[tnolet]

Very true.

But then you start selling to Enterprise and everything changes. Because one missing "hygiene feature"* can tank the the whole deal. And every Enterprise has a different one.

*like a toilet. It needs to be there. You use it 3 minutes per day. If it is not there, the house is uninhabitable.

[mackman]

As best I can tell we've never sold the same product twice. Product roadmap is "whatever the last person I spoke to asked for." And tech debt maintaining a grab bag of 5,000 almost-but-not-quite-entirely-production-grade "must have" features that the customers rarely if ever use despite claiming that not having it was a deal breaker, is, well, debty.

[xnorswap]

The best decision I ever made was moving from a company that acted on the whims of whomever the sales team spoke to last, to a company that had a strong product vision and was happy to say no to their customers on occasion.

It's a lot less exhausting when you're not changing priorities every quarter.

You also avoid the soul crushing experience of working really hard, crunching to get a feature out, only to realise your time was given away free to land a deal. Sometimes a deal that fell through anyway.

[rubicon33]

Oh my god you just perfectly described the frustration of working in enterprise SaaS. It’s been fun in some ways but the constant churn of almost-but-not-entirely-production-grade software is soul crushing. We celebrate and reward speed to market and lack of process in a way that feels unhealthy and unrewarding.

I’ve worked at consumer facing companies but also other enterprise SaaS and have to say I’ve never seen it done like this before. Just ruthless pursuit of features over polish, craft, etc.

[snarf21]

This is what I've come to refer to as a Spice Girls sales team.

The solution is for the cost of these new additions to come off the top of the deal (pre-commission) they are signing to re-align the incentives.

[bobsmooth]

>You use it 3 minutes per day.

Damn you must get a lot of fiber.

[taude]

I had started writing this in a new thread, then saw yours....

"Unless it's Enterprise users. Then 1000 Enterprises all care very seriously about 2 custom features no one else cares about. You had to do horrible things to your code base to support, that will only kick some poor dev in the face two years after you left, and a year after the customer churned."

[didip]

At least a toilet is fairly standard these days. Not so much with digital only products.

[montag]

I like to call these "windshield wipers." Rarely used yet essential.

[stronglikedan]

> like a toilet... You use it 3 minutes per day

I think you may need to go see a doctor about that, seriously.

[Dylan16807]

What do you imagine is bad about that number?