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Jul 11, 2023 · 18m · top-founders

Product vs. Engineering: The surprising way to create alignment in 2023

Nikita Gupta · 14m spoken Nathan Latka · 46s spoken
0:00 / 0:00

gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

At the SaasOpen conference, Simba Co-Founder and CTO Nikita Gupta presents practical strategies for eliminating friction between product and engineering teams by sharing direct customer context, fostering empathy, and setting collaborative technical deadlines.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 4.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Nathan as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 0.0 Nathan pushing back 0.0
05100:0010:002:38–6:35 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Simba's Product Journey and Misalignment Pitfalls This is a solo conference presentation segment where Nikita Gupta explains Simba's product evolution and reactive feature development pitfalls. Because there is no active host dialogue or sparring, all host and combativeness scores are zero.6:37–8:56 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Diagnosing Bottlenecks and Early Warning Signals Nikita continues her keynote breakdown on how product managers throw requirements over the wall and create feature factory bottlenecks. As a solo presentation, there is zero host pushback or interpersonal combativeness.8:57–14:58 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Building a Sustainable Strategy Through Empathy and Collaboration Nikita presents actionable solutions for aligning product and engineering through shared Gong calls, customer empathy, and lowering egos. The presentation remains entirely informative and collaborative with the audience.2:38–6:35 · Guest teaching 0/10 Simba's Product Journey and Misalignment Pitfalls This is a solo conference presentation segment where Nikita Gupta explains Simba's product evolution and reactive feature development pitfalls. Because there is no active host dialogue or sparring, all host and combativeness scores are zero.6:37–8:56 · Guest teaching 0/10 Diagnosing Bottlenecks and Early Warning Signals Nikita continues her keynote breakdown on how product managers throw requirements over the wall and create feature factory bottlenecks. As a solo presentation, there is zero host pushback or interpersonal combativeness.8:57–14:58 · Guest teaching 0/10 Building a Sustainable Strategy Through Empathy and Collaboration Nikita presents actionable solutions for aligning product and engineering through shared Gong calls, customer empathy, and lowering egos. The presentation remains entirely informative and collaborative with the audience.2:38–6:35 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Simba's Product Journey and Misalignment Pitfalls This is a solo conference presentation segment where Nikita Gupta explains Simba's product evolution and reactive feature development pitfalls. Because there is no active host dialogue or sparring, all host and combativeness scores are zero.6:37–8:56 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Diagnosing Bottlenecks and Early Warning Signals Nikita continues her keynote breakdown on how product managers throw requirements over the wall and create feature factory bottlenecks. As a solo presentation, there is zero host pushback or interpersonal combativeness.8:57–14:58 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Building a Sustainable Strategy Through Empathy and Collaboration Nikita presents actionable solutions for aligning product and engineering through shared Gong calls, customer empathy, and lowering egos. The presentation remains entirely informative and collaborative with the audience.2:38–6:35 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Simba's Product Journey and Misalignment Pitfalls This is a solo conference presentation segment where Nikita Gupta explains Simba's product evolution and reactive feature development pitfalls. Because there is no active host dialogue or sparring, all host and combativeness scores are zero.6:37–8:56 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Diagnosing Bottlenecks and Early Warning Signals Nikita continues her keynote breakdown on how product managers throw requirements over the wall and create feature factory bottlenecks. As a solo presentation, there is zero host pushback or interpersonal combativeness.8:57–14:58 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Building a Sustainable Strategy Through Empathy and Collaboration Nikita presents actionable solutions for aligning product and engineering through shared Gong calls, customer empathy, and lowering egos. The presentation remains entirely informative and collaborative with the audience.

speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Nathan 29% · guest 71%0:00 · Nathan 29% · guest 71%3:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%3:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%12:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%12:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%15:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%15:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%18:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 0%18:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 0%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 5:40 Rejection of the simplistic roadmap myth

Nikita directly pushes back against conventional misconceptions, stressing that product management is far more nuanced than just drawing a roadmap and telling engineers to build it.

 Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 15:25 Clarifying the question premise

Nikita immediately stops the audience member's question to bifurcate and challenge the framing of whether deadlines refer to product design deliverables or engineering production releases.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 10:45 Educating on engineering motivation through user evidence

Nikita shares the operational breakthrough of replacing top-down feature mandates with raw Gong customer interview recordings to give engineers firsthand context.

 Nathan holds their own ▶ 0:15 Host establishing conference rigor and data depth

Nathan sets the bar for the episode by highlighting the proprietary SaaS database filtering tools and rigorous metric standards required of SaaS Open presenters.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicNathan as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementNathan pushing backWhy
Simba's Product Journey and Misalignment Pitfalls 0000 This is a solo conference presentation segment where Nikita Gupta explains Simba's product evolution and reactive feature development pitfalls. Because there is no active host dialogue or sparring, all host and combativeness scores are zero.
Diagnosing Bottlenecks and Early Warning Signals 0000 Nikita continues her keynote breakdown on how product managers throw requirements over the wall and create feature factory bottlenecks. As a solo presentation, there is zero host pushback or interpersonal combativeness.
Building a Sustainable Strategy Through Empathy and Collaboration 0000 Nikita presents actionable solutions for aligning product and engineering through shared Gong calls, customer empathy, and lowering egos. The presentation remains entirely informative and collaborative with the audience.

Statements from this episode (4)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Simba's customer success team occasionally took on product management roles
“We've actually had a lot of our team members wear multiple hats. So even our customer success managers and head of customer success have also dipped into PM as well.”
Nikita Gupta Jul 11, 2023 ▶ 1:51
Disclosure
Simba's product leaders caused bottlenecks by treating engineering like a feature factory
“So, this happened because our product leaders were throwing requirements over the wall and treating our engineering team like a feature factory.”
Nikita Gupta Jul 11, 2023 ▶ 8:07
Insight
Engineers only build with empathy when product teams over-communicate value
“Over communication is really important as to why a feature needs to be developed, and it has to be there because only when the engineers understand the value of the product that they're building, then they will be able to build it with empathy and understand w…”
Nikita Gupta Jul 11, 2023 ▶ 11:26
Insight
Let engineering alter designs early if scope exceeds the target delivery date
“The best part is, is like really early on when you're doing the designs and you're about to hand it off to engineering, get like a good sense of what that deadline would be. And then let the engineering team work with you to alter the designs if it's not fitti…”
Nikita Gupta Jul 11, 2023 ▶ 17:32
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