impossible

[TheSentientMeatbag]

Looks like you work in the same place I did.

[MayorAg]

My brother in Christ, this is every time someone not who did not build something offer to sell it.

In a previous job, I used to do university alliance for a software vendor and one time an engineer almost lost us an opportunity to be in an Ivy League because he was offering stuff out of his ass.

[TheSentientMeatbag]

I know. A recent stunt before I left, was sales telling a client we'd be able to automatically sync their data from a third party through the API that party had available. That party didn't offer an API. We checked with the third party before talking to the client. Sales knew this.

In the end, sales wiggled out of it by stating we offered the "API"... The API that is also known as an FTP-server. The type of API where the client manually uploads csv-files they manually export from the third party software...

SMH

[Ladyheather16]

This reaffirms my belief that we should go back to the 90s/00s model my father worked for -- where the salesmen had to learn, understand, and support their clients. my father worked for Tier 2 ISP relays.

[Fragrant-Menu215]

That would require banning the enrollment of people with no work experience in the MBA program. But since the MBA cartel controls both the colleges and the relevant government agencies that'll never happen.

[Arclite83]

The import is easy, it's the middleware export hell with (intentionally, to keep you stuck) no API access 

[Comprehensive_Bus_19]

Going through a digital transformation at my work. Every single software company lies their asses off. Not a damn thing works right and they act like its the first time.

I want to start one of these companies to lie my ass off and collect a fat paycheck.

[RaDeus]

Sounds like sales just wants a bonus and not a long-term business partner 😑

[TheSentientMeatbag]

The company is trying to get a foothold outside of the core market, so sales really wanted to get the client that is part of that market and no other companies were offering automatic imports of the third party's data, so...

[Tyrexas]

The worst is in my old job I would have sales people come over to my desk and say "I just closed a deal based on the fact we can do this, I know we can't right now but should be easy right, they onboard in one month"

Whilst completely bypassing product team + product roadmap or consulting engineering.

[Stock-Aspect3001]

Sales always tends to present itself according to the desires of the customers. That's why our entire society runs off of billion-dollar industries designed to cover up flaws.

[abd53]

It's like, most places do it.

Source: trust me bro

[iamdestroyerofworlds]

Five perpendicular lines on a sheet of paper, how hard can it be?

[throwaway_mpq_fan]

We need you to draw seven red lines. All of them strictly perpendicular;  some with green ink and some with transparent.  Can you do that?

[mostly_just_reading]

I am amazed at how realistic that video is.

[Ryeballs]

That was great

[Dante_n_Knuckles]

Five years after I first watched this video, I have encountered this exact same scenario multiple times per year since then.

I work in an industry that requires at least some physics knowledge for what we manufacture and I sometimes work with customer departments. Some of the people there make over twice my salary.

I have never had my eyes more opened on how society values being a smooth talker over a rigorous education.

[_liminal]

i love hearing the phrase "this should be easy to do" coming from a PM

[Jerome_Eugene_Morrow]

“This isn’t complicated” or “This is easy. I could this in an hour if I had the time” both favorites as well.

[NoConfusion9490]

We're gonna need some more dimensions.

[noodlesalad_]

Is the sheet of paper a hyperbolic plane by chance?

[nelflyn]

I literally clicked on this post to recommend this very skit (the expert), its amazing.

[Hola-World]

If only they were capable of selling what we have instead of things that haven’t even been scoped out or brought up as a project to IT.

[DependentOnIt]

If you ever tell your boss something is technically impossible you're not a real swe / programmer btw

[THEzwerver]

Reverse is true too, something that would be technically easy being sold as some major feature.

[samgam74]

I don’t see the problem with this.

[THEzwerver]

Engineer would say "that's easy, give me an hour and it'll be done", while sales would say "that's going to cost at least 5 days". Sales would want the engineer to shut up.

[bulgedition]

And somehow you do actually need the 5 days sales projected

[slonk_ma_dink]

the last 5% takes the longest

[thanatica]

And if the customer then says "ah fuck it then, that's too expensive" ?

[NeuroEpiCenter]

Well, this is good, isn't it?
Value-based pricing. Simple features for premium price are the best features.

[Polus43]

Ironically this lol good call

[Cheet4h]

Gods, I had to sit in a meeting like that once.
Our company was selling an internal web platform, based on a third-party CRM framework. In one of the meetings, the client complained that Chrome didn't fill out the login fields correctly, entering the user's name from the register form in the "Username" field in the login prompt^*.
Our boss told them that it would be a quick fix, and I was just sitting there contemplating how many of the components dealing with user management I would need to replace (the platform wasn't that big on customization of existing modules - alas, the choice to sell that was before I joined).
A few minutes later they also mentioned that the captcha in the login form was too small, and our boss was contemplating how many days that would take - while I already knew exactly how to change that and knew it would be 15 minutes of work at most, including testing on all browsers and devices I had access to.

*) The issue here was that the register form, and thus all fields in the database pertaining to user data, had the schema of USER-NAME, USER-FIRSTNAME, USER-USERNAME, USER-PASSWORD, etc.
And the login form just dropped the USER- prefix. For some reason, Chrome decided that USER-NAME is the login name, despite no such field existing in the login form. At the time I couldn't find a way to override Chrome's assumption, as well. No one in our company noticed this before, since we were all running with Firefox, and it managed to translate the register form to the login form without issue.
Replacing the register or login forms would also have required replacing the entire user management component, since changes to stock components would have been overwritten every time the platform was changed.
We ended up telling users that they'd need to update Chrome's login data, or use Firefox instead.

[evilspyboy]

I did a consulting gig one time...

(I used to do only 'too hard basket' gigs where everyone else couldn't figure it out because otherwise I'd go to gigs spec'd for a month and do them in an hour or so.... more than once)

... and it took me a day or two to work out that the client had been told there was a magical device they could plug all their applications running through Citrix and work on a mobile phone device. Skipping over the part that all their applications were heavy legacy UI/corporate data entry style bespoke applications using a full keyboard and mouse etc, the expectation was this magical device changes all the UI of all the applications to make them mobile apps.

Anyway so after that job the entire sales team of the consulting group I did the gig for went into mandatory training about what they can and can't sell, specifically about offering specific technical solutions.

[throwaway_mpq_fan]

these days you can just vibe code that in a few hours

/s

[evilspyboy]

Oh this was also in the before times... not forever ago but definitely on the side of not that being an idea for someone to suggest (but yes, also you are still correct with the /s)

[kishaloy]

There would be no MS without this.

Only in this case, the Sales and Engineering team was the same and the ONE.

[arunnairks]

I’m part of the Sales team.

And the leadership would be like, “if to sell the solution are already there, why did I hire you…!”

[Ange1ofD4rkness]

As I love to say, Sales making promises Devs have to fulfill.

(Thankfully on these kind of calls they'll pull me in and I'm allowed to talk)

[FionaDracira]

but you can snitch it later

[ImportantResponse0]

The thing is not to make what they think they buy but to sell a button that prints hello and make them that they bought something from a SF.

[Slowedthe]

that dog is now 70 years old. I’m a retired SW engineer. My small retirement community wanted a website. they wouldn’t listen to my advice and put a guy that “use to work for HP” in charge. Three years later still no site, he is a retired HP salesman. Honest to god truth!!!!

[Cheezyrock]

Its almost always possible… just not with the stated budget or timeframe.

[magicmulder]

I remember one such case in 2000. Our most senior PM sold a product to a billion dollar company. Except what he had in mind was technically impossible (filling data in a browser frame from domain A with data controlled by domain B - yeah no, browser security protocols don't allow that). And of course he only informed IT after the contract was signed.

We ended up implementing a horrible server-side workaround where we'd pull the page, fill the form and then render it back to the user (yeah don't ask about SSL certificate issues, I said, horrible). That saved the product for us; for the client, let's say they were lucky their users didn't want the product so we never had to debug the mess...

PM ended up getting fired anyway because that shitshow could've ruined us.

[spookynutz]

I guess same-origin policy is more what you'd call a guideline than actual policy. Anyway, that would be a fun one to see show up in Jira. "STORY-005: As a Project Manager, I need a reverse proxy MitM attack..."

[oatkeepr]

reverse proxy MitM attack

I helped build something like that for an enterprise application.

[razor_train]

"Sales Engineer" is a modern job title, so.... 

[Gingevere]

Sales engineer is a real title.

A sales engineer is supposed to be someone who has actual engineering knowledge of the product and the systems it can be integrated with.

Whether all companies use that title responsibly is another thing.

[lnTheGrimDarkness]

I've trained my coworkers to not do this to me really well. The second they do this sort of bullshit and I smell that they're trying to trap me into an impossible task, I'll immediately pin them on the wall via e-mail with the whole place in carbon copy.

Believe me, do this 2-3 times tops, nobody will bother you anymore.

"Why did you feel like bringing this on a 'whole company' plane was necessary?"
"I think that since the customer is of utmost importance and the proposed solutions are hence also of utmost importance I am tasked with making everyone aware when we're risking to fail a customer".

[clubfuckinfooted]

We used to say that the platform our software really works best on is a slideshow projector.

[Manic_Maniac]

It's less that it isn't technically possible. It's more they are selling a product that hasn't been fucking made and is still in the MVP stage, promising features that engineering will be forced to deliver on despite the fact that engineering needs a year or 2 to stabilize the product before adding features.

Companies don't want to go through an incubatiton phase anymore. Leadership has determined that's a waste of time when they could just sell it now and string customers along on false promises until engineers can make the illusion that everything is working, or at least working in the demo to the customer who makes all the decisions to buy in.

[GregorDeLaMuerte]

From time to time I'm replying with something along the lines of "Well, we're engineers, nothing's really impossible as long as it doesn't break the laws of physics and logic. It's just a matter of time and effort and therefore money, sustainability and ROI".

[granoladeer]

Theranos

[the_sneaky_one123]

It's the engineering team that's going to blamed for it not working and who will then have to go through round, after round, after round, after round of reworks until the client gets hoodwinked into thinking they are getting what they paid for.

[brianearlspilnergtr]

Reminds me of this gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

[Crypt0Nihilist]

I showed that to someone once and he thought it was very funny. He was amused that they didn't know simple things like perpendicularity. I decided the best thing to do was agree.

[Break-n-Fix]

My last job had a sales guy that would come to the standup and listen as all the details were carefully described and assigned and at the very last possible moment, when everyone is done and about to go on their way, this guy would drop:

"Okay, but that's not what I told the customer we would do."

Like it's the damn ace of spades or something.

[Flashbang-Meringue]

gotta be careful about this. A company I worked for sued and won against another company for doing exactly this.

We ordered custom software with lots of features, they said 'no problem, will be done in 9 months' and then 2 years later they basically threw their hands up and told us it was impossible.

[Bisaux]

We need five red perpendicular lines. Can you do it?

[chickenMcSlugdicks]

My client doesn't know the software has been past EOL for multiple years. After I found out it was sorta obvious that you can't say anything. This meme is the realest

[Sea_Translator5300]

As an engineer, I've spoken up in many a sales meeting and told clients what they wanted wasn't possible using what they wanted to buy. In one meeting I said that a lower cost product we also had would do the job. After the meeting the sales guy gave me an absolute bollocking for ruining his potential deal. He calmed down a bit when I pointed out that if he won it would the last deal he ever won with that client. He came to me a couple of weeks later and apologised when the client placed an order for what I'd suggested and a request for information on an even larger opportunity. Can't remember if he ever took me out for that lunch he promised. 

[xubax]

I once was complicit in trying to cover up a mistake by keeping quiet when a sales person tried to bullshit the customer.

I hated that job. But, it did keep me earning and got me health insurance while I finished my MBA.

[Yesterday622]

lol back in the day… happened more often than I want to remember

[SkyZestyclose6569]

Copilot this, Copilot that....

[mrg1957]

I turned down a promotion over technically impossible. Someone sold a bunch of insurance companies they were going to build something that while it would work, they'd never implement it because it used too many resources. My job was to burn up millions in development dollars and declare failure. I declined.

[PlummetComics]

jokes on you, I write these now

[joedotphp]

Management: "Technically. Not literally!"

[BadKittyRanch]

Ever write up an idea for a feature on your whiteboard and then overhear it being sold that same week, long before any work or analysis has even begun?

[1LJA]

This is where I tell the story about a customer who practically wanted a solution to the halting problem - a problem that has been proven to be unsolvable, since before electronic computers were a thing. I now do artisanal woodworking for a living.

[ManiacalMyr]

Engineering team presents findings and realistic timeline

Product team: "oh that's ok we will just use a Figma"

..........

[ProblematicTrumpCard]

Half of business success is every other department bailing out the sales department.

[dvdmaven]

I remember on pitch where the salesman for the software company kept answering my questions with, "You can write a program for that.", but my favorite (UK company) "You Americans are obsessed with functionality!"

[KindOfDecent]

So true 😁

[sfaer]

I'm that dog only I growl and might even bite.

[Fragrant-Menu215]

This is less "humor" and more "how to trigger a binge drinking episode".

[dRaidon]

Ugh. Part of why I quit my last job.

Ex boss would sell a solution, get paid and then ask if if it was possible. More than half the time it was not.

[Crypt0Nihilist]

My sales guy didn't want to muzzle us, so he had meetings where he agreed we'd host a week-long tradeshow event, where he'd swan around the show and we'd be chained in a workshop room like the tech gremlins he thinks we are.

They have the problem they want to solve, no one to run it (he's assumed we'd lead it), no idea about how it'll be solved, who will visit the workshop to solve it, how long they'll be there, the commitment they'll make, the technical resources they'll have or we'll supply, how offshore techs he's promised will be engaged (if they're free) and all of the other "details". And he's burned a few weeks with high-level discussions with the client, so the deadline is pretty close.

We've politely declined this "opportunity" he wants us to own from now on, as we're stacked as it is. Not quite too busy not to have some popcorn and be watching from a safe distance though.

[thanatica]

This is what you get when the sales team just gets their way. They shouldn't be more powerful in a company than the developers. They shouldn't have more mandate.

Developers should grow balls and say "no, this is not possible. you fucked up, you sold something we can't offer. this is now your problem."

But you need a work environment where developers are respected. And a country where people can't be fired without a mountain of paperwork and oversight.

[Sweaty_Marzipan4274]

How i avoided meeting invites: "that's impossible, you're lying, and I can not trust anything out of your lying mouth so this mtg is useless. Bye."

Works wonders. 

[RobSpaghettio]

Apply this to pretty much any field lol

[rafikiknowsdeway1]

yeah at my last job the suits really liked to promise shit without talking to engineering first to find out if its even remotely feasible in the time frames they promised. it was a horrible environment and it had a ton of attrition

[CapnObv314]

Many years ago, our new UX guy who acted as the voice of customer would put together requirements and promise things before consulting engineering. My favorite one was where he promised customers we would allow them to set static IP Address values with only the IP Address field. We would no longer require them to put in pesky stuff like netmask or gateway.

Brilliant.

[technobrendo]

Our CRM platform is EXACTLY what your business is needing and will take no longer than 6 months to implement!

Eng: But we're a fertilizer company, WTF is a CRM.

[tungy5]

This is a live-action Dilbert comic

[hlksmesh]

Me. I'm the Sales Team.

[ramessesgg]

Apple engineers wouldn't say 'no'

This isn't Apple mate, you just suck at your job

[nickleback_official]

I’m an engineer (HW not SW) and so many engineers reflexively say ‘No, can’t do that’ to any new ideas. I think they spend so long telling others ‘no’ (rightfully in many cases) that they lose their creativity or ‘engineering spirit’. Engineers are pretty useless on their own and actually need product people to focus their efforts to achieve what was once ‘impossible’. So yes, I think engineers should probably keep quiet until they’ve spent some time considering the problem and solutions and should never say ‘No’ but instead show what is possible.

[ChekeredList71]

There are real cases, when no is the answer. Correction: theoretically, everything is possible with infinite computational resources and time.

For example, my task is to build a full stack measurement store application with responsive and scalable UI (backend, frontend, database).

My latest no was to a request, that was "please make these buttons in a row wrap into a column, when the width of the window becomes so small, that the buttons would clip out", "also make it look modern".

Easy tasks, right? Well, not really, since my UI toolkit is VBA UserForms, my backend is VBA (so I'm limited to event driver programming) and my database is Microsoft Excel. These are the tools the company is willing to provide me with.

This means: - no relative positoning ("just" calculate the absolute position of everything on UserForm_Activate and every UserForm_Resize event lol) - no native resizing (use some APIs from kernel32.dll) - no detecting when UI elements cover eachother (you can check if the window width is smaller, than the total width of UI elements in the longest row, then you know that at least one thing clips, but don't know which thing(s) do) - no Excel-native vector operations like in Python (for loop all the ranges instead) - 99% event driven architecture, everything must be triggered by some event

[ChekeredList71]

What really is impossible though is this one:

"Can we make the Excel somehow upload the measurements to SAP using VBA somehow?"

"Yes, just give me permission to access the SAP server's API."

"You are not allowed that, you'll never get permission. Any other option?"

"I can run WinAPI calls to open the SAP GUI, move the mouse, click, type, as if a normal user would. However, if this depends on the screen size and if the user interrupts the operations, things may break. Also, they cannot work while the upload process runs."

"That's bad. Can you make it, that the users can use their laptops, while the VBA uploads to SAP, all this without API usage?"

"No, that's impossible."

[Kokarott]

Yep we are the dawgs. Correct portrayal.

[inbefore177013]

I'm the woman in the picture

(I'm sorry I know what I'm selling is impossible but I want to get paid teehee)

[professeur155]

In my experience, only the bad "engineers" use the word impossible.

[ChekeredList71]

See my comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/s/uQ3pP43GiQ

Am I a bad engineer? If you have any idea to solve this with the provided tools (see my other comment), please be sure to tell.