Comment by exac
21 hours ago
Fraud aside, I think a more common thought among developers is
> Did my old job only exist because the Product Owners didn't realize we didn't have product-market fit?
21 hours ago
Fraud aside, I think a more common thought among developers is
> Did my old job only exist because the Product Owners didn't realize we didn't have product-market fit?
That's the job: experiment until you find product-market fit... or die trying.
That's just innate. Often you don't know until you try.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's what a healthy economy looks like.
At a small company, anyone can damage the company prospects. But product people have outsized negative impact when they are wrong. They can tank the whole company in short order.
Which is maybe as it should be, but it does pit agonized debates over detailed technical work in perspective.
All true but every time I tried to help with an outsider's perspective -- and IMO us as engineers with systems thinking _can_ contribute -- I was told to shut up and stay in my lane (more politely than that but still crystal clear what's the underlying message + a clear show of we-will-not-debate-this-again).
So let them do damage. I do what I am told, I have the strategic thinking but not many have made use of it. OK. It's their right. I still pocket a wage. They could have gotten more for their money but consciously chose not to. Who am I to stop them? (And not like I actually can.)
2 replies →
A healthy economy permits the companies within it to fail.
1 reply →
One time I worked for a client who entire idea for a product was "it's going to do the same as <specific popular open source dev tool>, except in Go and with GraphQL!" They literally had zero vision beyond duplicating effort for no reason. During the first meeting I sat in, I asked them directly why someone would choose to use their version instead of the existing one, and they didn't have an answer. Something like one or two years went by before they decided to end the contract with us, and I never learned what they hoped to achieve.
Well, that might be part of the reason why it's your old job and not your current one. :)