Pamela FurstSenior Manager, Customer Success

"Why's it taking so long to get that feature out?" | CEO Translator (Ep. 3)

Name: "Why's it taking so long to get that feature out?" | CEO Translator (Ep. 3)
Uploaded: 2022-02-22T15:00:33+00:00
Duration: 2 min 20 s
Channel: Pamela Furst
Description: In this episode, the speaker addresses common CEO frustrations about delayed feature delivery, focusing on the underlying expectations behind questions…

22 Feb 2022 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:20

In this episode, the speaker addresses common CEO frustrations about delayed feature delivery, focusing on the underlying expectations behind questions like “Why is it taking so long?” He explains that CEOs often push hard for budget and hires, expecting immediate results, but many are unaware of the lengthy hiring and ramp‑up processes required before new engineers can meaningfully contribute. The talk outlines the typical timeline from green‑lighting a hire to a new hire becoming productive, highlights the naiveté of assuming that staffing alone will instantly accelerate shipping, and stresses the importance of continuously educating executives about these constraints. By proactively starting engineering hiring well before the expected delivery dates and communicating realistic timelines, product teams can align expectations, avoid surprise delays, and ensure that budget‑won hires translate into tangible product outcomes.

Chapters

Hey, what's Josh working on? Are we really hiring as fast as we could be? What's going on with the roadmap? You ever get these questions? What we're gonna do today is actually we're gonna walk through like what they really mean when they're asking you those things. And once you know what they actually mean, like, what are we going to do about it? How are we actually going to get ahead of it? And how do we actually address it? CEOs are actually always fighting for budget to actually make things happen. So I think we already know that when you get greenlit for a hire, get it done as fast as possible, both because it might disappear on you, but also because by the time the CEO fought for it, they, you know, they fought hard for it, they wanna see it done because they wanna see yield from those hires. Now, I think there's often a bit of naivety around like, oh, we got the people, so let's deliver the thing immediately, right? So we all know that it takes a while to get ramped up. You gotta understand the code base, you gotta figure out how to fit in with the team, the processes change, all of those things. I think sometimes we find this naivety, which is like, oh, good job, you got the 25 hires done, okay. Great, now where's the product we said to ship, right? So part of this is like, I think our job is to, you know, educate like what is the actual picture here? Like how long does it take to actually hire and we get the people? Like how long does it take for them to actually make a dent in actually what we're actually shipping? And then how long does it take to actually make once we actually get there, right? So some of this stuff is quite long haul and you do need to educate this and the outcome of that education might conclude that like, Hey, we actually need to start the engineering hiring right now, right? And because of that long lead time to happen. And so, by the time someone's expecting, you guys are hires done, so where's the thing we're supposed to ship? At that point, you've already kind of missed the chance of educating, right? So, like all things, by the time they're asking, it's a bit late to actually address it directly. You just need to kind of get through there. But on a regular basis, a reminder of actually how you need to be educating along the way before the issues present themselves.