A tech company sells a product made of software, and that product is built and improved continuously by small cross-functional teams. Unlike a building, software is never "finished" — it is shipped, measured, and improved forever. That is why these companies hire constantly.
1.1 What a "product" actually is
A product is anything a user interacts with to get a job done: a banking app, Spotify, Uber, Slack, an internal tool for warehouse staff. Products come in a few common forms:
| Form | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Web app | Runs in a browser | Gmail, Canva |
| Mobile app | Installed on a phone (iOS or Android) | Monzo, Instagram |
| Desktop app | Installed on a computer | Zoom, Photoshop |
| API / platform | Software used by other software, not by people directly | Stripe payments, Twilio SMS |
| Internal tool | Built for a company's own staff | A warehouse picking system |
1.2 Who the product is for: B2C, B2B, B2B2C
- B2C (business to consumer): sold to the public. Think Netflix. Big focus on huge user numbers, growth, and polished design.
- B2B (business to business): sold to companies. Think Salesforce, Xero. Focus on complex workflows, reliability, security, and sales-led growth. Often called SaaS (Software as a Service) — software rented by subscription rather than bought.
- B2B2C: sold to a business that serves consumers. Think a white-label loyalty app a supermarket gives its shoppers.
Why you care: a designer from a B2C app and a designer from a B2B dashboard tool have very different strengths. Same title, different job.
1.3 How teams are organised
Most modern companies organise into small product teams (also called squads or pods) of roughly 5–10 people. A typical team looks like this:
- 1 Product Manager
- 1 Product Designer
- 3–7 Software Engineers (a mix of frontend and backend)
- Sometimes a QA engineer, data analyst, or engineering manager
Each team owns a slice of the product, for example "checkout", "search" or "onboarding". Groups of related teams form a tribe or domain. Shared specialists (platform, security, data) often sit in central teams that support everyone.
There are also two separate ladders of leadership:
- Individual contributors (ICs): people who do the hands-on work and grow by getting more senior (Senior Engineer, Staff Engineer, Principal Designer).
- Managers: people who lead people (Engineering Manager, Head of Design, Director of Product).
A Staff Engineer is not a manager. This trips up many recruiters — more on this in Module 7.
1.4 Company stage changes everything
| Stage | Size (rough) | What life is like | Who thrives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed / Seed | 2–15 people | Searching for product-market fit; chaos; everyone does everything | Generalists, builders, risk-tolerant people |
| Series A–B | 15–150 | Found something that works; now scaling it; first real processes | Fast movers who can also add structure |
| Series C+ / Scale-up | 150–1,000+ | Growing fast; teams specialise; more process | Specialists, people who've seen scale before |
| Enterprise / Big Tech | 1,000+ | Structured, specialised, slower, more stable | Deep specialists, people who navigate large orgs |
Product-market fit means the product clearly solves a real problem that enough people will pay for. Before it, companies experiment wildly. After it, they scale.
Why you care: a brilliant Google engineer can struggle at a 10-person startup (too little structure), and a scrappy startup engineer can struggle at a bank (too much). Always match the candidate's environment history to the role, not just their skills.
1.5 How tech companies make and measure money
You'll hear these terms in intake meetings:
- Revenue models: subscription, transaction fees, advertising, marketplace commission, freemium (free basic version, paid upgrades).
- ARR / MRR: annual / monthly recurring revenue — the key health number for subscription businesses.
- Users, DAU / MAU: daily / monthly active users.
- Churn: the percentage of customers who leave.
- Funding: startups raise money from investors in rounds (Seed, Series A, B, C...). Recent funding usually means hiring budget.
Recruiter takeaway
In every intake meeting, ask four questions before you talk about skills:
- What is the product and who uses it (B2C or B2B)?
- What stage is the company at, and what's changing in the next 12 months?
- Which team will this person join, and what does that team own?
- Who will they work with every day (PM, designer, how many engineers)?
The answers will tell you more about who to source than any list of technologies.