I will tell you, for anyone who actually helps to build the selling product, there is nothing worse than watching a salesperson completely oversell a project, walk away with a fat check, and you are left holding the bag and working overtime.
A salesman and a programmer go on a bear hunting vacation together. As they arrive at the log cabin in the wood, the salesman tells the programmer: "Ok, why don't you unpack and get everything set up, and in the meantime I'll go find us a nice fat bear."
The sales guy leaves and the programmer start unpacking. An hour later, as he's about half done and taking something out of the car, he hears a loud roar coming from some bushes near the cabin. He looks and sees the salesman shoot out from the bushes, with a huge, snarling, growling, drooling bear charging behind him. The bear is enormous, all jaws and claws and muscle.
The salesman runs straight for the door of the cabin, the bear right behind him. At the last moment, he steps to the side. The bear, carried by its momentum, crashes into the cabin. The salesman quickly closes the door and locks it behind the bear. Loud noises come from inside as the bear trashes the place and tries to find its way out.
The salesman turns to the programmer and says:
"Ok, phew, that's one done. I'll go find another one while you skin this one."
I can think of something worse: being the customer.
I had to integrate an existing system with a product sporting a 7 figure price tag. Most painful part involved dealing with disinterested engineers who brushed off our unmet requirements as "Blame the salesman."
The entire company deserves blame and the engineers should be fighting for better sales standards if they don't want to put the work in.
> the engineers should be fighting for better sales standards if they don't want to put the work in.
That assumes they have any way to do so. Unlikely in the situation you describe, where engineers are probably considered an expense and sales "bring in the revenue", I'd expect sales to be completely siloed from engineering and that they don't give a shit.
Hence the depressing (and likely depressed) and disillusioned answer you got from engineering: they have no way to fight this internally.
Over-promising is usually a result of a poor salesman who does not focus on maintaining long-term relationships with his or her prospects/clients (and will probably jump from industry to industry). Unfortunately this is rampant at businesses with high sales volume and lower software / contract prices because there is minimal incentive to focus on anything besides quotas.
If this happens often at your company, Client Services or Development needs to have a heart-to-heart with the sales manager.
Unfortunately, some of the most successful software vendors in the world have turned over-promising and risk-shifting into a way of life. For a million reasons, the market tolerates this injustice, and more often than not rewards it. It's hard not to be bitter about it.
A couple of years ago, I worked at a place like this. The salespeople would promise features to new clients and guess at when they would be implemented.
As a developer there, it was my job to get them implemented by that time. I think I only stayed there 6 months before quitting for a better job..
