Is it normal for your boss to sell a product when it is only half completed and pick arbitrary deadlines to demo it to potential clients?

I thought this was general process?

Yes, seems pretty standard to me

I too can confirm this is the default way of work.

Apparently normal. Doesnt mean it's done by everyone. At least half of my colleagues were shocked when they first started because it was new to them.

Yup... 😪

Works this way in research as well. Except the project is wizard of Oz. Where you cherry pick the results but the implementation is disgusting. Yet you sell results and wash your hands. I think this is general practice.

Our sales team does that.

Welcome to my life

At least they waited until half finished. Previously I worked on a project that had been sold from some initial concept sketches - found out about new features that had been promised every time we attempted to deliver - then the customer was being promised more work (no one informed dev team) as compensation for not having the original on-time.

Guess the boss understood recursion after all!

Yup!

It's called "shiny object syndrome" and it sucks.

Our boss also does this. Just a month or so ago he "sold" a new website, without consulting the dev team (he knows fuck-all about development) and had the client 75% deposit. To this day there isn't even a design for the site. Nobody knows what the fuck he promised the client and as a result we (me) are going to build an under-quoted under-estimated site and guess who's fucking fault it is going to be. 😣