> If a user holds an ice cream cone upside-down and their ice cream falls to the floor, do you blame the user for not holding their ice cream cone upright or the creator of the ice cream cone for a stupid design that allows the ice cream to so easily fall out of the ice cream holding device and onto the floor?

Playing along with this analogy, what I think we see a lot of in product development is the customer going to the PM and saying they need the cone to have a cover. The PM and the customer iterate over the specifics of the cover. PM goes to the engineer and tells them the cone needs a cover that meets x, y, and z requirements. Engineer, knowing how you're supposed to use the ice cream cone, objects. PM, knowing what the customer needs, insists.

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dgfitz 4 days ago | parent [-]

> Engineer, knowing how you're supposed to use the ice cream cone, objects. PM, knowing what the customer needs, insists.

That’s the kicker. They know what the customer _wants_ not what they _need_

The number of times a Jr engineer has asked me “how do I accomplish task X in technology Y, it’s really important!”

I always, always ask “what problem are you trying to solve. Not once in over 15 YoE has the solution been to use X.

A good PM doesn’t say “this is what the customer needs” because most of the time the fucking customer doesn’t actually understand what they need.

The engineer knows that holding the ice cream cone upside down means they’re trying to use the product in a way it was never intended, so they push back.

A good PM would ask “why do you want to hold the ice cream cone upside down, customer?”

“Oh well we don’t actually want to hold it upside down, we just get frustrated that sometimes when we put too much ice cream on/in the cone it falls out. So if you can make the cone hold the ice cream while upside down, the problem is solved!”

“Oh, so what you actually need is a bigger cone that can hold more ice cream?”

“Oh, yeah that would work too”

meme about Spider-Man facepalming, where Spider-Man is the engineer

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uberduper 4 days ago | parent [-]

My point is that by letting the customer define the solution rather than explain the problem, nobody knows they're even trying to hold it upside down. The why of it all is lost in some PM / Engineer power struggle that usually results in ice cream cones having covers (and a happy customer).

	▲	dgfitz 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		As a sw engineer, I’m going to tell our customer that the thing they claim they want they do not need. Because I’ve done this enough times, they’ll listen to me and we won’t waste time on it. You should try it, instead of designing soggy ice cream cone caps.