Dylan Field
Their Advice Is Really for Them
Inspired by Dylan Field episode
Dylan Field's stakeholder feedback lesson: when people give advice, they're often solving their own problems, not yours.
Dylan Field noticed that when stakeholders gave feedback at Figma, they weren't identifying user problems. They were describing problems THEY had. Real advice, just not for users.
Your mother-in-law has THOUGHTS about the nap schedule. Your toddler needs more structure. Or less structure? She's unclear, but she's confident. The advice is flawless—for a child who is not yours, in a life that is not yours, solving problems you don't actually have.
Your friend's sleep training method worked perfectly. Of course it did. Her kid falls asleep to a gentle lullaby at 7pm sharp. Your kid treats bedtime like a hostage negotiation that starts at 8 and ends at 10:30 with everyone crying on the bathroom floor.
The feedback isn't wrong. It's stakeholder feedback—someone else's feature request reported as a bug in your product.
You can listen. You can nod. But when you're raising this tiny human, you know which feedback is about users and which is about the stakeholder.
