The Dev Who Sat in a Sales Call

ag404labs.com

2 pointsxsh69422 comments

I worked at a company that for a very short time had engineering, tech support, and sales and such all follow a person from another department around for a little while. It opened up communication and understanding far beyond anything ever had, but it of course ended after a short while. It was inconvenient, and I think it upset some managers who were the gatekeepers of communication and process and otherwise useless humans.

I still fight regularly for a meeting with clients that isn't a list of ideas or features, but is a "why do you want to do this thing" explanation from the very top. I don't always get it, but when I do the new feature right out of the gate, almost every dang time.

I've had the same experience, cross-department shadowing at a listed fintech. It worked tremendously well... For 3 months until they invoked "too many meetings" rule to shut it all down. IMO it died because it exposed how many people's entire job was controlling information flow. The "useless humans" you mentioned? Their job security depends on being the bottleneck. If developers understand customer problems directly, what's the PM doing all day? If sales knows what engineering can actually deliver, why do we need three layers of "roadmap prioritization"?

When engineers can talk directly to customers, when support understands the product, when sales knows what's actually possible, suddenly half the middle management layer has nothing to do.

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