I've just been assuming that this kind of product/customer-driven engineering in a business environment can be learned, if it's not already known. And the only questions are whether the org can teach it (with culture, onboarding, consistent messaging) and whether the candidate would be happy with that.
If a candidate came to me with no product/commercial experience (e.g., recent grad, or from a research environment), I'd try to characterize the nature of the work, and see whether I could get an honest discussion with them about how they'd feel about that (and whether they really understood what that means). I'm not wise enough to have figured out tests that will tell me.
And I'd have to hit some team-oriented discussion, too, since that's my biggest concern lately, even more than product-oriented. And it's something a lot of companies seem to do badly (e.g., people focused on their own appearance in sprint tasks or metrics or promotions, rather than the whole of the team's work coming together).
I've just been assuming that this kind of product/customer-driven engineering in a business environment can be learned, if it's not already known. And the only questions are whether the org can teach it (with culture, onboarding, consistent messaging) and whether the candidate would be happy with that.
If a candidate came to me with no product/commercial experience (e.g., recent grad, or from a research environment), I'd try to characterize the nature of the work, and see whether I could get an honest discussion with them about how they'd feel about that (and whether they really understood what that means). I'm not wise enough to have figured out tests that will tell me.
And I'd have to hit some team-oriented discussion, too, since that's my biggest concern lately, even more than product-oriented. And it's something a lot of companies seem to do badly (e.g., people focused on their own appearance in sprint tasks or metrics or promotions, rather than the whole of the team's work coming together).