5 ms·

OP did tell the truth. Your interpretation adds judgment. The relevant facts to the listener (prospective customer) are: - "This is a picture of software to b

by motoko 17y ago

OP did tell the truth. Your interpretation adds judgment. The relevant facts to the listener (prospective customer) are: - "This is a picture of software to buy" - "This software to buy will solve your problems." Here is what you added: - "These are just..." we ourselves do not believe that this software to buy is valuable despite we are here to convince you that this is software to buy is valuable - "figure out..." we ourselves do not believe that this software to buy will solve your problems despite that we are here to convince you that this software to buy will solve your problems

gruseom 17y ago
I don't consider this telling the truth: "Each time we would come back with a few more 'screenshots' and tell them that development was progressing nicely" No doubt you could come up with some hair-splitting interpretation under which it wasn't technically lying.
- mst 17y ago
  Development of the codebase might not have been but development of the product clearly was. And the use cases. And the commercial viability of the market so their company had a chance to be around to support their customers. And the business understanding needed to support those customers properly. Not all development is programming.
  - gruseom 17y ago
    Development of the codebase might not have been but development of the product clearly was. The hair-splitting begins. The phrase "software development" in my book, and I suspect in most people's, implies code. If you just mean any old development, well, sure, the customer development was proceeding quite nicely. Maybe that was what they meant? Try a simple thought experiment. If the customers learned that there was no code and the product consisted of nothing more than the printed "screenshots" they'd been shown, would they care? I'd guess that one's answer to that is pretty correlated with whether or not one thinks deception was involved here. My answer - not about these particular customers, but in general - is yes, they would care. As a customer, I certainly would. (Not, of course, because of any objection to paper prototyping as such, but because a critical piece of the situation had been hidden from me.)
    - tptacek 17y ago
      I'm with mst. It's not lying when you fail to point out the flaws in your own pitch. If the prospect asks, "do these screen shots actually exist in code" and you say "yes", you're a liar; if they don't ask at all, they don't care. I got a little skeeved out at "development is coming along nicely", just like you, but the solution to that is just to choose better words. They could simply have said "design is coming along nicely", nobody would have cared, and they'd have the exact same outcome. So while you're right that those were unfortunate words, it's hard for me to get too bent out of shape about them.
      - gruseom 17y ago
        I can't really argue with that. Blast you. There isn't enough information in the story to know what was really going on. Some possible contexts are a lot more venial than others. I think what irritated me was just the gloating tone of "we sure put one over on them"... but perhaps they didn't mean it that way.
akeefer 17y ago
Deciding which facts are "relevant" to the customer is a pretty dicey proposition: why do you assume that the fact that no code has been written is irrelevant to the customer? Just because the sales guy wants it to be irrelevant doesn't mean that the customer shouldn't have the right to make their decisions based on the actual facts, rather than what's convenient for the seller.
- tptacek 17y ago
  No, if the facts are important to the prospect, the prospect asks about them. I didn't read anything in this post about them supplying false answers to direct questions. You are not obligated to provide SEC disclosures along with your pitches. I do that, and it's a horrible habit and something I've been trying hard to break. It communicates nervousness and lack of confidence. Again: you can't just make stuff up. If the prospect asks, "how much of this stuff actually works", you need to be clear --- "we're still in the design phase". But if the prospect doesn't ask, the prospect doesn't care, and you let it go.
  - akeefer 17y ago
    Fair enough; you're not obligated to disclose everything up front if they don't ask. But that's a world different from making a deliberately misleading statement. If someone says "We're actively developing this" I'm not going to just assume I'm being mislead and say, "Sure, but do you have code?" The statement implies an answer to the question, so I'll feel like I already have an answer to the question, and I'd be wrong. So no, it's not a direct answer to a question, but it's meant to imply an answer to the question so people don't ask anything further. Deliberately attempting to mislead people is just as bad as outright lying in my book, and I can't see the way that statement is worded as anything less than an attempt to mislead the potential customer.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      Change the words "actively developing this" to "actively designing this". Can we stop debating it now?
- 17y ago

by motoko 17y ago

gruseom 17y ago

I don't consider this telling the truth: "Each time we would come back with a few more 'screenshots' and tell them that development was progressing nicely" No doubt you could come up with some hair-splitting interpretation under which it wasn't technically lying.

mst 17y ago
Development of the codebase might not have been but development of the product clearly was. And the use cases. And the commercial viability of the market so their company had a chance to be around to support their customers. And the business understanding needed to support those customers properly. Not all development is programming.
- gruseom 17y ago
  Development of the codebase might not have been but development of the product clearly was. The hair-splitting begins. The phrase "software development" in my book, and I suspect in most people's, implies code. If you just mean any old development, well, sure, the customer development was proceeding quite nicely. Maybe that was what they meant? Try a simple thought experiment. If the customers learned that there was no code and the product consisted of nothing more than the printed "screenshots" they'd been shown, would they care? I'd guess that one's answer to that is pretty correlated with whether or not one thinks deception was involved here. My answer - not about these particular customers, but in general - is yes, they would care. As a customer, I certainly would. (Not, of course, because of any objection to paper prototyping as such, but because a critical piece of the situation had been hidden from me.)
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I'm with mst. It's not lying when you fail to point out the flaws in your own pitch. If the prospect asks, "do these screen shots actually exist in code" and you say "yes", you're a liar; if they don't ask at all, they don't care. I got a little skeeved out at "development is coming along nicely", just like you, but the solution to that is just to choose better words. They could simply have said "design is coming along nicely", nobody would have cared, and they'd have the exact same outcome. So while you're right that those were unfortunate words, it's hard for me to get too bent out of shape about them.
    - gruseom 17y ago
      I can't really argue with that. Blast you. There isn't enough information in the story to know what was really going on. Some possible contexts are a lot more venial than others. I think what irritated me was just the gloating tone of "we sure put one over on them"... but perhaps they didn't mean it that way.

akeefer 17y ago

Deciding which facts are "relevant" to the customer is a pretty dicey proposition: why do you assume that the fact that no code has been written is irrelevant to the customer? Just because the sales guy wants it to be irrelevant doesn't mean that the customer shouldn't have the right to make their decisions based on the actual facts, rather than what's convenient for the seller.

tptacek 17y ago
No, if the facts are important to the prospect, the prospect asks about them. I didn't read anything in this post about them supplying false answers to direct questions. You are not obligated to provide SEC disclosures along with your pitches. I do that, and it's a horrible habit and something I've been trying hard to break. It communicates nervousness and lack of confidence. Again: you can't just make stuff up. If the prospect asks, "how much of this stuff actually works", you need to be clear --- "we're still in the design phase". But if the prospect doesn't ask, the prospect doesn't care, and you let it go.
- akeefer 17y ago
  Fair enough; you're not obligated to disclose everything up front if they don't ask. But that's a world different from making a deliberately misleading statement. If someone says "We're actively developing this" I'm not going to just assume I'm being mislead and say, "Sure, but do you have code?" The statement implies an answer to the question, so I'll feel like I already have an answer to the question, and I'd be wrong. So no, it's not a direct answer to a question, but it's meant to imply an answer to the question so people don't ask anything further. Deliberately attempting to mislead people is just as bad as outright lying in my book, and I can't see the way that statement is worded as anything less than an attempt to mislead the potential customer.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Change the words "actively developing this" to "actively designing this". Can we stop debating it now?
17y ago