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> Sales reps make so much because they bring in so much more than they cost. Almost. Engineers also bring in so much more than they cost. The real question is
by aianus 11y ago
> Sales reps make so much because they bring in so much more than they cost.
Almost. Engineers also bring in so much more than they cost.
The real question is if the money they bring in scales with the amount you're paying them. The reason salesmen can make so much money is because you can just pay them mostly on commission and take on practically zero risk of overpaying them. You can't do that with engineers.
- nitrogen 11y agoYou can't do that with engineers. Why not? Salespeople must have rules for assigning proportional commissions from joint sales. Why not assign proportional commissions to the engineers responsible for the product sold?
- metafunctor 11y agoBecause for product development, the time from starting a project until scalable revenue is very long. Granted, even the sales part can sometimes takes months, even years. But the engineer's work starts much before the sales work begins. Engineers who want a bigger piece of the eventual profits start companies.
- aianus 11y agoHow do you know which engineer(s) are responsible? Maybe Alice and Bob both worked on the product but Bob spent all day on HN and Alice did all the work. And what about Charlie who joined after feature completion but fixed a couple of major bugs and closed a security hole that would have bankrupted the company had it been left open? It's just unwieldy compared to the salespeople case.
- draugadrotten 11y agoIt's just as complex with salespeople. What about Alice and Bob visiting the customer together for two presentations and then Bob closes the deal on the third presentation he does alone. What if Alice lives in Kansas and meets Charlie the Customer in Europe on vacation, should the European sales guy Marco get a piece of the action?
- aianus 11y agoMy ex-girlfriend worked on sales optimization and this isn't how it worked at all, at least at her clients'. Each geographical area had one salesperson and all sales in that area were attributed to that salesperson. It was very easy to calculate commissions.