Space Aliens Are Among Us, Your Product Roadmap is Realistic and Other Lies You Believe
Johnny Austin
@recursivefunk
LeadingEng West Coast Oct 2023
About Me
It's me, Johnny 👋🏾
Some Experience
- 17 Years of product and tech experience (10 in leadership)
- Sr. Director, Product @ Best Egg
- Former CTO @ Till
- Former Director of Engineering @ Mapbox
- Two acquisition exits
- Built products and services that have reached millions of end users
- Managed globally distributed teams across 5 timezones
- Non-profit boards/for-profit board of advisors
- Someone once paid me money for a jQuery plugin
Quick Disclaimer
Yes, you're the exception. But...
Types of Lies
The Bold Faced Lie
The Betrayal
The Delusion
"People don't know what they want until you show it to them."
- Steve Jobs
Assume you're not Steve Jobs.
What Happened?
(Some of) The Lies
Bold faced lie, betrayal or delusion?
I can hit my headcount target for next quarter.
Higher HC != Increase in productivity
We need to build to cover all possible use-cases.
Be forward looking, not future-proofing.
We need to refactor.
Quantify the impact.
We'll pay down that tech debt later.
lol.
If we focus on growth today, we'll find a way to get to profitability later.
ZIRP thinking is so over.
No one will pay for this.
They'll pay for value.
Streaming Prices
Why do we tell these lies?
We're not going to stop.
Thanks!
@recursivefunk
👽✌🏾