3 ms·

My favorite as an engineer/scientist who has sat through tons of terrible presentations: 20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good

My favorite as an engineer/scientist who has sat through tons of terrible presentations: 20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately. If people can't understand your ideas, you're counting on them to shrug and say, "Boy, this guy sounds smart! I guess we should do what he says!" If they're doing their job, they won't.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
It's sad, really. In a perfect world, you'd have an awesome design coupled with awesome sales pitch. In reality, a lot of people realized that almost the entire ROI comes from the sales pitch, so you can half-ass the design part (or even skip it entirely, if your sales person is good).
- forgotmysn 8y ago
  its also probably a supply/cost issue. People that are good at sales are more common, and cheaper to employ than people that are good at designing complex feats of engineering.
  - danielsju6 8y ago
    But they rarely find themselves in the same circles.
    - sverige 8y ago
      People that are great at sales are very rare, though. And people that are great at sales and have great platform skills are the ones who make it past director level to the executive suite. Engineers do well when they spot such people early and make friends with them. "Early" is important, because by the time they make it to the executive suite, they (hopefully) already have trusted "technical advisers" who will tell them when their idea sucks before it gets sold and propagated throughout the organization. If they don't, then they will rely on their secret sales intuition and their defenses against common sense will be impenetrable. This is usually the highest executive function of engineers / "technical advisers" in large enterprises. Not so glamorous, but critical to the health of any organization.
    - jimbokun 8y ago
      And when they do, you get Apple.
  - citrablue 8y ago
    It could also be caused by the evaluation of candidates by (typically) business types. They think they can recognize a great sale (because it sold them), but evaluating engineering talent is hard. Even for other engineers, much less suits.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

It's sad, really. In a perfect world, you'd have an awesome design coupled with awesome sales pitch. In reality, a lot of people realized that almost the entire ROI comes from the sales pitch, so you can half-ass the design part (or even skip it entirely, if your sales person is good).

forgotmysn 8y ago
its also probably a supply/cost issue. People that are good at sales are more common, and cheaper to employ than people that are good at designing complex feats of engineering.
- danielsju6 8y ago
  But they rarely find themselves in the same circles.
  - sverige 8y ago
    People that are great at sales are very rare, though. And people that are great at sales and have great platform skills are the ones who make it past director level to the executive suite. Engineers do well when they spot such people early and make friends with them. "Early" is important, because by the time they make it to the executive suite, they (hopefully) already have trusted "technical advisers" who will tell them when their idea sucks before it gets sold and propagated throughout the organization. If they don't, then they will rely on their secret sales intuition and their defenses against common sense will be impenetrable. This is usually the highest executive function of engineers / "technical advisers" in large enterprises. Not so glamorous, but critical to the health of any organization.
  - jimbokun 8y ago
    And when they do, you get Apple.
- citrablue 8y ago
  It could also be caused by the evaluation of candidates by (typically) business types. They think they can recognize a great sale (because it sold them), but evaluating engineering talent is hard. Even for other engineers, much less suits.