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Word, it's all about bringing in the money. If you can convince people to give you more money, you get that money, and if you can't, you don't. Sales guys are w
by cookiecaper 16y ago
Word, it's all about bringing in the money. If you can convince people to give you more money, you get that money, and if you can't, you don't. Sales guys are well-respected in most corporate hierarchies because the sales guys are the people going out there and actually getting customers that bring in cash. It doesn't matter if you write the most beautiful program ever, the reality is there has to be a way to monetize that program if you want to run a business off of it (and obviously, your employer does). If an engineer can't do it and a sales guy can, the sales guy deserves a bigger cut of the pie.
You can see great examples of this by looking at basically any celebrity. Do Oprah and Brad Pitt really deserve billions of dollars for their contributions? Most people would say that morally their contribution to society is minor (or even negative), but the market doesn't seem to agree, and they are rewarded with money far exceeding the income of many business leaders. They get this money because they chose to do something people are willing to spend money on.
Why do thugs that play football, whose moral contributions are, again, minor or often negative, make millions of dollars each year? Because millions of average people pay $30/wk to watch them run into each other, $100/yr in team merchandise, etc. If you don't like that, convince people to stop spending money on football.
"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
- pyre 16y ago> It doesn't matter if you write the most beautiful program ever, > the reality is there has to be a way to monetize that program if > you want to run a business off of it (and obviously, your > employer does) On the other hand, you could have all the charisma in the world, but you'll have a hard time selling something that doesn't exist (unless you want to cross onto the wrong side of the law and dabble in fraud / being a conman). Not really commenting on 'who deserves more,' but I just don't think that you're logic really stands up.
- wladimir 16y agoExactly. Not everyone in a company can be focused on directly getting money from the customers. IMO, it's not a problem if sales people get paid somewhat more than engineers. However, if the ratio of pay of a sales guy to an engineer gets distorted too much, no one will want to be engineer any more. If that was the case, technological advance will stagnate. Everyone will be fighting to get the biggest part of an ever decreasing pie, instead of actually creating value. See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2233736 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2233736
- cookiecaper 16y agoThere's plenty of people willing to give you something to sell. Programmers and salesmen deserve compensation proportionate with the value they provide. I am a programmer myself and believe that engineer-centric companies are usually better than companies with MBA management. The dynamics of each company vary -- my comment was merely in the vein of "why do people that provide little moral value make money?" They make money because they do things that generate money even if those things are of relatively little objective value.
- gregpilling 16y agoIts actually easier to sell vaporware than a real product. Vaporware never has any bugs or problems. Or as one of my colleagues during my equipment selling days said "The brochure never fails to boot up". We were selling Pentium100 based equipment at the time.
- pyre 16y agoAt some point you do actually have to deliver something. You can pitch vaporware and get people interested. You might even get some people to give you money, but at some point you do have to deliver something. People pitching vaporware and never delivering can't be said to be a 'good' thing for the economy.