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
5
2008
16
2009
31
2010
61
2011
67
2012
88
2013
80
2014
71
2015
135
2016
144
2017
183
2018
180
2019
267
2020
227
2021
223
2022
220
2023
314
2024
279
2025
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2026
9

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