Product Management Failures

The cluster discusses why a company's products failed, primarily attributing it to poor product management, leadership, and design rather than engineering deficiencies.

➡️ Stable 0.5x Startups & Business
2,860
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#4993
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
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16
2009
31
2010
61
2011
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2012
88
2013
80
2014
71
2015
135
2016
144
2017
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2018
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2019
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2020
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2024
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2026
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Keywords

AFAIK SQL UX OK NIH BigCo HL3 CEO product engineering management products working failed execution product people engineering team projections

Sample Comments

cgarvis • Oct 16, 2018 • View on HN

They probably failed due to bad product management.

kragen • Mar 27, 2025 • View on HN

They sucked at product development.

kderbyma • Jun 10, 2022 • View on HN

they hired the wrong engineers. they focused on infrastructure....no product

Interesting idea. It would be sad to be an engineering team working on these poorly managed products, then.

xapata • Apr 5, 2017 • View on HN

Maybe it was the right product, but the implementation was shoddy. We'll never know.

robertlagrant • Apr 22, 2022 • View on HN

Bit of a mismatch between what their product people thought and reality, perhaps.

colin_jack • Nov 1, 2011 • View on HN

Don't agree, to me the real problem is actually that they failed to make it or any other similiar consumer product.

reiichiroh • May 24, 2014 • View on HN

Why didn't they catch these issues before they committed to manufacturing them?

charlieflowers • Aug 18, 2013 • View on HN

Wow! That would lead one to speculate that perhaps they haven't had the best of engineering teams focused on improving the product over the years! Which means there might be a huge opportunity here.

ulfw • Dec 22, 2016 • View on HN

Goes to show that their product leadership has no clue what they are doing