[rigorman]

>>Light side: Closing the loop between what the customer wants, what their actual problems are, and what engineering and manufacturing can deliver.

>Marketing seems to have given up on that sort of effort years ago.

Marketing hasn't, but companies' hiring and organizational structure decisions have - especially tech companies.

As long as the only marketing personel a company hires are advertising personel, given authority and responsibility for advertising only, the loop can't be closed.

In tech, programmers are the "engineering and manufacturing", but they tend not to want to be told what consumers want by the marketing team (who, if hired and authorized properly, would be doing rigorous independent research and data analysis using data from that research, user data, and bought research, to come by those insights...)

[JohnFen]

> In tech, programmers are the "engineering and manufacturing", but they tend not to want to be told what consumers want by the marketing team

This is true. In fact, I'm currently engaged in a bit of a battle over this very thing at my current employer (I'm a software dev). They're hiring a brand new marketing team, but all they've been hiring are salespeople, and I've been pushing them to be sure to include someone who will do actual market research that we devs can use to inform product design.

[Gibbon1]

That is a good thing to push for because while they overlap Marketing != Sales. A good marketing person is absolutely worth it.