The situation at hand was not an uncommon one. Craig, one of the company’s top producing sales reps, had once again sold a client on a feature they did not have. He certainly didn’t lie about having the feature, but instead proposed an offer the client couldn’t refuse: if you buy it, we’ll build it.
Management, not being the type to turn down booked sales, couldn’t refuse the offer either. And thus, they sided with Craig on what ‘impossible’ actually meant. They also assigned Gerald and team to develop the much-needed feature: an IP-based authentication system that would allow users of their Software-as-a-Service product to access the system without ever needing to log in.
Yeah, I'm sure the sales guy is a douche, but he totally called out the programmer saying it was "impossible".
Really, the guy came up with a good solution that they could use as a premium feature for future work. While it's common that project managers tend to underestimate the amount of work need for certain things, I think programmers tend to underestimate what companies will pay.
