For all of you hiring managers out there, what's your opinion on product-focused engineers? Is that a desirable trait? Or would you prefer a candidate who could care less about the product he works on and only cares about the technology?
It’s far too situational to give a blanket answer. I run a 15 person startup, and my preference is product focused people because of the breadth they can cover. However, we have a number of people who aren’t that way and are just good developers, which is great. My sense would be the narrow/deeper technically a space is, the less preference there is for product focus, but again just my personal guess.
I would think this is more valuable for startups where roles are less defined and less for big companies. Then again I'm at a ~2B company and product-focus is still appreciated and considered in hiring.