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On December 21 2015 13:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2015 06:56 B-royal wrote:
Really? I think it's just a matter of listening to the wrong people then. There's been plenty of EXCELLENT advice regarding Sc2 such as Lalush' depth of micro or some of the economy analysis threads.. Let me put it this way. 80% of your paying customers asks for item A 10% asks for item B 5% asks for item C 30 random guys in a Broodwar website asks for item D Lalush asks for item E Which one would the CEO listen to?
Good point. Though I would assume that if you would release item E, it would eventually convince the other population by virtue of being objectively the best.
On December 21 2015 17:51 CaucasianAsian wrote:
no one, and say that item G is better than anyone can hope for, and that it's in development while you release item F
Haha.
On December 21 2015 17:57 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2015 12:54 B-royal wrote:
Have 10 people:
9 out of 10 are mediocre players and win 50% against each other. One player (X) is just a mess and loses 100% of his games.
Now you have 9 players (>51% of the population) with higher than 51 win percentage, which can get higher and higher the more they play mister X.
edit: Purely from intuition, this does seem very much possible. Maybe someone can bring some math in here and prove it haha. As someone studying to become a math teacher, this is basically 90% of a proof. If a statement is "x is impossible/always true", the only thing you need to disprove this statement is a counterexample. Because if it isn't true in one single case, it is obviously not always true. You could make the statement more exact, and formulate your example out a bit more, but basically you have done what needs to be done to disprove that ridiculous statement.
Thanks, this actually boosted my confidence. Good luck with becoming a math teacher!
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On December 21 2015 13:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2015 06:56 B-royal wrote:
Really? I think it's just a matter of listening to the wrong people then. There's been plenty of EXCELLENT advice regarding Sc2 such as Lalush' depth of micro or some of the economy analysis threads.. Let me put it this way. 80% of your paying customers asks for item A 10% asks for item B 5% asks for item C 30 random guys in a Broodwar website asks for item D Lalush asks for item E Which one would the CEO listen to?
If you want to go by that logic why aren't companies asking the consumers exactly how the game should look like? Because there are certainly more consumers than there are programmers/CEOs/designers that have a different opinion on what it's best for the game. Sounds like what's best for the game always depends on what the majority of people thinks is best and not what people with superior knowledge think is best.
If you ask me, he should probably listen to that one person, assuming what he says makes sense. The large majority that cries for something else without deeper understanding what is really wrong will later on realise that they got what the wanted in a better way.
That being said, this depends of what they try to implement. If they want to implement new skins to sell for $$$ the CEO should surely listen to the majority.
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On December 22 2015 01:20 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2015 13:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 20 2015 06:56 B-royal wrote:
Really? I think it's just a matter of listening to the wrong people then. There's been plenty of EXCELLENT advice regarding Sc2 such as Lalush' depth of micro or some of the economy analysis threads.. Let me put it this way. 80% of your paying customers asks for item A 10% asks for item B 5% asks for item C 30 random guys in a Broodwar website asks for item D Lalush asks for item E Which one would the CEO listen to? If you want to go by that logic why aren't companies asking the consumers exactly how the game should look like? Because there are certainly more consumers than there are programmers/CEOs/designers that have a different opinion on what it's best for the game. Sounds like what's best for the game always depends on what the majority of people thinks is best and not what people with superior knowledge think is best. If you ask me, he should probably listen to that one person, assuming what he says makes sense. The large majority that cries for something else without deeper understanding what is really wrong will later on realise that they got what the wanted in a better way. That being said, this depends of what they try to implement. If they want to implement new skins to sell for $$$ the CEO should surely listen to the majority.
Here's how the Product cycle works in broad strokes.
The PM goes to R&D and sees what they have
The PM goes to Marketing and sees what is popular
The PM goes to finance and sees what is affordable
A concept is birthed from those stats.
That concept is then tested both internally and externally--changes get made based on both internal and external testing. Product gets sent to Design to look pretty, gets sent back to Product to be given a name, brand, etc..
Product is released.
THEN Customer Suggestions gets put into play.
EXAMPLE:
Engineer: "I have sharp pointy thing"
Marketing: "People like stabbing things with pointy things"
Finance: "We can make only this many pointy things"
Test: "We stabbed many things with pointy thing, pointy thing did not break"
Design: "Here's the pointy thing in red"
Company: "Here's our Red Pointy Thing!"
Customer Opinions: "Can we have the pointy thing in blue?"
Expert Opinion: "I wish it had a handle..."
Company: "New Blue Pointy Thing!"
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I think players who join broodwar have to understand 3 things:
1. are you playing for fun or are you actually trying to get better (not mutually exclusive, but playing vs better players will have most of the time an expected result).
Loosing is not fun vs better players but you can make a lot of non-ladder games for fun. If you want to get better, there are a lot of posts and guides for it, but as anything, if you want to get good at it, it takes time and work.
2. Iccup is not broodwar. Iccup is the private server that was made for players to find challenges. What I am trying to say is, most of the good players will play there (and fish server) so you are getting into a hard competitive environment.
A good way to counter this is to practice in 3v3 hunters maps. There you will get less high skill players and more ppl having fun. But please understand that Iccup is the grandmaster league of SC2 in most cases. If you want to get practice with lower skilled players, you might need to do some searching on the forums or simply ask around in the iccup chat.
3. Broodwar is an old game and most of the players that still play it have played it for years. They have years of experience ahead of new players. New players who want to be good have to do their homework.
Its kinda like tribes ascend of CS 1.6. If you the there fresh, you will probably not get a single kill for dozens of games, but its part of the learning process.
All taht being said, if there is one thing the broodwar community is good at is helping new players.
Even those that have 50 games played can help a new comer, and everyone likes to show they are smart/good, so that EGO is an easy thing to exploit :D.
Personally, I like noobs. Some of them are the most mannered people out there, and its a very good attitude.
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On December 22 2015 02:20 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 01:20 Miragee wrote:On December 21 2015 13:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 20 2015 06:56 B-royal wrote:
Really? I think it's just a matter of listening to the wrong people then. There's been plenty of EXCELLENT advice regarding Sc2 such as Lalush' depth of micro or some of the economy analysis threads.. Let me put it this way. 80% of your paying customers asks for item A 10% asks for item B 5% asks for item C 30 random guys in a Broodwar website asks for item D Lalush asks for item E Which one would the CEO listen to? If you want to go by that logic why aren't companies asking the consumers exactly how the game should look like? Because there are certainly more consumers than there are programmers/CEOs/designers that have a different opinion on what it's best for the game. Sounds like what's best for the game always depends on what the majority of people thinks is best and not what people with superior knowledge think is best. If you ask me, he should probably listen to that one person, assuming what he says makes sense. The large majority that cries for something else without deeper understanding what is really wrong will later on realise that they got what the wanted in a better way. That being said, this depends of what they try to implement. If they want to implement new skins to sell for $$$ the CEO should surely listen to the majority. Here's how the Product cycle works in broad strokes. The PM goes to R&D and sees what they have The PM goes to Marketing and sees what is popular The PM goes to finance and sees what is affordable A concept is birthed from those stats. That concept is then tested both internally and externally--changes get made based on both internal and external testing. Product gets sent to Design to look pretty, gets sent back to Product to be given a name, brand, etc.. Product is released. THEN Customer Suggestions gets put into play. EXAMPLE: Engineer: "I have sharp pointy thing" Marketing: "People like stabbing things with pointy things" Finance: "We can make only this many pointy things" Test: "We stabbed many things with pointy thing, pointy thing did not break" Design: "Here's the pointy thing in red" Company: "Here's our Red Pointy Thing!" Customer Opinions: "Can we have the pointy thing in blue?" Expert Opinion: "I wish it had a handle..." Company: "New Blue Pointy Thing!"
Not really:
the life cycle of a product is far longer and in most cases it has many diverging paths.
I studied marketing and markets for 3 months and I could probably write around 4-5 pages about a products life cycle (but who wants to do that much work, right?) and im quite sure that those who studied for years can do even a better job.
In reality, the hardest part of any product is to identify a need in the market and its spread.
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On December 22 2015 02:28 iloveav wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 02:20 Naracs_Duc wrote:On December 22 2015 01:20 Miragee wrote:On December 21 2015 13:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 20 2015 06:56 B-royal wrote:
Really? I think it's just a matter of listening to the wrong people then. There's been plenty of EXCELLENT advice regarding Sc2 such as Lalush' depth of micro or some of the economy analysis threads.. Let me put it this way. 80% of your paying customers asks for item A 10% asks for item B 5% asks for item C 30 random guys in a Broodwar website asks for item D Lalush asks for item E Which one would the CEO listen to? If you want to go by that logic why aren't companies asking the consumers exactly how the game should look like? Because there are certainly more consumers than there are programmers/CEOs/designers that have a different opinion on what it's best for the game. Sounds like what's best for the game always depends on what the majority of people thinks is best and not what people with superior knowledge think is best. If you ask me, he should probably listen to that one person, assuming what he says makes sense. The large majority that cries for something else without deeper understanding what is really wrong will later on realise that they got what the wanted in a better way. That being said, this depends of what they try to implement. If they want to implement new skins to sell for $$$ the CEO should surely listen to the majority. Here's how the Product cycle works in broad strokes. The PM goes to R&D and sees what they have The PM goes to Marketing and sees what is popular The PM goes to finance and sees what is affordable A concept is birthed from those stats. That concept is then tested both internally and externally--changes get made based on both internal and external testing. Product gets sent to Design to look pretty, gets sent back to Product to be given a name, brand, etc.. Product is released. THEN Customer Suggestions gets put into play. EXAMPLE: Engineer: "I have sharp pointy thing" Marketing: "People like stabbing things with pointy things" Finance: "We can make only this many pointy things" Test: "We stabbed many things with pointy thing, pointy thing did not break" Design: "Here's the pointy thing in red" Company: "Here's our Red Pointy Thing!" Customer Opinions: "Can we have the pointy thing in blue?" Expert Opinion: "I wish it had a handle..." Company: "New Blue Pointy Thing!" Not really: the life cycle of a product is far longer and in most cases it has many diverging paths. I studied marketing and markets for 3 months and I could probably write around 4-5 pages about a products life cycle (but who wants to do that much work, right?) and im quite sure that those who studied for years can do even a better job. In reality, the hardest part of any product is to identify a need in the market and its spread.
You don't seem to understand what you're studying then. As each of those steps I'm talking about takes years.
PM asks Engineering/Science: "What do you have?"
Sci/Eng: "Um... we got about 6 different almost finished, 4 different failures, 15 different ones we haven't started, 10 different ones we started but I am not sure who is working on it. Which one do you want to know about? I'm not counting the 20 or so unfinished stuff from people who left the company that we haven't gotten rid of or the 20 others that are still under review with legal. Ask Marketing which one we should work on."
PM Goes to Marketing: "What do the people want?"
Marketing: "Which industry? Group? Cost Point? Location? Product type? etc... Ask Finance how big a release we are talking about."
PM Goes to Finance: "What can we afford?"
Finance: "Um... It depends--what are we making? Ask Sci/Eng what they have and I can tell you how much it costs."
This then goes round and round for months or years for each product. Academic comments like "identifying a need in the market and its spread" is kind of useless since no matter what the need--you are still stuck with the products your sci/eng team are payed to research, develop, and finish. If you find out the public wants red cars, but your science team had spent the last 2 years developing a blue plane--then you are going to sell blue fucking planes because that's what you have. If you want to have a selection of products to offer then you're going to have to expand your development team wide enough to be working on a bunch of different projects, all of them in different states of completion, all of them sucking the budget from all your other teams. The wider your breadth of capabilities, the more resources your marketing team needs to be able to survey, scan, and communicate with to the various customer groups.
And then you realize you're in a start up--there's only 4 engineers, 1 marketing guy, and the finance and product guy are both you. You only have 1 product and you have the option to twist the truth to your customers or just go bankrupt that year.
Maybe you're in a bigger company? You have 500-600 engineers/scientists, your marketing team is global. Even tiny questions like "Do our customers like red pointy things" have about 200-300 different answers depending on region, country, social groups, and income groups. And with so many different plates spinning in the air at once the moment one customer group is happy you don't dare to change the math on them and just keep them happy while you're trying to figure out the other 199-299 other customer groups.
But it doesn't actually matter what scale we are talking about--because it all boils down to the same thing every single time. What do we have to sell? How many can we make? What do people want? And can we convince the people that what we have to sell is close enough to what they want?
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On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players.
I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz.
Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now.
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On December 22 2015 06:39 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players. I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz. Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now.
i think all of these would be better and Idra the least impressive of them, since he is basically overrated 
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On December 22 2015 09:14 Cele wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 06:39 L_Master wrote:On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players. I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz. Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now. i think all of these would be better and Idra the least impressive of them, since he is basically overrated
Shots fired, is there a burn unit nearby?
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On December 22 2015 09:14 Cele wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 06:39 L_Master wrote:On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players. I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz. Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now. i think all of these would be better and Idra the least impressive of them, since he is basically overrated
F91 agrees.
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On December 22 2015 09:14 Cele wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 06:39 L_Master wrote:On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players. I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz. Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now. i think all of these would be better and Idra the least impressive of them, since he is basically overrated
His stats in foreign scene were exceptionally good, and he played at solid B-team level, better at times. I'm sure guys at that level of say an Ample or Larva, or whoever that were B teamers easily would win against guys like Sziky and Trutacz. Same applies to IdrA, as he played at that level. His absolute skill was much higher than any other foreigner.
I would not call IdrA overrated, but it would be fair to call him two-faced. The thing that hurt IdrA was that his mindset wasn't there in certain situations. He was vastly more skilled than anyone else when he was focused/chilled, but as soon as you got him out of rhythm or on tilt he would make mistakes and play well below the level of his standard play.
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On December 22 2015 13:29 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 09:14 Cele wrote:On December 22 2015 06:39 L_Master wrote:On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players. I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz. Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now. i think all of these would be better and Idra the least impressive of them, since he is basically overrated His stats in foreign scene were exceptionally good, and he played at solid B-team level, better at times. I'm sure guys at that level of say an Ample or Larva, or whoever that were B teamers easily would win against guys like Sziky and Trutacz. Same applies to IdrA, as he played at that level. His absolute skill was much higher than any other foreigner. I would not call IdrA overrated, but it would be fair to call him two-faced. The thing that hurt IdrA was that his mindset wasn't there in certain situations. He was vastly more skilled than anyone else when he was focused/chilled, but as soon as you got him out of rhythm or on tilt he would make mistakes and play well below the level of his standard play.
I was going to say "How about F91 tho" and then I read your second paragraph. I think another aspect of this is that IdrA played as a practice partner, rehearsing the most standard strategies over and over, and therefore became closed-minded to more varied strategies.
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well, i didnt see the B-teamer level in him tbh, never did. Idra was good in his time, but not an outstanding foreigner. He lack's the results and the win's against korean Pro's in regular tournaments, that many top foreigners have in their TLPD. I mean he had 1 televised match to  Trap which he lost in a very uninspiring fashion (having seen the game recently again)
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On December 22 2015 14:24 Cele wrote:well, i didnt see the B-teamer level in him tbh, never did. Idra was good in his time, but not an outstanding foreigner. He lack's the results and the win's against korean Pro's in regular tournaments, that many top foreigners have in their TLPD. I mean he had 1 televised match to Trap which he lost in a very uninspiring fashion (having seen the game recently again)
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/international/games/38613_IdrA_vs_YellOw
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/international/games/38614_IdrA_vs_YellOw
and talking about his Foreigner "career", he was 148-81 (64.63%), which is slightly better than Mondragon (115-70 (62.16%)) and much better than Nony (47-33 (58.75%)). While Mondragon beat sAviOr at a WCG, it was only in groupstage and in the end saViOr did not even beat PJ at that tournament. While I still think Mondragon was better (Germany fuck yea!), you cannot really prove it by looking at the stats.
Though, Mondragon has had 15 title wins according to his liquipedia and won 28,552.52 Dollar (http://www.esportsearnings.com/players/1269-mondragon-christoph-semke) with them. IdrA on the other hand, "only" won 11 tournaments and earned 10,218.58 Dollar with them (http://www.esportsearnings.com/players/1060-idra-greg-fields).
But only looking at 2009 and 2010 performances, I would say IdrA was definitely the most skilled player, but this is just my oppinion.
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Mondragon was one of the best foreigners to touch the game. While his tournament performance was already quiet good in the later stages of Broodwar he did play incredible games in custom but as far as skill goes I still believe if Draco would have had the right mindset he would have been our best shot.
He was truly incredible but his attitude led to him quitting.
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On December 22 2015 06:39 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players. I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz. Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now.
Pretty sure Idra,Nony,Draco(in his prime),White-Ra,Ret,F91 were better than they are now
Also Lx and PJ
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On December 22 2015 23:20 Pulimuli wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 06:39 L_Master wrote:On December 21 2015 19:03 Sero wrote:
There's no American players like that, and I can only think of Trutacz reaching B. I haven't heard of any foreigner reaching A on Fish. Overall play is better now, but not the top tier of players. I dunno, I think there might be a couple exceptions, namely IdrA, that could be better than guys like Trutacz and Sziky are today. Possible Nony /Mondragon could be at the level of Sziky/Trutacz. Everyone else from 2009 would certainly get wrecked by the top guys now. Pretty sure Idra,Nony,Draco(in his prime),White-Ra,Ret,F91 were better than they are now Also Lx and PJ
Sziky was already one of the better players in 2009 even tho he wasnt super well known, i doubt he'd lose to the 2009 versions of Nony and Mondi (in a bo5 or bo7 of course).
I dunno much about Trutacz but i dont think he's close to Sziky's lvl (from the games i played against him a year ago), i played Fish for ~1-2 months when i came back for the BW reunion tourney and hit C rank (albeit just barely, i had a 1-2 game cushion then dropped back down to D).. if the top players came back and started practicing seriously alot of them would hit B rank quite easily, getting to A rank would obviously be a challenge tho. A rank on fish is like A+ lvl on iccup, B rank is high A-/A rank lvl (and im talking about 2009/2010 iccup rankings, if you were to play vs koreans mostly).
edit: and yes Draco was by far the most talented foreigner (excluding the early progamers like Elky and Grrrr...) in BW, guys like Mondi/Sen/Nony/Ret had a good mix of commitment and talent (i mean Ret would retire alot and come back but when did practice he went all out, he was one of the more talented foreigners aswell). IdrA wasnt super talented but he had the most dedication out of everyone, all in all he was the highest skilled foreign BW player because of his training in korea.
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edit2: i have no fucking idea what i just did
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+ Show Spoiler +On December 22 2015 02:53 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2015 02:28 iloveav wrote:On December 22 2015 02:20 Naracs_Duc wrote:On December 22 2015 01:20 Miragee wrote:On December 21 2015 13:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 20 2015 06:56 B-royal wrote:
Really? I think it's just a matter of listening to the wrong people then. There's been plenty of EXCELLENT advice regarding Sc2 such as Lalush' depth of micro or some of the economy analysis threads.. Let me put it this way. 80% of your paying customers asks for item A 10% asks for item B 5% asks for item C 30 random guys in a Broodwar website asks for item D Lalush asks for item E Which one would the CEO listen to? If you want to go by that logic why aren't companies asking the consumers exactly how the game should look like? Because there are certainly more consumers than there are programmers/CEOs/designers that have a different opinion on what it's best for the game. Sounds like what's best for the game always depends on what the majority of people thinks is best and not what people with superior knowledge think is best. If you ask me, he should probably listen to that one person, assuming what he says makes sense. The large majority that cries for something else without deeper understanding what is really wrong will later on realise that they got what the wanted in a better way. That being said, this depends of what they try to implement. If they want to implement new skins to sell for $$$ the CEO should surely listen to the majority. Here's how the Product cycle works in broad strokes. The PM goes to R&D and sees what they have The PM goes to Marketing and sees what is popular The PM goes to finance and sees what is affordable A concept is birthed from those stats. That concept is then tested both internally and externally--changes get made based on both internal and external testing. Product gets sent to Design to look pretty, gets sent back to Product to be given a name, brand, etc.. Product is released. THEN Customer Suggestions gets put into play. EXAMPLE: Engineer: "I have sharp pointy thing" Marketing: "People like stabbing things with pointy things" Finance: "We can make only this many pointy things" Test: "We stabbed many things with pointy thing, pointy thing did not break" Design: "Here's the pointy thing in red" Company: "Here's our Red Pointy Thing!" Customer Opinions: "Can we have the pointy thing in blue?" Expert Opinion: "I wish it had a handle..." Company: "New Blue Pointy Thing!" Not really: the life cycle of a product is far longer and in most cases it has many diverging paths. I studied marketing and markets for 3 months and I could probably write around 4-5 pages about a products life cycle (but who wants to do that much work, right?) and im quite sure that those who studied for years can do even a better job. In reality, the hardest part of any product is to identify a need in the market and its spread. You don't seem to understand what you're studying then. As each of those steps I'm talking about takes years. PM asks Engineering/Science: "What do you have?" Sci/Eng: "Um... we got about 6 different almost finished, 4 different failures, 15 different ones we haven't started, 10 different ones we started but I am not sure who is working on it. Which one do you want to know about? I'm not counting the 20 or so unfinished stuff from people who left the company that we haven't gotten rid of or the 20 others that are still under review with legal. Ask Marketing which one we should work on." PM Goes to Marketing: "What do the people want?" Marketing: "Which industry? Group? Cost Point? Location? Product type? etc... Ask Finance how big a release we are talking about." PM Goes to Finance: "What can we afford?" Finance: "Um... It depends--what are we making? Ask Sci/Eng what they have and I can tell you how much it costs." This then goes round and round for months or years for each product. Academic comments like "identifying a need in the market and its spread" is kind of useless since no matter what the need--you are still stuck with the products your sci/eng team are payed to research, develop, and finish. If you find out the public wants red cars, but your science team had spent the last 2 years developing a blue plane--then you are going to sell blue fucking planes because that's what you have. If you want to have a selection of products to offer then you're going to have to expand your development team wide enough to be working on a bunch of different projects, all of them in different states of completion, all of them sucking the budget from all your other teams. The wider your breadth of capabilities, the more resources your marketing team needs to be able to survey, scan, and communicate with to the various customer groups. And then you realize you're in a start up--there's only 4 engineers, 1 marketing guy, and the finance and product guy are both you. You only have 1 product and you have the option to twist the truth to your customers or just go bankrupt that year. Maybe you're in a bigger company? You have 500-600 engineers/scientists, your marketing team is global. Even tiny questions like "Do our customers like red pointy things" have about 200-300 different answers depending on region, country, social groups, and income groups. And with so many different plates spinning in the air at once the moment one customer group is happy you don't dare to change the math on them and just keep them happy while you're trying to figure out the other 199-299 other customer groups. But it doesn't actually matter what scale we are talking about--because it all boils down to the same thing every single time. What do we have to sell? How many can we make? What do people want? And can we convince the people that what we have to sell is close enough to what they want?
Honestly, if this was 6 months ago then I might've forgotten this post immediately after reading it. BUT, after dealing with all different kinds of this particular variant of shit (in the middle of a medium-sized company that designs and builds specialized servers), this has somehow become absolutely hilarious to me. Particularly this gem that HAS to have come from personal experience:
On December whatever, Naracs_Duc wrote:If you find out the public wants red cars, but your science team had spent the last 2 years developing a blue plane--then you are going to sell blue fucking planes because that's what you have.
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EPT
