←back to thread

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

(old.reddit.com)
324 points bilsbie | 1 comments | 21 Aug 25 15:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
Show context
m463 ◴[21 Aug 25 16:41 UTC] No.44974861[source]▶
All the negative responses.

I have been at countless places where the engineers are out of sync with the product.

And it might be something silly like their coworker added something they didn't know about and the UI is now confusing. Could even be the website started proclaiming something that didn't align well with the product.

Another factor is that the [product -> PM -> bug system -> engineer -> fix -> QA -> product] loop is heavy. It takes a long time and major things get fixed but minor friction doesn't.

having [product <-> engineer] can be amazing.

Engineers might have never encountered the full experience, or may merely be out of sync with how it works today vs last year.

replies(4): >>44975324 #>>44976454 #>>44977175 #>>44978649 #
1. nunez ◴[21 Aug 25 18:41 UTC] No.44976454[source]▶
you're not wrong, but i don't think forcing engineers to take sales calls is the right move either. there's lots of soft skills involved in running a successful call that engineers aren't trained or even interviewed on.

(i'm definining "sales calls" as the initial discovery call before a demo or proof of concept is agreed upon. i would be okay with having engineers _ride along_ for complex presales demos, but even then, product should really be serving that role.)