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I would move to sales. Sales is the only skill that helps you make money fast, if that's your goal. What I really mean by that is as you get better at Sales, yo
by neya 8y ago
I would move to sales. Sales is the only skill that helps you make money fast, if that's your goal. What I really mean by that is as you get better at Sales, you increase your "personal conversion rate" - which I define as a person's ability to convert someone into a paying customer.
When you're good at sales + you're already a developer, you can build your own Saas and sell them (like most solo founders do, except excel them at selling it).
When you're good at sales + you work for someone else, you can still get rich fast by taking up a commission based job (most tech startups I know of these days, provide around 10%).
- gammateam 8y agoSales isn't the only commission based job. You should broader your point: percent based compensation can make you money fast. Far faster than trading your fixed hours for money at a capped rate. Trading time for money is doing a thing that doesn't scale.
- smudgymcscmudge 8y agoWhat are some non-sales examples?
- quantgenius 8y agoTrading financial assets.
- dvtrn 8y agoAnecdote: A good friend made enough money he was able to quit his job as an engineer to provide telecom consulting services directly to small healthcare providers in the North Carolina mountains. Started a small phone company, hired a sales guy, who closes the deal, my friend comes along and walks the company through integrating. He describes it as a hybrid between being a reseller and a managed service provider, but 100% of their revenue is residuals from services his partner sells, and they both live pretty comfortably and happily.
- neals 8y agoAny examples of jobs that have percentage based compensation but aren't sales?
- gammateam 8y agoPartnerships and advisory roles can have % based compensation. Brokering typically has % based compensation. These don't inherently involve any more 'sales' than selling yourself in an interview for any other kind of role. They can involve more sales if you need them to.
- charlieegan3 8y agoI know developers working at consultancies who earn a percentage of their day rate as part of their compensation. Though I think this is quite uncommon.
- noufalibrahim 8y ago+1. Sales + Marketing.
- mrfusion 8y agoHow much of it is cold calling people though? I’d hate to be annoying as my job.
- neya 8y agoSales is not just about cold calls. This is a common misconception. Cold calling is just one aspect of it. You can skip cold calling as a channel and pursue other channels of interest. In fact, these days, cold calling doesn't work well as it used. People have moved on to other channels such as linkedIn, chat based applications, etc.
- mrfusion 8y agoWow good to know. What’s a good starter sales job for a recovering software engineer? What do you search for on monster.com?
- RickJWagner 8y agoI can be a developer, a trainer, a tech doc editor, a tech conference presenter and more. But I know deep inside that I can never be a salesperson. It's just not in me. The Dilbert gene. I think it's true of a lot of developers, too.
- neya 8y agoIf you can do all the above, then you already have some basic sales skills. A developer - needs to "sell" his solution to his teams/managers A trainer needs to sell his trainings to get students to come visit. A tech conference presenter needs to "sell" his ideas to the audience so they can "buy" it. Actually, training and sales is an extremely good combination to have. Case in point: Most people on the internet get rich by teaching others to become rich rather than doing what they teach themselves :) Such as - eCommerce courses, become a consultant type courses, etc.
- johnchristopher 8y agoI think you pinpoint in your three bullet points why that can't work: you have to believe in what you are selling.