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

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324 points bilsbie | 3 comments | 21 Aug 25 15:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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dcastonguay ◴[21 Aug 25 16:17 UTC] No.44974574[source]▶
> 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/actionable at turning customer needs into working solutions.”

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1. vkou ◴[21 Aug 25 16:25 UTC] No.44974660[source]▶
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.

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2. antonymoose ◴[21 Aug 25 17:32 UTC] No.44975628[source]▶
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

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3. LargeWu ◴[21 Aug 25 18:36 UTC] No.44976413[source]▶
I know you're kidding, but the TPM I work with is basically a stenographer. If we ask him "why" on a requirement, 60% chance the answer is "I don't know, but the customer wants it"