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The only person who can be considered the “5th Beatle” is Beatles producer George Martin. He was the “5th Beatle,” because he was absolutely crucial to their sound and success.The Beatles would probably have achieved some success without being associated with Martin, but they wouldn’t have been the Beatles, as we know them, without him. Martin was the Beatles producer—he supervised the making of their records. Martin strongly influenced the way the songs were presented to the public. He had more influence on their music than anyone except the Beatles themselves.First, Martin was the only record exec who saw any talent in the Beatles. They had been rejected by nearly every other record company until Martin came along. Martin frankly, wasn’t impressed much by their music—he liked Paul’s vocals, George’s guitar work and their overall wit. But he recognized that they had a je ne sais quoi quality. He was willing to take a chance on them and he signed them.The first thing Martin did was to convince the Beatles that Pete Best wasn’t a good enough drummer for them. The Beatles listened. Best was quickly replaced by Ringo, who was a vast improvement.Martin was the musician who played on the most Beatles songs, other than the Beatles themselves. Martin played piano on 18 tracks, harmonium on three and harpsichord on two. Martin played keyboards on about 30 track. Martin was, in the Beatles early stages, the best keyboard player in their circle. Of course, eventually Paul and John became the main keyboard players, with Paul playing on 48 tracks and John on 28.Martin nurtured their talents, encouraged them to be themselves and encouraged a work ethic. The Beatles treated him with near reverence. They worked very hard in the studio. In their first major recording session, they did 79 takes of 14 songs in a non-stop, marathon 13-hour recording session. Later on, they would sometimes do more than a hundred takes of a song to get it right.Martin taught the group the importance of arrangement. In fact, it was Martin’s idea to feature Paul on “Yesterday” simply playing his acoustic guitar and singing, backed by a string quartet. Paul was skeptical of the idea and had to be convinced. But Martin did convince Paul. Martin wrote the arrangement himself and he smartly got Paul to help him and Paul contributed some great ideas.That single idea by Martin was his major stroke of genius. The addition of strings, and eventually, entire orchestras, was the most important thing that Martin contributed. I think it may have been the element that listeners most responded to and that set the Beatles most apart from other groups. Of course, it helped having great songs written by the Beatles themselves. But Martin had a huge part in crafting the Beatles sound. It’s hard to imagine songs such as “Eleanor Rigby,” “I Am the Walrus,” “In My Life,” “A Day In the Life,” “Penny Lane” and “All You Need Is Love,” without Martin’s arrangements.Martin taught the Beatles that the recording studio was an important tool. Eventually the Beatles stopped playing live and became just a recording group. With albums such as “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s” Martin re-wrote the user manual for record production, incorporating new and unconventional recording techniques.The qualifications that Martin had were to be 5th Beatle were: 1. Recognizing the Beatles talent, initially; 2. Convincing them to replace Pete Best; 3, Playing keyboards on many of their hits; 4. Encouraging a work ethic; 5. Writing all the great arrangements on their recordings; and, 6. Strongly influencing their sound.What was most important about the Beatles was their music—and George Martin had more influence on their music than anyone except the Beatles themselves. Martin was the 5th Beatle.

Beatles producer George Martin was the only person deserving the label as the “Fifth Beatle.”Perhaps, one other person could be considered for that distinction, and that’s keyboard session player Billy Preston. Preston played electric piano on 6 official Beatles tracks and Hammond organ on 4 official Beatles tracks on the “Let It Be” and ”Abbey Road” albums.However, as fine as Preston’s contributions were, George Martin was absolutely crucial to the band’s sound and success for the group’s entire career.The band may have achieved some success without Martin, but they wouldn’t have been the Beatles as we know them.Martin, as the Beatles producer, had the most influence on their music and, other than the Beatles themselves, he contributed the most to the Beatles recordings.First of all, Martin was the only record executive who recognized the Beatles talent and saw potential in them. They’d been passed over by nearly every other record company. Martin was the one who signed them and helped them develop as recording artists.Martin was the one who let the Beatles know that Pete Best wasn’t good enough for them.Martin was the musician who played on the most Beatles tracks, other than the Beatles themselves. Martin played piano on 18 tracks, Hammond organ on 4, harmonium on 3, harpsichord on 2, Lowrey organ, glockenspiel and other instruments.Martin nurtured the Beatles’ talents, encouraged them to be themselves and encouraged a strong work ethic. They worked hard in the studio. In their first album session they did 79 takes of 14 songs in a non-stop marathon 13-hour session.Martin taught the group the importance of arrangement. It was Martin’s idea to feature a string quartet on Paul’s “Yesterday.” Initially, Paul didn’t want anything to do with strings. But Martin convinced him to give it a shot and he invited Paul to participate in writing the string arrangement.That idea was a stroke of genius. Martin’s string and orchestral arrangements became the element that most set the Beatles apart from and above other groups. Other groups copied Martin’s production and arrangements, but they couldn’t reproduce the magic that that the Beatles and Martin made together.It’s hard to imagine songs such as “Eleanor Rigby,” “I Am the Walrus,” “In My Life,” “A Day in the Life,” “Penny Lane,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “All You Need is Love” and numerous other Beatles recordings without Martin’s arrangements.Martin taught the Beatles that the recording studio was an important tool. With albums such as ”Rubber Soul” and “Revolver,” Martin re-wrote the user manual for record production, incorporating new and unconventional recording techniques. The Beatles themselves experimented with tape loops, multi tracking, electronic sound and the like.The most important thing Martin did was to translate the Beatles imaginative concepts into reality in the studio. An obvious example is the song “A Day In the Life.” The slowly rising orchestral glissandos were simply empty bars of counting until Martin developed a solution.The Beatles were, first and foremost, musicians and Martin had considerable influence on their music.If there was a “Fifth Beatle,” it was George Martin.

Product engineers at Quora are empowered to:Have huge impact. Quora today is about 200 employees, supporting a product that welcomes 200 million monthly unique visitors as of June 2017. Product engineers at Quora have a clear impact on, and contribute to, Quora's growth and development — they own various features in the product and contribute to the whole lifecycle of a project (from prioritization, planning, to continuous maintenance), on all platforms (web, mobile web, apps) for Quora product in all languages.Grow in and have impact through broad skill sets. Depending on the engineer's goals and interests, this can vary from specific engineering skill sets, like ML or data infrastructure, to non-engineering skill sets, such as project management, product intuition or understanding of data. Product engineers are not pigeonholed to pure engineering execution of requirements or specs.Tackle a variety of technical and product challenges. Quora's scale and complexity as a product, as well as the current lean team size, means that we still have lots of open questions to tackle as we grow. These unknowns, in a product and company that are reasonably mature, are really exciting challenges for people to step into.Iterate quickly. Our culture encourages long-term thinking for development velocity, which leads to investment in tools, abstraction, cleanups, and efforts that reduce friction for engineers to move quickly.As a product engineer (before I transitioned to management about a year ago), I truly felt this empowerment in my day-to-day work. As one of the founding members of the internationalization team, I contributed to both the product and technical roadmap of this effort, seeing through various decisions that bring Quora from an English-only product into an international product (we are in five languages today, but we hope to expand even more!). This included everything from co-designing the translation API, running the localization process with translation vendor and contractors, choosing some of the early group of testers and communicating directly with them, to contributing in the go-to-market plan for this product. While this was my path of impact and growth, other engineers are empowered in different ways to fit their broader goals and interest.How specifically does Quora as a company empower these things in product engineers? Here are some specific ways our culture and processes allow this to happen.Collaborative Product Development ProcessAt Quora, all functions in the product development team (engineers, designers, data scientists and PMs) have seats at the table when defining and shaping the product, instead of purely focusing on the execution of their own roles. Product engineers are expected to have a deep understanding of the product, so that they can provide valuable input on brainstorms, prioritize projects at the team level, or even drive product changes on their own. We also expect project leads to make decisions based on input from all functions on the team, making decisions through consultation, instead of authoritatively.Roles on the team are more fluid than in a typical company. Product management or leadership opportunities might fall into any function within the team — product managers, product engineers, product designers, or data scientists. Because designers and data scientists at Quora code, the product implementation/execution is also a shared responsibility between designers and engineers, further fostering the collaborative product development process. Designers typically write view-level code (Python, Javascript, CSS), while engineers write 'backend' code. In practice, the split of responsibility is quite fluid depending on team members - some of the more technical designers might even write model code, and some engineers might write CSS styling.This is a different setup compared to some other companies, which have strong boundaries between different functions within product development, with clear deliverables in between functions. For example, PMs give product specifications to designers, who design wireframes, which are sent to engineers, who implement that product. In such companies, the relationship can feel request-based with firm barriers between functions.In a traditional product process, a product manager makes decisions, and an engineer builds according to that spec. The product manager doesn’t have the power to actually implement anything; whereas the engineer can’t contribute to product decisions.As a product engineer, I build the product, but am also heavily involved in product decisions, and often make those decisions whether I’m leading the project or not. Making product decisions is a series of tradeoffs, and I’m ideally positioned to do so with knowledge of both technical feasibility and user needs. There’s something special about having the power to do this. By bridging these two areas, we end up with better decision-making and ultimately a better product.~ Jessie Duan's answer to What do you like about the Product Engineering role at Quora?Because of this collaborative product development process, engineers who are strongly interested in thinking about the product can have a lot of product impact, in addition to technical impact. Some of the engineers in the role have past experience in product management or entrepreneurship, thus flexing both their engineering and product muscles.Lean TeamIn my nearly four years at Quora, I have worked on a variety of different product areas, including new user experience, logged out experience, question merging, sessions, and writer credibility. Each of these had different nuances to think about, both product-wise and technically. Because of this, I never get bored. There's always some new challenge to think about.~Laura Scharff's answer to What do you like about the Product Engineering role at Quora?Quora's development team is quite lean - we are currently about 200 people, supporting a product that welcomes 200 million monthly unique visitors as of June 2017. Project teams are similarly lean, allowing engineers and designers to have broad ownership and responsibilities over their project or feature. An engineer and a designer on the team typically owns the changes on all platforms in all languages. In addition, many engineers work on different areas of the product and interact with different technical systems, introducing them to a good breadth of challenges on both dimensions. For example, most designers and product engineers will have a basic understanding of machine learning.Development VelocityQuora's development team strongly values our ability to move fast as a lean team. This means that product engineers and designers can prototype, iterate, and make decisions quickly toward improving the product.Examples of this principle, in practice:Continuous deployment process, which allows developers to quickly deploy code to production. We have adopted continuous deployment since the early days of the company.Unified web, mobile web, and mobile app code, which allows product engineers and designers to build quickly for all platforms and reuse the same code.Easy-to-use experiment framework, which allows developers to quickly run A/B tests to understand the impact of a change to various metrics easily, with minimal need for manual data pulls.Continuous localization process, which does not block deployment on new resource strings.Abstractions and tools that help designers to code and prototype their own design, reducing the back-and-forth interactions between design, PM and engineers on product requirements and mock-ups.Investment in code quality and regular cleanups of the codebase.These examples show that the focus on development velocity is not exclusive to engineering, but also the whole product development team (product managers, designers, data scientists). All functions not only benefit, but also are responsible for, the development velocity of the team as a whole.As Laura wrote:It's very useful to be able to push out intentionally scrappy code for a prototype so that we can get product feedback before spending more time and effort on a better engineering solution. My first iteration of a project might be incredibly slow to load, but it will take less than a day to write, works well enough to conduct user research, and I can very easily throw it all away to write something more reliable later. We can cut down on time spent designing systems for things we don't even know we want to build yet.Support system for continuous learningLike Quora the product, Quora the company is also an intellectually curious group — employees who work here, are excited to learn and continuously grow. Some examples of how the organization helps support product engineers to productively contribute to the collaborative product development process above:To increase awareness and knowledge sharing across teams, all product engineers gather every week to discuss various things, from the different projects happening in the company, other products in the industry, or other skills that can help them in their day-to-day work. This includes project estimation, project management, or doing back-of-the-envelope calculations.To develop intuition on data and metrics, we have open and easy access to dashboards that track various metrics, as well as a database of past experiments and data results.To help develop empathy on user experience, product engineers can freely sit in on user research studies — anywhere from new user experience to the question asking experience.To help engineers learn from other engineers, we run a weekly technical mentorship program in an informal setup.Any of these sound interesting? Join us!