I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by rendaw » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC

general1726 wrote: post #52

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…

Or engineers are little bit full of themselves and know better how user should experience the product. If user is "holding the product wrong" it is a problem of a user and not a problem of stupid design, created by a person who knows in which order these buttons should be pressed. People around Desktop Linux could write a complete book about dismissing user's complaints. The moment you have stubborn engineer who know…

The fact that Jobs wasn't an engineer shows this clearly isn't just an engineering problem.

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

#192

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 3:53 AM UTC

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…

It's too bad we didn't have a major movement in software engineering a couple decades back that recognized that playing telephone through a chain of intermediaries (analysts, PMs, etc.) between customers and engineering was an anti-pattern, and articulated as a major principle that engineering should work directly and regularly with the community that the software is being built for.

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

#193

Post by hilux » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:20 AM UTC

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…

The new "product led" trend seems to be that PMs are much more on the implementation side than on the customer-facing business side.

E.g. I know this guy leading sold-out Product Management workshops in Silicon Valley, who understands nothing at all about actually taking any product to market, about competition, marketing, etc. ... never mind satisfying actual customers.

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

#194

Post by ivan_gammel » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:43 AM UTC

pyman wrote: post #181

ivan_gammel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support every single word of this comment. Good product managers are unicorn masters of discovery and delivery who are so rare that they climb up quickly in corporate hierarchy to strategic positions leaving holes in product operations. I have seen products running A/B tests without understanding how they work, designing UI sketches without any knowledge of UX, pushing features to roadmap based on a feedback of a s…

I think the role of Product Manager should be renamed Customer Manager to avoid confusion and conflicts of interest. Some companies like Airbnb tried switching to Program Manager, but that only adds to the confusion. Right now, the Product Manager is seen as the CEO's delegate, making sure the product follows business strategy, while the Engineering Manager is the CTO's delegate, making sure the product follows techn…

>Business strategy

>Customer Manager

That sounds weird. Product managers do not represent customers interests, they represent business value which is not always in making all customers happy. E.g. conversion optimization brings no added value to customers, so it’s not a great name choice. If the role defined as it us now, „product manager“ is the most appropriate name.

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

#195

Post by Tor3 » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:51 AM UTC

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 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/actionable at turning customer needs into working solutions.”

I disagree - there are real limits on how PMs and others can describe how customers feel about products. At my workplace I've always argued for rotating engineers through customer support now and then. As someone who did customer support AND development at the same time, I noticed the wall between developers working in isolation and others who also worked customers. You can work from specifications alone, and they may well be perfect specifications validated by customers, but if you're not actually seeing what they do you can't really understand.

Working with customers now and then simply translates to better products and also less maintenance issues, which is _better_ for said developer.

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

#196

Post by lmm » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 6:11 AM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #182

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…

The first rule of Hacker News comments is it's never the engineer's fault

It can be the engineer's fault if it's an engineering mistake. But bad process is the fault of the people who control the process and bad product management is the fault of the people who control the product management.

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

#197

Post by magicalhippo » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 6:45 AM UTC

We make a B2B application, and I jump at the opportunity to join in on a support call with a customer or otherwise see how our customers use our product.

I knew nothing about the sector when I started, but I've grown a fairly decent understanding of the challenges and pain points. However every customer does things a bit differently, and so it's useful to experience it first hand.

That our dev team has such good understanding of the domain and our customers has been instrumental to the company's rise to a dominant position, I think. You just make better decisions, from small to large, when you're more in-tune with how the application will be used.

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

#198

Post by kstenerud » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:17 AM UTC

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 read it as: Most people are bad at empathy because they've never practiced it, and so forcing them into the shoes of another is a good way to give them a kickstart into the realm.

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

#199

Post by boticello » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:24 AM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #119

general1726 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or engineers are little bit full of themselves and know better how user should experience the product. If user is "holding the product wrong" it is a problem of a user and not a problem of stupid design, created by a person who knows in which order these buttons should be pressed. People around Desktop Linux could write a complete book about dismissing user's complaints. The moment you have stubborn engineer who know…

If a user holds an ice cream cone upside-down and their ice cream falls to the floor, do you blame the user for not holding their ice cream cone upright or the creator of the ice cream cone for a stupid design that allows the ice cream to so easily fall out of the ice cream holding device and onto the floor? I find far more often that bad UX is the result of someone trying to use a tool for something it wasn't design…

And thus the tub was conceived. By someone who was watching people wrangling with cones.

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

#200

Post by pyman » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

ivan_gammel wrote: post #194

pyman wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the role of Product Manager should be renamed Customer Manager to avoid confusion and conflicts of interest. Some companies like Airbnb tried switching to Program Manager, but that only adds to the confusion. Right now, the Product Manager is seen as the CEO's delegate, making sure the product follows business strategy, while the Engineering Manager is the CTO's delegate, making sure the product follows techn…

>Business strategy >Customer Manager That sounds weird. Product managers do not represent customers interests, they represent business value which is not always in making all customers happy. E.g. conversion optimization brings no added value to customers, so it’s not a great name choice. If the role defined as it us now, „product manager“ is the most appropriate name.

It does sound a bit weird, I have to admit. Customer Experience Manager sounds better or just CX Manager.

For me, the title Product Manager sets the wrong expectation, it makes it sound like they own the product, which clashes with other roles. In reality, they don't own the product, they own alignment: customer needs, business goals, and engineering feasibility.

I've heard many YC founders say that the CEO (or CPO) is the only one who truly owns the product, and I agree. The PM should never own it, they are interpreters who take the CEO's vision, combine it with customer insight, and help the team make the right trade-offs.