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How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

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Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#101

Post by RhodesianHunter »

hieunc229 wrote: post #65
bob33212 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had a couple conversations where a business guy starts off with a decent idea then he says something like "the cognitive AI module will fill out your expense report after watching you do it for a couple weeks". What the fuck? If I had the ability to code a cognitive AI module which could do that I would not be building it for you, I would solve self driving and license the software for billions.

Business guys usually comes together and brag about their works. Quite often, they start to talk about things they heard but don’t understand much. And the other one hear about it, get excited, but also don’t understand much. Then on the meeting, he brought the idea up and convince everyone to do it. The next you know, you’re pulling your hair out trying to understand what is going on

A few years ago at a small company after a round of golf with some other shmuck, our CEO told us we needed SSO via OAuth, because that's how we can convince people we're secure. How soon could we get it developed? Spare no expense!

We had a single website with an already written to OWASP standards login, no external API or plans for any.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#102

Post by sukilot »

rodgerd wrote: post #19
mathewsanders wrote: post #5

“Agile teams that truly iterate with the customer can often avoid these problems because the customer is there the whole way through and the team continuously pivots to close gaps discovered by the customer throughout the project, thereby building something the customer actually needs and wants.” I‘m 2 years into my first role as a product owner (made the switch from design) and working at a fortune 100. The thing th…

The problem is the definition of customer and the actual commitment to a customer focus, in my experience. It's usually hijacked away from the actual customer - that is to say, a person who pays your company for products and/or services - to various internal "customers" who are nothing of the sort. Spotify are ostensibly the Gods of Agile, but how many Spotify music customers were actually begging for podcasts? How m…

Spotify is a growth company. They build for future customers.

Podcasters at also business partners, just like songmakers are. The only relevant difference between podcasts and music is that you've been conditioned to expect that music costs money but expect podcasts to be free.

Spotify didn't blackmail Joe Rogen into licensing his podcasts for $100M.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#103

Post by MarcelOlsz »

rb808 wrote: post #77

The problem is that software no-one wants often has the best careers. I worked on a system used by many people and it was hard work, was getting 10-15 years old, held together with tape and lots of users who all had their gripes and requests. I moved to a system hardly used by anyone and life is so much better. Get to play with interesting technology and no one minds because there is now risk of annoying a our users…

What area? I've mostly quit software because of how much I hate working on complete garbage and also don't have the schooling/engineering skills to work on truly cool stuff. Pivoted to wood working.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#104

Post by sukilot »

denkmoon wrote: post #53

I am currently employed to develop an entire data analytics system because a government department can't get their firewall rules right. None of the members of this government department want a bespoke system, they want to use tools they are familiar with but due to the firewall rules this isn't possible.

Why don't you build gateway to th standard tools?

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#105

Post by the_af »

vxNsr wrote: post #100
bob33212 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had a couple conversations where a business guy starts off with a decent idea then he says something like "the cognitive AI module will fill out your expense report after watching you do it for a couple weeks". What the fuck? If I had the ability to code a cognitive AI module which could do that I would not be building it for you, I would solve self driving and license the software for billions.

Solve self driving? How bout market prediction and just play the market forever. Why would you risk failure when you can just do nothing and make trillions?

Well, to be honest self driving sounds more useful to mankind ;)

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#106

Post by StillBored »

Worse is when you know another part of the company is sabotaging what your trying to achieve.

One might call it the right hand competing with the left, but frequently the path forward to the next version/product/whatever is pretty clear, but the existing product teams are well entrenched and of course make all the $$$$, so its a game of politics, and keeping a low profile while trying to gain traction.

Pretty frustrating in many ways. Especially when you start to gain traction, then suddenly groups start to take 1/2 steps, which might have been useful and productive years earlier but now just act subversively.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#107

Post by gretch »

mathewsanders wrote: post #5

“Agile teams that truly iterate with the customer can often avoid these problems because the customer is there the whole way through and the team continuously pivots to close gaps discovered by the customer throughout the project, thereby building something the customer actually needs and wants.” I‘m 2 years into my first role as a product owner (made the switch from design) and working at a fortune 100. The thing th…

I've worked 6 years as a PM, last 4 at FANG

Here's some advice, which you are free to take or to leave, (and that's very reasonable since my advice is generic and I can't speak to your exact circumstances)

1) Just start doing it. Don't wait for someone to give you permission to prioritize customer needs. Pick up the phone and call them. Go to a store and watch them shop for your product. Talk to people. When you set OKRs/KPIs, just make them about customer needs. Be the change you want to see. Especially if you have spiritual buy-in from your manager. But your intentions have to be crystal clear on point about wanting what's best for the customer and the business and doing so in a rational way until you earn some social capital. It cannot be interpretable as political or they'll construe it as that and fire you

2) Use bureaucracy jiu-jitsu. Do what you think needs to be done in order to make the customer and the business successful. When someone tries to make you work on their arbitrary BS, give them a form to fill out and tell them it's in your team's triage queue. Make them force you to deprioritize a project which has clear value and then when that happens, make sure you announce loudly to all stakeholders why that project was depriortized and what's going to be implemented instead. If your stakeholders have even 2 braincells, they'll do the pushing back for you - you don't need to do it alone.

Lastly, you can't change an entire culture by yourself. For some places, it's just too late. But if you can find allies who feel the same way you do, you can be the beginning of a large change for your whole org by just being a good example

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#108

Post by epberry »

noizejoy wrote: post #87
hieunc229 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it sounds so weird but intriguing. Do you mind telling the rest of the story?

The story would probably make little sense to most HN readers, since it's very old and what was very non-obvious back then, became very obvious 5 years later. Around 1994/95 client/server was unassailable in board rooms (much like AI is now). And after initially speaking up against it, I ended up shutting up about my criticism of that architectural approach, since it would have just gotten me fired. So I ended up sne…

Doesn't this speak more to the board's astounding foresight than inane projects?

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#109

Post by ta17711771 »

sukilot wrote: post #96
hedora wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the CEO asked me to build a human level AGI in front of our only customer (small company). I asked them what they wanted to do (it was solvable with keyword search) and told the CEO that I’d be happy to get it into the next version. It took an afternoon or so to implement. Gotta love the PHB effect.

It's interesting that you seem to be insulting your CEO, who managed to solve a customer problem with reasonable tech requirements for you and a grandiose upsold sales pitch. Seems like a win-win-win

> grandiose upsold sales pitch

Yes, liars should be insulted.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#110

Post by the_af »

sukilot wrote: post #96
hedora wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the CEO asked me to build a human level AGI in front of our only customer (small company). I asked them what they wanted to do (it was solvable with keyword search) and told the CEO that I’d be happy to get it into the next version. It took an afternoon or so to implement. Gotta love the PHB effect.

It's interesting that you seem to be insulting your CEO, who managed to solve a customer problem with reasonable tech requirements for you and a grandiose upsold sales pitch. Seems like a win-win-win

If it happened like the OP described, they just got lucky, but it could have gone differently. A good (but less than honest) CEO would have colluded with the developer before talking to the customer, both agreeing to upsell an easily implemented feature. However, the mark of a PHB is that he/she will ask for random features while completely misjudging their feasibility -- sometimes you'll get lucky, sometimes you'll crash and burn horribly.
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