambast redundant jobs and useless management, but a moment of reflection for our industry and just how much software we have built for entirely self-serving purposes. So many man hours spent on the ephemeral whims of software. Sorry for the cynicism.
Less cynically, I feel the smaller the company, self-funded, the more likely a generalist will thrive and the business domain will be real-world and impactful. If it's venture funded and can pivot to advertising, it probably will. If you move away from tech hubs the wages are lower, but you might find a more fulfilling role.
As long as you don’t ask AI. It keeps giving the same bland startup ideas and I imagine the governance / regulatory evidence gathering market is going to be pretty crowded with startups.
There are no correct answers. It should probably be more of a subjective journey than we like to imagine.
Ultimately you get to decide what you want people to become. Even if you do it in ignorance.
To quote a wise man. If the revolution doesnt have singing and dancing im not comming.
Product engineers, on the other hand, are actually quite ambiguous to evaluate. Many methodologies have been introduced, starting from Barry Boehm, but over time they gradually stop fitting, and there are many points that are hard to assess. It's essentially a matter of organizational management theory. The ideal of organizational management theory is that diversity comes together to create synergy, but conversely, such diversity means that decision-making within the organization slows down.
Technologists, by contrast, are very easy to observe in terms of speed or code quality. In fact, most people choose a career of learning technology and making money rather than founding a startup, and from that perspective, since "career" tends to be emphasized as an employee's career rather than a founder's career, isn't that why technologists are emphasized?
What companies value as a capability is ultimately an evaluation that can be measured. And product engineering, when you think about it, presupposes discussions with decision makers.
'Is it necessary to implement this feature?'
'Do customers actually need this feature?'
'Isn't the business model wrong?'
Most decision makers are people high up in the hierarchy, and friction with them is unavoidable. In other words, it crosses existing role boundaries, which means more frequent conflicts in organizational dynamics.
Whether that is ultimately a gain or a loss for the organization is something nobody can konw