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Notes -
I should probably switch companies because at my company our sales isn't so much problem-solving as it is about warm and fuzzy vibes.
Virtually every feature I've ever worked on seems to have no users whenever I query prod. I assume the same goes for nearly all features in our Frankenstein's monster of a monolith. Instead, 99% of the product's value comes from this miniscule percent of product loops and workflows written by some senior architect 20 years ago.
Still, we're told all our features are very important to sales. You see, I don't work for a software company like I think I do -- I work for a sales company. The defects I fix weren't caught by users, but by internal sales engineers. The purpose of these bells and whistles is to give the client warm and fuzzy feelings that our product is better than the competition. Naturally these features don't solve user problems because they go unused! And the shot-calling higher ups who sign the contracts and see the demos aren't actually our users -- they are our users' boss's boss.
Still, it would be wrong to say we demo vaporware (it does work, although probably not as robust), or to say the features don't provide company value. They win deals (presumably). But our software engineers are jaded because we're usually not solving user problems.
Request bloat and cowardly/uncaring dev teams are usually to blame for useless features going nowhere. I've had to deal with a product that literally no one thinks is useful at all, but the request was built into production because no one cared enough to disabuse the boss of his false assumptions. 'Lets try and see how it works' turns into 'wait why is this even here' when it is caught four months later.
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