I'm the Director of Engineering at an e-commerce startup in an industry I know very little about (BaubleBar, fashion jewelry), and our challenges are in a much different realm than a product based startup, and I would say that we attract a different kind of developer.

As far as the business goes, operations and marketing need to scale much faster than our technology. Acquiring customers and efficiently supporting them (building and supporting tools for improved reporting, logistics, order fulfillment) are definitely more important to company growth than building a recommendation engine.

Our work varies a lot more and we get the support a huge variety of different types of projects. We support marketing, creative, customer service, operations and are constantly integrating with a new advertising network, analytics platform or shipping API.

I think engineers want to work on things that are impactful in measurable ways. Some want nerd cred, or really hard technology problems, my team builds cool stuff supporting a (more traditional) business that's growing crazy fast. And for us, that's exciting.

P.S. We're also hiring in NY.