Interview with Dying Company's Product Manager

[@kailentit]

last product manager vid i Promise()... then they gonna be out of job

[@ahvideplaneet]

We should have a meeting about this.

[@wherami]

@@ahvideplaneetfirst let's have a meeting to pre meeting

[@iusevimbtw]

(node:4796) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection (rejection id: 1): Error: spawn cmd ENOENT[1] (node:4796) DeprecationWarning:Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated. In the future, promise rejections that are not handled will terminate the Node.js process with a non-zero exit code.

[@LuxFerre4242]

@@kailentit .then() ?

[@youaremadeofstarstuff]

buildspace office?

[@Mr.SnakySnake]

“Our business model is your forgotten subscription fee”

[@feritperliare2890]

"I didn't forget your link is literally broken this is illegal" -someone who couldn't reopen a ticket

[@Mr.SnakySnake]

@@feritperliare2890 “thank you for your 5 star rating”

[@MazonDel]

Not gonna lie, I welcome my debit card expiring because all the emails about failed subscriptions gives me a better opportunity to figure out which ones I care about. :D

[@botanich]

​@@feritperliare2890That's why I specifically have a card with 0 money and credit limit. My heart becomes happy from all "not enough money bank notifications".

[@leobardostephenlincolnstrangez]

@@MazonDel This happened to me 1 week ago and im super happy

[@ximon-x]

"Leave them confused. Increases time spent on the app" way too accurate

[@TheUMESH34]

Literally what google did woth search lol

[@michaelallen185]

Every time reddit makes a change

[@75hilmar]

I already wondered if this could be like a real thing

[@Hylive]

*squishes stress ball*

[@blind_studios_jp]

"when they want to unsubscribe, they have to login again" - absolute classic

[@bobbyologun1517]

lol

[@send_love]

hide the login window, straight up replace it with a register now for 80% off (the first year, only for new customers)

[@gebruderschwarzwald7931]

this is so sad

[@pegcity4eva]

So facebook

[@bobbyologun1517]

@@pegcity4eva i read broken code by jeff horwitz and yes facebook

[@Marfig]

Thank you all for coming. There was a lot of great feedback. Let's discuss this in more in more detail on the next meeting.

[@WM-gr4qi]

... You're not allowed to just say that, man, you have to put a trigger warning on that $#!@

[@BroliciousG2]

​@@WM-gr4qiwomp womp

[@errrzarrr]

How many story points is that¿

[@Rengah]

🤣🤣🤣 The PTSD is real.

[@simonschneider5913]

@@Rengah this actually reminds me of some very dark academic studies on human behaviour.

[@TheFrenchGroup]

"technically it should be impossible, we made it possible.. we have a great legal team" BAHAHAHA

[@75hilmar]

"Business is a jungle, and we're a stable rock. People see us and say: 'nothing will ever change'." _visionary hand gesture_

[@smort123]

"Deadass. War stays the same. On god."

[@RayAndrewsDev]

I lost it at "nothing will ever change"

[@75hilmar]

Hey people, so nice to see all the confirmation! I thought this lots of times with any sorts of incompetent office: "They must be doing this on purpose, right?" Maybe reality is sometimes not that far off.

[@JRay2113]

Ngl, this is actually the best product manager you’ve done. He has a purpose and executes. A real bias to action.

[@eriwatdouangmala4771]

And one of the few product managers who'd actually get along with lmao

[@rohit_banga]

Are you an amazonian ?? ( Apologies if not, Bias to action is an amazon leadership principle and it is mandatory for every amazonian to slip in a leadership principle in every conversation they do)

[@junesuprise]

@@rohit_bangaAmazonian? I beg you don’t spread this cheap marketing slang

[@bluegum6438]

@@rohit_banga holy moley just reading that sentence made me want to do something drastic, god help us all

[@burgundian-peanuts]

@@rohit_banga "Bias to action" has spread beyond Amazon to infect the rest of the industry.

[@Arkreiner]

I can't believe he finally made a video about Adobe

[@chpsilva]

Oracle, actually. Forgot the part about their legal department ?

[@outlaw1148]

@@chpsilva stock chart in the background is PayPal I believe

[@Ishsa]

The stock is PayPal but this could be a lot of companies

[@MineLynn]

😂😂

[@ciarasweeney]

IBM represent

[@slipperynickels]

this is exactly how every dying software company i’ve worked for actually worked: endless meetings about output, no time left for output.

[@traveller23e]

Mine was recently bought and is now just the software division if you will, but it's pretty clear we're headed that way. A particular favorite of mine among recurring themes is the lack of documentation regarding anything (including basic and common procedures) in a business context that provides devops. It's hard to configure a customer's installation if you have no f'ing clue how and the only people who do know are busy fixing the urgent issues at another customer because the higher-ups insist on biting off more than we can chew.

[@chadwells7562]

@@traveller23eStuff being documented is always the exception.

[@kosta5980]

@@traveller23ebro we may we working in the same company holy shit

[@virtualtransientvagrant]

At a startup I worked at, we added a weekly meeting to touch base on general feelings on the number of meetings we were having each week, which meetings we weren't having but should be having, and which meetings we should stop. An hour a week. That was just another red flag that things were going downhill. Another fun red flag was when our project manager tried to 'overthrow' the Director to take power for herself, but the coup failed and instead we ended up with 2 co-directors.

[@chameleonedm]

@@virtualtransientvagrant How in the world did that start up go so bad you reverted back to feudalism? I'm dying lmao

[@Ishkur23]

"Make the link to open a ticket broken" I wish this was satire.

[@snowyy.5275]

When our IT department shut down the slack channel and made it so that only some people can submit a ticket. Yes, less tickets was their primary KPI

[@najtofnin2009]

@@snowyy.5275 the term "KPI" makes me angry in a primordial way.

[@AlexbongoKurban]

Our customer's hapinness is always our lowest priority xDDDDD on point

[@clray123]

Of course, like priority number 1 (1 being lower than 10).

[@HannahGrayce-cf3bv]

Or take months to reopen a ticket is more like it.

[@bluegamer4210]

What matters is profit under this system

[@bee-Il]

"Oh, I can't tell you what company it is." Because it's at least half of them

[@dmitriyrasskazov8858]

Another half still does not suspect they are dying one

[@WM-gr4qi]

If that's a real stock in the background we can find out... Paypal Holdings, Inc.

[@Dalelfa]

Last frame video zooms out and pans to right showing Paypal's blue logo :D

[@VRchitecture]

It was written under his name at the beginning)

[@letsburn00]

​@@VRchitectureThat is an absolute brilliant callback about 70% of the way through where you only get critical information at the start.

[@contaminantbean]

Make sure they cannot reopen a ticket NEVER REOPEN A TICKET

[@sageinit]

IMPLEMENT A GITHUB BOT THAT CLOSES STALE ISSUES AUTOMATICALLY. THEN FORGET TO ADD AN OVERRIDE TAG. THEN MAKE MANAGEMENT OF THE OVERRIDE TAG ARBITRARY VIA UNDERSTAFFING *AND* RANDOM MANAGEMENT FEELINGS. ADD VOICE CONTROLLED MENUS. IMPLEMENT THE BOFH PHONE MENU LOOP BEHIND IT.

[@jonnoMoto]

Just create a new one and link it

[@josef5319]

Well I know its for fun and all but in real life, this is super important to keep things organized. I work in a international company and our helpdesk has hundreds of tickets a day. If we let customers reoopen the same ticket with some other different bullshit questions, it all goes to chaos. so once a ticket/issue is solved, it cannot be reopen for organization purposes.

[@josef5319]

but yea it is super frustrating to them it has been mentioned more than once

[@attila2246]

Ah, this is how my support team works. Servicenow is the worst.

[@andrewgus8763]

“Leave them confused, increase their time spending on the app” I worked at a sinking ship that leeched off a stretched stakeholder funding. This is so true.

[@enermaxstephens1051]

The stakeholder didn't mind being drained and supporting a bunch of lazy moochers?

[@LKRaider]

@@enermaxstephens1051nowhere in the contract it says stakeholder meetings need to reflect reality

[@kalaiselvanra]

Product manager is incomplete nowadays without asking the team to integrate AI to only bin it months later

[@errrzarrr]

And his dozen of Scrum certificates

[@93hothead]

Product manager thinking “AI” is like some magic API that will learn by itself lol

[@Spencer-wc6ew]

Add a checkbox that remembers its value. Your program now makes decisions based on info it has learned about that specific customer. That technically counts as AI.

[@cabnbeeschurgr]

"Uh sir this is a steel depot" "Idc put ai in it"

[@asmosisyup2557]

Implement AI to "help" the people by increasing their workload for the same output, but then fire half the team anyway and wonder why its not working.

[@styssine]

How in a single lifetime can a person gather all experience this guy has

[@medical-informatics]

I think 2 real jobs and 3-4 intern/working student jobs and a few summer jobs should be enough to get all this. Because it is the same everywhere.

[@zesky6654]

It took 1 year for me. These zombie companies are a lot more common than you think.

[@ds_7]

Is being afraid to share this with your company’s slack for fear that they might think it’s a reference to your company a bad sign?

[@vash47]

lmao I'm in the same boat. they laid off 1/3 of our company last year and they've announced a "reorg" for nex month

[@JanDahl]

​@@vash47I've an unemployment insurance that pays out for up to 12 months if I ever get between jobs. Expensive but totally worth it.

[@djsmeguk]

Yes

[@elongated_muskrat_is_my_name]

depends whether or not you're ready to jump ship

[@true_xander]

That probably indicates you're in a wrong company.

[@smallbluemachine]

“Keep silent, keep compliant”, Im adding that as a KPI, thanks pal!

[@sbp4215]

1:34 The seagulls circle and scream as they sense the ship is set to sink...

[@AZ-bf2yc]

Talking about the inevitable death of the company is the most productive the employees have been in a decade.

[@dwebb_506]

"When they want to unsubscribe, they have to log in again." Ok, that's just pure evil.

[@Jabberwockybird]

And you can't log in unless you have multifactor authentication enabled.

[@jojoanggono3229]

I like this guy, he has strong and all encompassing concept. Let's propose him for a promotion, let's say Director of Operation. When everything goes south then he is our scapegoat.

[@AlexKarasev]

You don't promote. Because if you promote him you now have to find someone to fill their spot. If you continue with this "promotion" nonsense further down the chain, that's multiple people that now are in new roles. Simultaneously. Are you underwriting the costs and risks inherent in that? If someone is qualified for a promotion and the right opportunity comes along, hire someone under-qualified into that role, and have this guy fill the shortfall while staying in his current job. With any luck, he'll learn his lesson. lol

[@rahul9704]

​@@AlexKarasev Damn.

[@jackofsometradesmasterofnone]

I had a suspicion that this guy was the manager of Curve Card, as soon as he said the likes of "our goal is to have such an awful customer service that the customer knows not to contact them a second time" I felt I was 100% correct.

[@logsnroll]

Too much wisdom from a PM!

[@AlexKarasev]

Our boy is going places!

[@RobUttley]

'strong British accent' - shots fired!

[@AJSTITAN14]

It's not you! It's us!

[@kwastek]

He was afraid to say what he really meant: strong Indian accent.

[@MMadjansen]

The UK is the only country in the world where I haven’t been able to understand people’s English, so this checks out.

[@AustrianEconomist]

@@MMadjansen You've clearly never been to jamaica lmao

[@MMadjansen]

True enough. :)

[@nicejungle]

Wait, I thought he was talking about my company 🤣 Very accurate, specially the change of logo

[@burlak3182]

Mavenir?

[@thespam8385]

He’s actually the best PM I’ve ever seen, at least he’s contributing ideas

[@bleughbloop8569]

The higher ups in any company have _zero_ trouble contributing ideas...ideas grounded in reality are a different matter

[@mccafferyfamily]

I used to work there, that was 8 yrs ago. They're still alive. I don't know how but they are.

[@sdsappsandgames6262]

Bro spill the beans... Drop the company name bro!

[@WHAT_1400]

@@sdsappsandgames6262 i will do that later via an anonymous Glassdoor review which will read like a salty blog post even though everything in it is probably true

[@kawaiimunism]

​@@sdsappsandgames6262very end of video, frame right

[@GeneralChangFromDanang]

He can't. He was re-hired with an NDA.

[@mccafferyfamily]

@@GeneralChangFromDanang you know how it works

[@wesha3953]

the rehiring part is wild

[@simonschneider5913]

ive seen that IRL!

[@nebufabu]

I've been that guy IRL... Getting rehired was the worst mistake I ever made.

[@simonschneider5913]

@@nebufabu got shit from all sides then?

[@sasagrcevic475]

@@nebufabu whats the story? did you at least ask for more money?

[@nebufabu]

@@sasagrcevic475 I did, quite a bit, but let's just say there was a reason they couldn't find anyone else and agreed to that raise... 3 more years of maintaining a website designed in the 90s by a desktop apps guy (and the company's then-current CTO, so of course, his design was just fine) and when we finally migrated it to then-modern frameworks, guess what happened...

[@arturweber7493]

Lmao "Oh, I can't tell you what company it is" while the camera pans out to show the Paypal logo in the right corner is genius.

[@Drackmord92]

Omg I didn't notice until I read this comment, thanks!

[@StarlightInsights_com]

It is the PayPal Holdings Inc stock on the screen 😂

[@Masahane]

I really wish he'd included it visibly going down in real time

[@gergelymarton]

Nice catch! For me, the video had a PayPal vibe anyway. I tried to get through the customer service labyrinth for weeks once, but it was impregnable.

[@StarlightInsights_com]

@@gergelymarton yea 😆 it was the first stock I searched for

[@chrisd1746]

I was already laughing before then, but that was the gag that made me finally subscribe to the channel. Absolute gold

[@kozas0]

At 3:48? Yes, but look back at 3:00 also, where you can see the whole wall; there's nothing there. I think they intentionally put that up at the end, right after "oh I can't tell you what company it is"

[@onenationunderdog5289]

I don't even work for a tech company and a lot of this satire hits. "Keep silent, keep compliant" has actually been my survival mantra to keep me sane till bonuses in March. I just remind myself that I've had far worse jobs, and that I'm so close to having student loans paid... Great content as always!

[@shawndeggans]

I worked there. Was fired. Brought back. Fired again. Great place!

[@BetterBohdan]

Last second company revelation is priceless

[@aHedgerowFrog]

did not notice. cheeky.

[@randylevy]

I rated this video a 5 (it was the only option available)

[@PplsChampion]

i used to work here i wonder if they still have the problem with the 2FA locking everyone out of JIRA so we can't figure out what to post in our slack scrum meeting about getting the CI working with Jenkins. it's very imporant to establish a working process first and foremost before considering a customer need, that's how we knew we were legit. the problem was we couldnt file the 2FA problem as a problem without filing a ticket in JIRA, otherwise we gonna start eating up story points. our product was organic cat food.

[@ThatGuyFromMA]

Do people still use Jenkins?

[@megamastah]

@@ThatGuyFromMA what else for embedded?

[@dekumarademosater2762]

do organic cats make good food?

[@ThatGuyFromMA]

​@@megamastahGitHub action custom runner?

[@megamastah]

@@ThatGuyFromMA well, the repositories are not hosted on GitHub.

[@haleyk10198]

i had a colleague that worked in so many failing finance institutions. most of them actually had business irrelevant stuff as their home page banner, like sustainability / pride ( i am saying business irrelevant, not good / bad ). the only one that he worked in & got out of the crisis was actually the one that putted their dipping stock prices as the banner.

[@jeffyboyreloaded]

"we're a debit system so it shouldn't be possible, but we made it possible....we have a great legal team" 😂😂😂

[@STOCKSINTHEWILD]

lol, the stock price of PayPal in the background kinda hits the vibe of the vid

[@pawelparadysz]

i was wondering what company that was

[@Curratum]

I work an IT-adjacent job in the same general sector and this is still extremely accurate. Down to every little joke.

[@briandecker8403]

This hits harder than you can possibly imagine - 100% on point.

[@LuxFerre4242]

Bro designed the customer service for Evri.

[@yakunats]

My goodness I can't stand that company!

[@Croz89]

​@@yakunats In a couple of years they'll rebrand to something else, like they did with Hermes.

[@Rapscallion2009]

2:30 thats actually out-of-date. The UK had a lot of call centres 20 years ago because the then government issued "regional development grants" to deprived areas. Often those areas were in places with strong regional accents which can be initially hard to follow if you're not used to them. The RDGs were ended a long time ago and the jobs moved overseas once they were no longer subsidised.

[@uncreativename9936]

He didn't want to be accused of racism by saying Indian.

[@itscryonim]

@@uncreativename9936 very clever

[@XDarkGreyX]

​@@itscryonim based on my time on YT, it's quite easy to find Indians who enjoy shitting on their own people

Love the part where he says the customer identification number is not tied to anything and when you are finally out the labyrinth you end up talking to someone without any knowledge of the product, bad microfone and horrible connection 😅

[@contaminantbean]

And don't forget the strong British accent 😄

[@aliannarodriguez1581]

It gets really scary when bank fraud departments start doing this.

[@rtorrijoable]

Don’t forget that he inmediately assumes “our most incompetent employee”…is a “she”!!!

[@pacoestevez8780]

The stock chart at 0:15 lol

[@thebearded4427]

God damnit this isn't a parody, it's a freaking documentary!

[@alexevans1183]

@3:14 "When they want to unsubscribe, they have to log in again." Damn you. Damn you to hell.

[@hasangilmanov5350]

"You must relogin to unsubscribe", ohhh no, pleace

[@AntonVattay]

The funny thing is American Health Insurance companies aren’t dying but this is exactly how I imagine their project managers.

[@StasKubrak]

Sounds like Deutsche Bank 😂 speaking from 10 years experience

[@syrykh]

Could be 😂

[@ritterkeks]

Hiding the company name in clear sight…. I waited till the end to confirm my suspicions

[@FunctionGermany]

which company? sorry, i'm not the brightest.

[@pernydev6844]

@@FunctionGermany Debit system, bad customer service, (name in the background), it's PayPal.

[@GSBarlev]

​@@pernydev6844Oh wow, yeah. If you pull up the all-time view, that's Paypal's stock ticker (and the number on the screen is their price as of whenever this was filmed).

[@RobertBlair]

I will post this in slack, see how many folks agree. The stock graph checks out.

[@monad_tcp]

@@pernydev6844 I though paypal was just for money laundering

[@Marfig]

At our company we believe in celebrating failure.

[@BlunderMunchkin]

Sounds like a Musk company.

[@nevoteb]

bro, the way he looks dead inside 💀💀

[@1axxs684]

This hits so close to home. I work at a dying retailer doing IT work and our office is just the pits. The fire someone and rehire them has happened a half dozen times in the past couple years. We're all dead inside. Great acting too!

[@knoppix87710]

this is... scary similar to my real life.

[@wiskasIO]

I'm proud I sunk a whole company before 30 and then again before 40, the future? Possibilities are endless! 🙌🏼

[@CovvaLomusan]

This is the best Black Mirror episode I’ve ever seen

[@ShelleyBeans]

Don't forget the meeting where you discuss what you should talk about in the next meeting.

[@TheVoltDolt]

The delivery on "we have a great legal team" kills me

[@jimbobur]

This is what corporate IT is like. If they were a company on their own, they would be a dying one.

[@Mrunibro]

The second half of the video started to feel a lot like a Microsoft description...

[@GSBarlev]

Microsol, more than any other company except maybe Google, gives the public perception of being less of a single company and more of a collection of autonomous units, fighting each other for resources. Think about how they can tease a new Xbox one week, then the next announce that Game Pass would treat consoles as second-class users. Or how Windows 11 tries desperately to increase adoption... while at the same time unnecessarily upping system requirements and shoving more ads into the taskbar.

[@krisssachintha]

first time watching this video, subscribed to keep delay the sinking ship :p

[@gkail6980]

"Oh, I can't tell you what company it is" Oh, I know several companies in this exact predicament right now

[@einarwow]

Sounds like he's describing Vodafone.

[@alternbg]

Oooh so nice! You guys made a Broadcom/VMware video !

[@donatj]

The number of times I have had a company close a ticket that was not at all resolved with no option to reopen it! I once had a customer service person ask me a question, I didn't get to it within two hours because I was on the road, and they closed my ticket for not responding.

[@lemillion8394]

Keep silent, keep compliant - words to live by

[@bobbyologun1517]

"customers are super annoyed....GOOD" :D :D :D

[@iamzwn]

Jan D. is my product manager. Love the content thank you guys for making me laugh.

[@MrRocksW]

Savage - I'm very tempted to send this to my PM

[@rupertsmith6097]

"When they unsubscribe, make them log in again!". Lol. This is like Kitchen Confidential but for IT.

[@JohnVance]

You can't tell me what company it is because it is every company. All the companies. All of them.

[@RillianGrant]

All companies have a couple of bad elements. It's when they come together that it crumbles

[@rujn]

I absolutely love your content. The duality of parity and truth makes me laugh, smile, and reminds me to be honest with myself.

[@xToxicNinjax]

Reminds me i have to call a company today so they can write a ticket for me so i can wait 2 hours for someone to look at it and schedule a call for me next week

[@flatujalok]

LOL this is bang on

[@sploders1019]

"Oh, I can't tell you what company it is." Because it's ALL OF THEM!

[@swagatpatra2139]

genius idea with the moving 5 star rating button and all other broken links.

[@Saufs0ldat]

A product manager's worst nightmare: "It's perfect"

[@redkeyspoke]

Atlassian, is that you?

[@send_love]

hide the login window, straight up replace it with a register now for 80% off (the first year, only for new customers)

[@easternpalace]

That teeny tiny pan over to the beginning of a logo on the line "Oh I can't tell you what company it is." Genius

[@rwp005]

When I watch your videos my satisfaction += 1 and my self loathing -= 1

[@clawoo]

The way he's trying to overhear what his colleagues are discussing in the beginning and that specific look: that's the "is it finally happening?" look 😅

[@riccardo549]

"make the link to re-open a ticket broken" too real

[@jcy089]

This is literally AWS whenever I try to get any information regarding any usage / cost breakdown. Now it's whatever AWS decides to charge per month and not actually our real usage 😂

[@Libellisth]

This really about Asana

[@burrrrrrrrrrrrrrp]

The person who does the least and gets paid the most… wins

[@oncecleverly]

Paypal customer service never fails to disappoint 3:47

[@Zel-kr3qj]

The Google page actually shows the stock of PYPL

[@Manx123]

A subtle detail you should have added was the share price in the background, (which I see is of PayPal's), gradually decreasing in jump cuts as the interview went on.

[@rrraewr]

This is eerily similar to any gov infra software project I've had the displeasure working on, they are dying before it even started and act it all the way through until it finally dies because pms don't understand the word "refactor" lmao

[@flatujalok]

make the link to reopen a ticket broke! hahahahaha our IT staff actually did this!

[@DogeMultiverse]

to retrieve your forgotten password, you have to log in first.

[@mrmaxin53]

Damn why is this so on point

[@jonocodes]

This is gold.

[@remsee1608]

This was the guy responsible for the Crowdstrike fiasco

[@GSBarlev]

A lot of these were near-direct quotes from a recent Adobe leak.

[@requiemforameme1]

A world where Adobe has kernel permissions and can push realtime prod updates is a nightmare hellscape I’d rather not imagine.

[@floflo1645]

​@@GSBarlevi can't find it. Do you have an article to share on it?

[@GSBarlev]

@@floflo1645 Can't share links in comments. The headliner was an Adobe high-up comparing their early termination fees to "heroin."

[@random240dc]

"Keep quiet, keep compliant" 💀💀💀

[@kevinjain]

This video was really good, can feel the pain in his words

[@AiSaac-q8k]

This guy is experienced in all sectors of the tech industry 😂

[@ulasfiliz759]

It genuinely looks like a video from The Office