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One of my first jobs out of college was software sales. Really opened my eyes to the absurdity of that industry. Very wolf of wallstreeet-esque. The tech was

One of my first jobs out of college was software sales. Really opened my eyes to the absurdity of that industry. Very wolf of wallstreeet-esque. The tech was mostly repackaged opensource software with a nicer UI and the senior sales guys were doing copious drugs and bringing down like six figure commissions on multi-million dollar contracts. They hired an army of associates to generate leads and then swooped in to grab the commission. The play was to cold call the shit of company, weasel you way into a decision maker's schedule, and basically roll the dice they might buy your software because they needed to check a box - it barely mattered what the thing actually did and beyond a well rehearsed script no one understood even the basics of the technology/problem space. It was also very feast or famine - a few made absurd cash but most lived on a precarious edge where they felt they might be fired at any moment. Understanding this is how the world actually works was a valuable education. I do feel with the rise of 'big tech' things have improved a bit and there is a renewed interest in approaching business problems with data and something that approximates a pseudo objective science-like process. But barely.

__sha3d2 9y ago
> I do feel with the rise of 'big tech' things have improved a bit Haha. I'm a technical salesperson that is the black sheep of my sales org. Things are worse now.
- mcny 9y ago
  > Haha. I'm a technical salesperson that is the black sheep of my sales org. Things are worse now. Besides that, how is life at Oracle?
Top19 9y ago
Worked at Oracle for years, the sales cowboys of IT for better or worse. Sales has improved a lot. A lot of the younger people coming in are much more moral than previous generations. A lot of sales has moved to inside sales as opposed to field sales. Not quite as fun sometimes, but easier on people’s families and schedules, less abuse of expense accounts, going to strip clubs, etc. Also so much of what inside sales does is recorded, there is the possibility of much more accountability (e.g. harder to lie to customers). Sales has improved a lot, but I think we’ve traded that for declines in the morals and increases in the absurdity of marketing. Everything from false claims / fake news to serious privacy concerns.
nostrademons 9y ago
The rise of big tech is basically a market response to decision-makers who acted like you observed. When you've got a bunch of executives who will drop millions of dollars on open-source software because they needed to check a box, that's a huge economic inefficiency waiting to be arbitraged away. What "big tech" founder/CEOs did was say "Well, I understand the technology, I can learn the domain knowledge more easily than these buffoons can learn the technology, how would I build a company from the ground up to compete directly with them and steal all their customers rather than playing the sales game?" And with a suitably driven, intelligent, and business-savvy founder, it works [1]. The whole "software is eating the world" philosophy is based on the idea that it's better to go radically vertical and bring technology straight to the consumer rather than deal with the inefficiencies of enterprise sales. [1] Kind of. The key here is "suitably driven, intelligent, and business savvy founder." Most technologists are not such - they not only don't know the domain, they don't care enough about it to learn. So there's been a bit of a pullback to traditional enterprise sales for SaaS businesses in the last couple years; many of the consumer markets that have not yet been revolutionized by big tech have pretty thorny barriers to entry that no technologist has yet found their way around.
- hateduser2 9y ago
  How do you have such insight? If you can produce such insight so easily, surely you must be a very successful investor? This is such a strong perspective it seems.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    I've done okay. :-)
- dennis_jeeves 9y ago
  Well articulated nostrademons, feel free to email me of ideas that you think are suitable low-hanging fruit but still not tackled by the tech community at large.
gdubs 9y ago
In terms of cinematic comparisons, your story brings to mind "Glengarry Glen Ross".
greenmana 9y ago
I imagined this as a dramatic voice-over sequence in some movie having a montage about said actions.
bmy78 9y ago
This is the world in which we live. A very select few feast while the rest fight over table scraps. And then we argue over those table scraps while those who feast couldn't care less.

__sha3d2 9y ago

> I do feel with the rise of 'big tech' things have improved a bit Haha. I'm a technical salesperson that is the black sheep of my sales org. Things are worse now.

mcny 9y ago
> Haha. I'm a technical salesperson that is the black sheep of my sales org. Things are worse now. Besides that, how is life at Oracle?

Top19 9y ago

Worked at Oracle for years, the sales cowboys of IT for better or worse. Sales has improved a lot. A lot of the younger people coming in are much more moral than previous generations. A lot of sales has moved to inside sales as opposed to field sales. Not quite as fun sometimes, but easier on people’s families and schedules, less abuse of expense accounts, going to strip clubs, etc. Also so much of what inside sales does is recorded, there is the possibility of much more accountability (e.g. harder to lie to customers). Sales has improved a lot, but I think we’ve traded that for declines in the morals and increases in the absurdity of marketing. Everything from false claims / fake news to serious privacy concerns.

nostrademons 9y ago

The rise of big tech is basically a market response to decision-makers who acted like you observed. When you've got a bunch of executives who will drop millions of dollars on open-source software because they needed to check a box, that's a huge economic inefficiency waiting to be arbitraged away. What "big tech" founder/CEOs did was say "Well, I understand the technology, I can learn the domain knowledge more easily than these buffoons can learn the technology, how would I build a company from the ground up to compete directly with them and steal all their customers rather than playing the sales game?" And with a suitably driven, intelligent, and business-savvy founder, it works [1]. The whole "software is eating the world" philosophy is based on the idea that it's better to go radically vertical and bring technology straight to the consumer rather than deal with the inefficiencies of enterprise sales. [1] Kind of. The key here is "suitably driven, intelligent, and business savvy founder." Most technologists are not such - they not only don't know the domain, they don't care enough about it to learn. So there's been a bit of a pullback to traditional enterprise sales for SaaS businesses in the last couple years; many of the consumer markets that have not yet been revolutionized by big tech have pretty thorny barriers to entry that no technologist has yet found their way around.

hateduser2 9y ago
How do you have such insight? If you can produce such insight so easily, surely you must be a very successful investor? This is such a strong perspective it seems.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  I've done okay. :-)
dennis_jeeves 9y ago
Well articulated nostrademons, feel free to email me of ideas that you think are suitable low-hanging fruit but still not tackled by the tech community at large.

gdubs 9y ago

In terms of cinematic comparisons, your story brings to mind "Glengarry Glen Ross".

greenmana 9y ago

I imagined this as a dramatic voice-over sequence in some movie having a montage about said actions.

bmy78 9y ago

This is the world in which we live. A very select few feast while the rest fight over table scraps. And then we argue over those table scraps while those who feast couldn't care less.