Asking users how they were referred is by no means reliable. Many times we have kept that question in place even though we had strong tracking in place.

People tend to just select the first option in a dropdown or radio series or select an option that we can see is not their actual path. The solution offered in the example seems as if he thinks it's a legitimate replacement.

It is not.

I mean a simple "let hires watch a video about our product" is just about saving some repetitive time... who asked for a "video onboarding solution"? And let the full tech team work on that for two weeks, jeeez! Be happy noone else noticed that wasted time and fired you?

A motivated PO could do this on his own if he has a little bit knowledge and the right tools in his spare hours (at least ours could)...should be good enough just for new hires. Or maybe better delegate that to some marketing guy that maybe even already has video material and who is done within half a day??

Communication is really important, but it's not the end all be all for the job. It sounds like the author was "too busy" to communicate effectively and the lessons learned are what happens when you aren't listening, immediately shut down an idea, or tell someone to do something without knowing what you're after.

You live and learn. That's how you gain experience.