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The engineering – marketing divide

Sunday, April 6th, 2014 by Nigel Jones

We have all sat in surreal meetings with the sales and marketing folks. This video captures the dynamic perfectly (caution – you won’t know whether to laugh or cry):

The Expert Video

I actually have some sympathy for the marketing people portrayed here, as it must be very hard when you’re so far out of your depth. The person I can’t stand is the smarmy sales guy who’ll promise anything to make a sale, regardless of the consequences. I have to admit to having chewed out a few sales guys in my time that have pulled stunts like this one.

Anyway, I don’t have any particular insights on this other than to let you all know that you’re not alone when it comes to meetings like these.

4 Responses to “The engineering – marketing divide”

  1. Mate Rigo says:

    OK, I definitely started out crying, and finished the video laughing.
    This is hilarious!

  2. The video would be funny if it wasn’t so true.

    I programmed a device with a GUI and touch screen. Marketing wanted me to add a feature where a user could hover his finger over a button on the screen and help text would show up explaining its use.

    Because of that incident, our Engineering department now has a term we use after going into Marketing brainstorming meetings. It’s called “Damage Control”.

  3. Goce Dimitrievski says:

    Excellent video, couldn’t stop laughing. There is another very similar video, but this one has more to do with embedded systems:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YUvlrVlNao

    It is Microchip’s answer to Dave’s (EEVblog) review of the new pickit3.

  4. Misha says:

    Thanks Nigel for sharing this great video!

    However, I begin to wonder whether the sales guy in this case did the right thing. Obviously the customer doesn’t know what he wants, and he will be satisfied with whatever the expert produces, so all the sales guy has to do is to promise… it doesn’t need to be done.
    I think that the problem is more of a general business environment where often deals are made by the people who are in the decision making chain at higher level, but are actually clueless about the real matter they are making deal about.

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