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There is a dark organizational pattern that I find wasteful: when sales have complete power over engineering, sales would routinely ask for features/projects at
by p0nce 5y ago
There is a dark organizational pattern that I find wasteful: when sales have complete power over engineering, sales would routinely ask for features/projects at a breakneck pace for _potential_ customers instead of having a product-based mindset for real customers.
This create a lot of deathmarch situations that waste human potential, end careers, and do not sell a whole lot in the end.
- FartyMcFarter 5y agoOne similar thing that I've seen happen in game development is having a big part of (or the whole) team working exclusively on a demo or trailer for marketing purposes, for weeks / months.
- OneTimePetes 5y agoWhich is then "sold" by the project lead/sales/pr on some conference/show to great success, unaware that they are the ones trading in project time for publicity. Deadlines of course remain fixed.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI've seen documentaries where they did that, crunching to make a demo or presentation work for E3. The worst ones are pre-rendered videos of things that they would like to do, but turns out they can't deliver - famous examples are Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky.
- peakaboo 5y agoI don't work for companies where sales are running engineering. Usually a horrible environment of code monkeys patching shit together so it barely works, and no rest at all inbetween tasks, because sales are clueless about what an engineer does.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- whoomp12342 5y agoalso sales get paid commission based so their motivitaion is extra $$$. most engineers do not get a piece of that pie, in this case making them a sucker.
- michaelcampbell 5y agoAt $PREVIOUS_JOB we in the development organization would routinely get pinged by people in the sales org with those "Hey, I need information on X so I can close this deal!", usually near the end of day, often on Friday, and always needed it RIGHT NOW. I started by countering, "Since I'm going to be working late on your project, what % of your commission are you offering?"
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoIt's a sign of poor engineering department management though; their most important job is to protect their employees and to say 'no' to one of the stakeholders. Because sales is just one voice of many - the actual users is another, engineering another, data and metrics is another, etc. As a manager, you need to manage resources and they are limited. You can't tell your staff to do overtime if it's not an actual emergency that affects paying customers, that's not sustainable.
- mmcnl 5y agoI agree, but I think it can be formulated in a better way. I.e. it's not about saying "no", it's about having a meaningful conversation about priority to reach a shared understanding with all stakeholders why we are doing the things we are doing. Saying "no" can be a result of this process, but this doesn't have to be the case. Also, saying "no" without proper clarification can give you a reputation of hard to work with, which may result in people going around you, which reduces transparency and increases politics.
- p0nce 5y agoYes. But this role doesn't always exist. For whoever is in power, creating suitable counter-powers may not feel like a pressing issue.
- mumblemumble 5y agoI've seen that pattern, too, but I would generalize it a bit. When a whole bunch of individual contributors from outside teams have too much direct pull on the product development team's priorities, prioritization suffers and the development team becomes overworked. This happens when it's sales, but also support and consulting roles, or any of a large variety of internal stakeholders. They're all just different flavors of the same problem: too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the soup. There's really only solution I've seen that works: don't allow everyone to be a cook. Designate exactly one person to be in charge of making these sorts of decisions.