I have seen it personally ... dozens? of times? Its the reasons startups can even succeed at all given the enormous momentum and cash reserves of these bigger companies - their goals, management, approach - it all becomes more diffuse and poorly executed.
I've also seen it a lot: sales person at a small tech startup convinces business person in large tech company to ignore their own engineers. I suspect most engineers at large firms have been on one side of this experience at somepoint, and most engineers at small but successful tech startups have been on the other side (lead engineer to sales: "You told them our our product could do _what?!_ That's fine. I never wanted my PTO anyway...:(")
External sales person says "oh you've been struggling with that for YEARS?!!?!?! We can get that done in 90 days if you can get that group of people on board" (3 years passes, everyone involved doesn't work there anymore, the project is a mess)
External sales person says "oh you've been struggling with that for YEARS?!!?!?! We can get that done in 90 days if you can get that group of people on board" (3 years passes, everyone involved doesn't work there anymore, the project is a mess)
You get the idea.
Knowing you've built the solution perfectly to the spec, whilst also knowing that the spec wasn't reviewed or endorsed by any technical people so the client's entire engineering team thinks you're incompetent, for just doing what their colleagues asked you to do...
But it doesn't even stop there. It goes down to the SMB market as well. Granted not the S but in Medium and larger places.
I have been dragged into multiple sales calls with the agenda "we need an app".
Full stop.
Fun day to be the "Solution Architect" on call.