>FDEs are sometimes mistakenly thought of as consultants, but the difference between consultants and FDEs is that the former make one-off recommendations, whereas FDEs generally work with customers, long-term.

...sounds like a consultant to me!

Also, even if "long-term" was an important distinction, the term FDE itself became popular a very short time ago!!! https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=f... so how can you assert FDEs work with customers for the long-term

The distinction really kinda depends on the situation.

FDEs have been around for a long time in the defense contractor space and Palantir picked up the term, broadening the meaning a decent bit. Then it spread to the rest of the software/tech space.

Historically FDEs in defense are engineers who would literally forward deploy out to other countries where the hardware was being deployed so that they could provide on the ground hardware and software support. They'd either literally be called FDEs, Engineer (forward deployed), field engineer, or some other title that roughly got the meaning across.

You'd deploy some platform and send along an engineer or two and a few technicians. Depending on the platform or the scale of the deployment the engineers would either be normal engineers forward deploying for a few months to a year or so or you'd hire a dedicated FDE for that given deployment/site.

AFAICT it became a lot less common as internet communications got better and you could do practical remote debugging and live video conferencing but you still see FDE roles in the traditional sense from time to time.

But yeah then Palantir and big tech came along and basically rendered it into a glorified consultant and/or systems integrator role.

The funny thing is I’ve worked at/worked with a ton of big tech companies (including FAANGs) where the most tenured people on some teams are external consultants.

Id say the main difference is FDEs post-engagement need to drive product strategy back into the platform (non trivial ask)

you typically see FDE-driven companies' products be 'assembly' driven and very deep into integration, as they figure out the optimal primitives that assemble into the shapes required to solve new customer problems

> FDEs generally work with customers, long-term.

In these days of mass layoffs every month, talking about "long-term" sounds like a cruel joke.

I've always heard the term "field applications engineer" for the consultants the vendor supplies to integrate their product.

In the automotive industry it's not uncommon for contracts to require an on-site engineer, basically FDE.

A consulting I used to work at started calling their engineers this. All of them. They just follow trends.

> even if "long-term" was an important distinction, the term FDE itself became popular a very short time ago!!! [] so how can you assert FDEs work with customers for the long-term

That's pretty straightforward; even if the role came to exist two months ago, you can still have signed a five-year service contract.