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I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

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Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#41

Post by deepsun »

gedy wrote: post #34
dcastonguay wrote: post #5

> At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. I cannot help but read this whole experience as: “We forced an engineer to take sales calls and we found out that the issue was that our PMs are doing a terrible job communicating between customer and engineering, and our DevOps engineer is more capable/ac…

I wonder if LLMs might be replacing these type of PM jobs where they gather up feedback (usually it's mostly in text form anyways), and translate and summarize so engineers can cut out some noise and confusion from PMs.

Ok, LLM translated and summarized. Then what?

Someone needs to look at it and push important points. Sometimes it's hard to push engineers, until they visit some calls and push themselves.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#42

Post by ilc »

As an engineer, there's only one reason I don't want to be on customer calls:

Once a customer knows the person who actually builds the product, they will short cut:

- Customer Service

- Product Management

- Any other sane defenses you put in to protect a developer's time.

And just contact me directly.

Then what do I do to get them off of me without losing a customer?

... That is why engineers don't get on support calls.

If I could be "Anon E. Mouse" for the engagement, that'd be fine. But fact is, that's not what happens.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#43

Post by ryandrake »

perrygeo wrote: post #33
dcastonguay wrote: post #5

> At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. I cannot help but read this whole experience as: “We forced an engineer to take sales calls and we found out that the issue was that our PMs are doing a terrible job communicating between customer and engineering, and our DevOps engineer is more capable/ac…

Yep, notice there was no mention at all about why the original software was so ill-designed in the first place. Not even a curiosity as to why. Your conclusion is more valid, though I wouldn't necessarily place the blame on the PM. Agile/Scrum rituals, where blame is diffused and developers are forced to sprint quickly through poorly-designed tickets, yields poorly-designed software. Who could have guessed? Feels lik…

The root cause I think is that nobody really cares. They're not paid extra to care, either. The PMs are putting checkboxes together and writing reports for their managers without really asking how what they are designing is going to actually be used, the engineers are turning each checkbox into code without wondering if what they are doing makes sense, and the project managers are making sure the train is running on time without regard for where the train is actually going. At the end of the day, the company's stonk goes up, everyone gets paid, and goes home to the family they care about and to do hobbies they actually care about. If any of these characters in the play goes above and beyond to do something wonderful, they aren't getting paid more, the stonks aren't going up higher, and the effort is usually just wasted. I'm not saying this is bad, either, it's just part of why products are so bad.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#44

Post by elzbardico »

Well. Then you should fire your project owners, product manager and marketing folks, as two things emerge clearly:

1 - Those people were not able either to capture what the customers really wanted, or to translate this into requirements for the developers, or both things at the same time.

2 - Due to the fact that their minds are trained to see things systematically, maybe you should remove all those layers between customers and developers.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#45

Post by deepsun »

perrygeo wrote: post #33
dcastonguay wrote: post #5

> At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. I cannot help but read this whole experience as: “We forced an engineer to take sales calls and we found out that the issue was that our PMs are doing a terrible job communicating between customer and engineering, and our DevOps engineer is more capable/ac…

Yep, notice there was no mention at all about why the original software was so ill-designed in the first place. Not even a curiosity as to why. Your conclusion is more valid, though I wouldn't necessarily place the blame on the PM. Agile/Scrum rituals, where blame is diffused and developers are forced to sprint quickly through poorly-designed tickets, yields poorly-designed software. Who could have guessed? Feels lik…

Part of the task is to push engineers to understand the customer problems and work that way. Sometimes it's hard, when engineers are stubborn (I'm guilty of that too).

This PM eventually found the way to push their engs, as described in the article. So I think PM achieved the goal pretty good.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#46

Post by marssaxman »

I used to love having a job where I had regular interaction with customers. It really made a difference in my ability to improve the features we had, and to design new systems which would be more likely to succeed. I miss that, and I wish more companies found a way to put engineers in contact with actual users...

...but if you tried to make me do even one sales call, at all, ever, for any reason, that would instantly terminate my interest in working for you.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#47

Post by antonymoose »

vkou wrote: post #12
dcastonguay wrote: post #5

> At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. I cannot help but read this whole experience as: “We forced an engineer to take sales calls and we found out that the issue was that our PMs are doing a terrible job communicating between customer and engineering, and our DevOps engineer is more capable/ac…

This is the first thing that struck me. Why does the OP still have a job if a line engineer can do it better? Promote the guy to CTO, and fire the useless chumps who were collecting a paycheck spinning their wheels.

Because he has people skills, damnit!

He clearly adds value, he has his secretary take down requirements from the customer and then he personally walks them down the hall to the engineers.

Not sure why you’re not getting this?

/s

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#48

Post by VladVladikoff »

dcastonguay wrote: post #5

> At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. I cannot help but read this whole experience as: “We forced an engineer to take sales calls and we found out that the issue was that our PMs are doing a terrible job communicating between customer and engineering, and our DevOps engineer is more capable/ac…

I run a small tech startup, about 2M ARR. And at times we’ve been short staffed on support and I’ve sat in for support for a day or two. And every time I do this I discover loads of issues customers are complaining about that don’t seem to ever make it back to our engineering team. Perhaps it’s just our support reps, or the nature of support, but they seem to love to “solve” problems themselves rather than reporting it to engineering for a more permanent fix.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#49

Post by BurningFrog »

dcastonguay wrote: post #5

> At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. I cannot help but read this whole experience as: “We forced an engineer to take sales calls and we found out that the issue was that our PMs are doing a terrible job communicating between customer and engineering, and our DevOps engineer is more capable/ac…

Perhaps, but being told something very often cannot possibly replace experiencing it yourself.

Re: I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform

#50

Post by mschild »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #48
dcastonguay wrote: post #5

> At the end of it, they were sketching a completely different architecture without my "PMing". Because they finally understood who was actually using our product. I cannot help but read this whole experience as: “We forced an engineer to take sales calls and we found out that the issue was that our PMs are doing a terrible job communicating between customer and engineering, and our DevOps engineer is more capable/ac…

I run a small tech startup, about 2M ARR. And at times we’ve been short staffed on support and I’ve sat in for support for a day or two. And every time I do this I discover loads of issues customers are complaining about that don’t seem to ever make it back to our engineering team. Perhaps it’s just our support reps, or the nature of support, but they seem to love to “solve” problems themselves rather than reporting…

I think a mix of both is best. If support can quickly solve a customer issue they should. But they also should make note of it and pass it along.
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