
Ask HN: How to deal with no confidence in product dev? - frustrated-lead
So, basically I&#x27;m the technical cofounder and so far the only technical person (though we are planning on hiring now).<p>While building the CEO and I did product dev together -- he more high level like sussing out user problems and processes and I designing and implementing the solutions.<p>Now since we&#x27;re expanding he isn&#x27;t able to do that any more so he got a product dev guy. I wasn&#x27;t consulted. I didn&#x27;t discuss this directly but I suspect he doesn&#x27;t think that I&#x27;m capable of doing the product dev. I do admit I could improve but I&#x27;m definitely capable of doing it.<p>So, the issue now is with the hired product dev. He&#x27;s been around for a couple of months and he&#x27;s a smart person in general but he just isn&#x27;t good at this. First, he doesn&#x27;t know the business and while you could say that he can learn that, the second thing is that he just isn&#x27;t skilled at the dev part.<p>It&#x27;s difficult to explain without giving concrete examples (there&#x27;re multiple) but often he can&#x27;t actually justify why something would be the solution. He comes up with things that don&#x27;t really address the issues we&#x27;re tackling.<p>The reason I&#x27;m writing is it because today he wrote a new story about an issue we&#x27;ve been having and his solution requires a lot of work in a totally unrelated page (that isn&#x27;t even used a lot). The part of the experience where this issue originates from he didn&#x27;t even address, until I asked about it and then it was a hasty after thought. He hasn&#x27;t even suggested the most obvious and simplest of solutions that could get us 90% of the way there with like half an hour work.<p>So, all in all I really don&#x27;t have confidence in working with him and definitely not in taking instructions from him.<p>Is this relationship doomed? I do feel slighted by the CEO because I wasn&#x27;t even considered or consulted.<p>Should I try to train the new guy?<p>Or be straight with the CEO?
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kodz4
Ask the CEO why you weren't consulted. There is no need to get confrontational
and bring up all this other stuff. It will just distract and take focus away
from the answer to that question.

You have to choose whether you want to play the "who is right" game or "how do
we work together to reduce misunderstanding" game.

It's the same choice you are making with the dev. Depending on what you choose
outcomes are very different.

