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> It doesn’t matter how brilliant your software engineering is if no one buys it. Right, because so many people buy Facebook products, or Twitter, or Google...

> It doesn’t matter how brilliant your software engineering is if no one buys it. Right, because so many people buy Facebook products, or Twitter, or Google... Many, if not most, software products don't sell anything. While there are tons of problems with getting 100% of your revenue from ads, the fact remains that many companies don't have anything to sell to their consumers. Of course, you have to make a good, sticky product, and so there is marketing involved... just not the sort of 1930s handshake-and-a-smile that this article seems to be describing. That said, my own experience is biased (I currently work for a non-profit!), and so the snarkiness of this reply probably isn't warranted. Surely for many places, sales experience is valuable... but I certainly wouldn't rank it higher over software development, at least not with the places I've worked at.

frozenport 9y ago
Selling your idea, perhaps to donors, is a kind of selling.
pathseeker 9y ago
That statement really only applies in the consumer space. Businesses pay for software all of the time and a decent sales team is critical to any B2B software.
aaavl2821 9y ago
A lot of people do buy facebook and google products. Adwords is a product. I am not familiar with the sales process for google and fb ads, but id imagine, at least in the early days, that there was some handshaking etc involved before people really understood the value of advertising on those platforms
pc86 9y ago
We spend several hundreds of dollars a day on Facebook ads and know of many companies spending thousands or tens of thousands a day. that's what FB is selling, isn't it?
ksk 9y ago
Finding companies that this article doesn't apply to doesn't invalidate the article. Everything has to be taken in context. You can apply your own layer of analysis and contextualize it differently. For e.g. Having a hygienic and safe place to work is critical because if an employee doesn't feel safe at work, they won't be able to work as effectively, or stress causes lower productivity, etc, etc. The primary, unchanging goal of any business anywhere is to stay in business. Sales bring in cash, and cash is king. Nothing else will keep you in business other than cash. All of those companies you mentioned were financed by burning through millions of dollars of somebody else's money. That is not the majority of companies. IMHO, the article makes a lot of sense. I'd rank software development either equal or below sales too. YMMV.
notquitesure 9y ago
Google revenue: 89b in 2016 Facebook revenue: 28b in 2016 More than 30k of Google's 80k employees on LinkedIn have titles including either "Sales" or "Account" (Account Executive, Account Manager, etc.). For Facebook it's 9k out of 26k. Facebook and google both sell user attention to advertisers. Exxon deploys vast engineering resources to extract and collect oil, but it would be weird to say that because they don't receive payment from their wells and refineries that they don't make sales
- goialoq 9y ago
  Yes, ad sales finance the products. But most of the products are not sold. A product/content creator doesn't need to do sales, if they are willing sign up for whatever the ad business is offering ($X CPI, user activity data, etc). Only one side of a transaction needs to sell. The other can simply choose to accept an offer.

frozenport 9y ago

Selling your idea, perhaps to donors, is a kind of selling.

pathseeker 9y ago

That statement really only applies in the consumer space. Businesses pay for software all of the time and a decent sales team is critical to any B2B software.

aaavl2821 9y ago

A lot of people do buy facebook and google products. Adwords is a product. I am not familiar with the sales process for google and fb ads, but id imagine, at least in the early days, that there was some handshaking etc involved before people really understood the value of advertising on those platforms

pc86 9y ago

We spend several hundreds of dollars a day on Facebook ads and know of many companies spending thousands or tens of thousands a day. that's what FB is selling, isn't it?

ksk 9y ago

Finding companies that this article doesn't apply to doesn't invalidate the article. Everything has to be taken in context. You can apply your own layer of analysis and contextualize it differently. For e.g. Having a hygienic and safe place to work is critical because if an employee doesn't feel safe at work, they won't be able to work as effectively, or stress causes lower productivity, etc, etc. The primary, unchanging goal of any business anywhere is to stay in business. Sales bring in cash, and cash is king. Nothing else will keep you in business other than cash. All of those companies you mentioned were financed by burning through millions of dollars of somebody else's money. That is not the majority of companies. IMHO, the article makes a lot of sense. I'd rank software development either equal or below sales too. YMMV.

notquitesure 9y ago

Google revenue: 89b in 2016 Facebook revenue: 28b in 2016 More than 30k of Google's 80k employees on LinkedIn have titles including either "Sales" or "Account" (Account Executive, Account Manager, etc.). For Facebook it's 9k out of 26k. Facebook and google both sell user attention to advertisers. Exxon deploys vast engineering resources to extract and collect oil, but it would be weird to say that because they don't receive payment from their wells and refineries that they don't make sales

goialoq 9y ago
Yes, ad sales finance the products. But most of the products are not sold. A product/content creator doesn't need to do sales, if they are willing sign up for whatever the ad business is offering ($X CPI, user activity data, etc). Only one side of a transaction needs to sell. The other can simply choose to accept an offer.