We do something similar at work. Except usually the dev department doesn't know until handed the project from sales and so the project goals might be entirely unrealistic given the deadline.

What do you mean that feature doesn't exist? Well, I sold it to the customer, they have to go live in two weeks and their workflow depends on this feature.

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DowsingSpoon 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

While I've fortunately never had this happen to me, I'd be tempted to say something like, "Wow. Well, I sure hope you don't get fired over this. Good luck. We'll scope it out and let you know how much time we'll need."

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tialaramex 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Having been on on the customer side it's frustrating how often the situation is: Me: "So, you got a bid which offers features A, B, C, and D we asked for, and you say it also has X and Y and hit our budget?" / Buyer: "Yes".

A week later. "OK, their install team says it can't technically do C yet, however there's an early 2026 preview scheduled which addresses most of C. The D feature isn't in the edition we have, our buyers are talking to their sales people and we may need to pay extra to unlock D. And you're correct that two other organisations in our industry confirm X is dogshit and you'd be better off without it but it can't be disabled. Still A does work, and we have filed bugs about the known defects with B so hopefully we can get those fixed"

Every time I buy a product as an ordinary consumer I marvel at how much worse my huge employer is at buying products than I am. I reckon if they were sent to the store to buy a whole roast chicken with a £20 note they'd come back with six expired chicken sandwiches and no change.

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roarcher 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Every time I buy a product as an ordinary consumer I marvel at how much worse my huge employer is at buying products than I am.

It's the size of the deal that matters. Most of the consumer goods you buy are sold on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. No individual sale is worth the vendor forming a "relationship" with that customer or promising bespoke features. B2B sales are often large deals that require months of negotiation and may be worth millions. Bullshitting in order to land the deal is incentivized on both sides, to the point where both only have a fuzzy idea of what exactly is being bought and sold.

But consumers get this experience as well when they make larger purchases. When I buy a car, maybe I fail to mention the unreported fender bender my trade-in was in, and maybe the salesman tries to charge me $1200 to etch "anti-theft tracking numbers" on the new car's windows, citing some dubious statistics about vehicle recovery rates.

	▲	QuantumNomad_ 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> consumers get this experience as well when they make larger purchases Or as I like to do, buying random things on AliExpress and Temu knowing full well that some of the things will not meet the expectations you’d have from the product listings. Sometimes I’m lucky and the stuff is good. Sometimes I’m a little unlucky and it’s worse quality than I’d like. At least I quickly learned to read carefully what was said to realize that what’s depicted is not exactly what’s being sold. Some sellers do this misleading trick where they have some amazing photo up front but there are either multiple variations of it or the thing being sold is only some component for that thing. I still sometimes see product reviews from other buyers that were upset that they didn’t get what they thought they were buying and I don’t blame them because it can be pretty misleading at times, but if you read carefully and look at all the pictures and check what the “color” or similar option dropdown says etc you will usually spot it when they are selling something different than what it might look like at first. So I haven’t had that kind of misfortune for years now. But sometimes you still get products that are lower quality than you were hoping for, even when the product listing was pretty accurate. Some kinds of bad quality is just not possible to judge unless you see the product in person.

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bityard 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe they exist but I haven't worked in a company yet that wouldn't fire an engineer or manager for refusing to implement a feature that some salescritter already sold. One of them made the company money (on paper, sure) while the other is threatening to undo the deal. It's not hard to guess which one the c-suites would send packing first.

	▲	dingnuts 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		oh you agree to do it but you laugh, literally laugh, at their deadline. and you say, you can fire me but that's not going to get your software done on time. in fact it will delay it. they shut up. it's done when it's done. I've done this many, many times. Oh you promised it by the end of the week and didn't ask me? lol, that sounds like a YOU problem.

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com2kid 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Whitehouse once called my team at Microsoft and asked for some features.

We said yes, we'd get right on it. :-D

We were all too stunned to have any real feedback.

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magicalhippo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fortunately it doesn't happen too often, and some can be attributed to our somewhat complex feature matrix that differs by regions due to reasons.

On the other hand, in our niche customers usually don't swap software providers often due to integration work needed.

When an opportunity arises, it's usually because the yearly license expires. So we got to either sell it now with a hard deadline in the near future, or wait 5+ years till next time they switch.

So that can lead to sales being a bit optimistic when making the pitch.

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ojosilva 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I've been on both ends of this workflow. Sales always wins.

"Wow. Well, I sure hope you don't get fired over this. Good luck. We'll scope it out and let you know how much time we'll need."

"We'll see."

The big-screen TV in the modern glass conference room showed the final slide: “Questions?”.

"I.. I'd like to add that this feature we sold is not in the product and we can't just go around adding features that Sales makes up out of the blue just... just to close a deal. I mean, we gotta plan these things, there's a procedure, we should get product involved..."

Head of Sales, interrupting: "Can't we, Jeff?"

Jeff, the middle-manager, shuffled his feet: "Uh. Yeah. Right. I think we shouldn't. Hey! Haste makes waste, that's what they say, right?"

Head of Sales: "Can't we Barbara?"

Barbara, the boss: "I don't know. Let me call Pradeep"

(Barbara presses the "huddle" button in Slack on her big iPhone. A few rings and a bored voice replies)

"Yeah?"

"Sorry to jump on you like this, Pradeep. Would you mind coming to meeting room seven for a second?"

Less than a minute later Pradeep walks in, his thick glasses casting a green hue over his eyes, his arrogant demeanor preceded him like a shadow.

"Pradeep, did you read the feature request I messaged you?"

"Yes."

"How fast can you do it"

"Just merged it this morning."

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LtWorf 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah you must work at my same company!