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I’ve often found engineers really struggle to jump over their own shadows when it comes to marketing. Things like... - “Marketing is evil!” ... perhaps but it’

by harryf 6y ago

I’ve often found engineers really struggle to jump over their own shadows when it comes to marketing. Things like... - “Marketing is evil!” ... perhaps but it’s also a necessary evil if you want anyone using your product - “Build it and they will come” ... except they won’t unless you tell people - “I hate spam/push messages/ads therefor everyone else must do to” ... but engineers tend to be the grumpiest about this stuff. Drip marketing to get users to engage progressively with your app, for example, can be valuable to users that even forgot they installed your app in the first place, because something distracted them right after - “We have all these features / options so let’s so let’s just show them all to the user and let them figure it out” ... paradox of choice etc And many more. You could _almost_ argue that some jobs, like PM, UX researcher, designer, digital marketeer largely exist because of the narrow mindedness of engineers... I don’t mean that seriously for obvious reasons but think there’s some truth in it

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
luckylion 6y ago
I'm not sure it's narrow mindedness, I feel like it's mostly principles and not seeing that marketing isn't only spam, lies and shit. I think most engineers associate marketing with sleazy SEO/affiliate/self-promotion people who offer little to no added value to the web, society or humanity, who will lie, cheat and steal to make a buck. Most engineers don't want to be like those people in any way, and that's a good thing, because we'd all be better off if those people were gone. But not all of marketing is "I have a shitty product, it has no encryption, but I will just say that it has super mega NSA encryption because stupid consumers will not know the difference". A lot of marketing is just getting the information out there. I think it's similar to SEO in that sense. There's the shit that's manipulating Google (and Google is willfully playing along) by just spinning the same text thousands of times and stuffing keywords into it. Everybody would be better off if that disappeared. But there's also the basic common sense SEO. Make sure your HTML works, well, make sure you have your headlines in <h1>, <h2> etc, make sure the important pages you want found can actually be reached with links on your site, make sure your site loads fast etc.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I think your view on this will depend on what do you believe the distribution of good vs. evil in marketing looks like. Is it like this? ^ DECENCY PROFIT | ---> <--- | ---> /---- <--- | /--- \---- | /---- \---- | /--- \---- | /--- \-- +------------------------------------------------> EVIL GOOD Or like this? ^ DECENCY PROFIT | -> |\ <---------- | -> | \ <---------- | | \- | / \-- | / \----------- | /- \------------------ +------------------------------------------------> EVIL GOOD I personally believe it's the latter. I added arrows indicating opposing incentives at personal level, and I believe the profit motive is much stronger than personal morals, for two main reasons. One, market competition means you won't survive unless you're optimizing for profits very strongly; with strong enough competition, if your competitor does something shady, you have to follow suit or risk being outcompeted. Two, professional specialization. I sometimes quip, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to be separated from it by enough levels of indirection". I mean it. There's plenty of entrepreneurs who wouldn't feel comfortable going to someone personally and lying about their product, or spying on them and selling what they learned to a scammer. But if such entrepreneur hires a marketing manager, who then outsources all marketing to an external agency, which buys its tools off-the-shelf, you may suddenly end up with lies in ads and 50 megabytes of trackers on your GDPR-violating website, and at no point each individual's conscience crosses the "this is EVIL" threshold; everyone can point at each other and say, "I'm just doing what I'm paid to", or "I didn't know my subordinates/subcontractors would do that".
  - allendoerfer 6y ago
    > One, market competition means you won't survive unless you're optimizing for profits very strongly; with strong enough competition, if your competitor does something shady, you have to follow suit or risk being outcompeted. I have recently learned here on HN, that this is called a Red Queen's race. Since like me everyone on HN loves expressive language I am spreading the word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race
jagtesh 6y ago
> You could _almost_ argue that some jobs, like PM, UX researcher, designer, digital marketeer largely exist because of the narrow mindedness of engineers I'd argue it's a simple division of labor. Engineers need to stay focused on solving technical challenges. Also, when it comes to PM - it's more than just writing product stories or prioritizing them. Doing stakeholder interviews is as art. Asking the right questions is crucial. So while Engineers stay focused on the how, the PM stays focused on the what. And the UX translates the what into an interactive map easily understood by target audience.
- sweetdreamerit 6y ago
  well, no. They are different jobs, that require skills that an engineer is not required to have. It's not just mindest, it's about methods and skills and theoretical backgrounds. UX is about eliciting the needs, the knowledge, the mental models of the users and to contribute to create (digital) representations that help them (the users) to accomplish their goals. This is not what an engineer is asked to do, and not what (s)he has been trained to.
  - egfx 6y ago
    I think a frontend engineer needs to have both a very strong aesthetic design ability as well as engineering abilities. Marketing on the other hand is a different animal. A good marketer can sell bad code, U/X. I worked in QA and I think this is similar. The best QA testers aren’t engineers because they don’t make assumptions. Marketers make assumptions but not about code but about human behavior like you said but I think this relates more to the U/X and marketing relationship vs the engineer to U/X relationship.
  - phab 6y ago
    I completely disagree. Engineering at its core is about building useful solutions to real-world problems. If you're not considering the user (including the theory behind the user's interaction with your product), you're not embracing your role as an engineer holistically. If I was hiring engineers, that is exactly what I would be asking them to do.
juped 6y ago
I'd love to be good at marketing, I'm just... not. I'm good at empathizing with users, but that doesn't help if you don't have any because you suck at marketing.
- mronge 6y ago
  It’s a skill you can train just like any other. We all sucked at programming in the beginning too! Just keep at it and your marketing chops will improve.
tomcooks 6y ago
The reason for the grumpiness is that, marketing or not, software works and exists. The opposite doesn't happen. Cue in the stereotypical markethead rappresentation: vapid, buzzword filled, socially successful.
- Sodman 6y ago
  All of the "no code" websites you see (even on HN) asking for an email address to sign up for updates on a non-existent product (ie gauge interest) seem to disagree with you.

by harryf 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

luckylion 6y ago

I'm not sure it's narrow mindedness, I feel like it's mostly principles and not seeing that marketing isn't only spam, lies and shit. I think most engineers associate marketing with sleazy SEO/affiliate/self-promotion people who offer little to no added value to the web, society or humanity, who will lie, cheat and steal to make a buck. Most engineers don't want to be like those people in any way, and that's a good thing, because we'd all be better off if those people were gone. But not all of marketing is "I have a shitty product, it has no encryption, but I will just say that it has super mega NSA encryption because stupid consumers will not know the difference". A lot of marketing is just getting the information out there. I think it's similar to SEO in that sense. There's the shit that's manipulating Google (and Google is willfully playing along) by just spinning the same text thousands of times and stuffing keywords into it. Everybody would be better off if that disappeared. But there's also the basic common sense SEO. Make sure your HTML works, well, make sure you have your headlines in <h1>, <h2> etc, make sure the important pages you want found can actually be reached with links on your site, make sure your site loads fast etc.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
I think your view on this will depend on what do you believe the distribution of good vs. evil in marketing looks like. Is it like this? ^ DECENCY PROFIT | ---> <--- | ---> /---- <--- | /--- \---- | /---- \---- | /--- \---- | /--- \-- +------------------------------------------------> EVIL GOOD Or like this? ^ DECENCY PROFIT | -> |\ <---------- | -> | \ <---------- | | \- | / \-- | / \----------- | /- \------------------ +------------------------------------------------> EVIL GOOD I personally believe it's the latter. I added arrows indicating opposing incentives at personal level, and I believe the profit motive is much stronger than personal morals, for two main reasons. One, market competition means you won't survive unless you're optimizing for profits very strongly; with strong enough competition, if your competitor does something shady, you have to follow suit or risk being outcompeted. Two, professional specialization. I sometimes quip, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to be separated from it by enough levels of indirection". I mean it. There's plenty of entrepreneurs who wouldn't feel comfortable going to someone personally and lying about their product, or spying on them and selling what they learned to a scammer. But if such entrepreneur hires a marketing manager, who then outsources all marketing to an external agency, which buys its tools off-the-shelf, you may suddenly end up with lies in ads and 50 megabytes of trackers on your GDPR-violating website, and at no point each individual's conscience crosses the "this is EVIL" threshold; everyone can point at each other and say, "I'm just doing what I'm paid to", or "I didn't know my subordinates/subcontractors would do that".
- allendoerfer 6y ago
  > One, market competition means you won't survive unless you're optimizing for profits very strongly; with strong enough competition, if your competitor does something shady, you have to follow suit or risk being outcompeted. I have recently learned here on HN, that this is called a Red Queen's race. Since like me everyone on HN loves expressive language I am spreading the word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race

jagtesh 6y ago

> You could _almost_ argue that some jobs, like PM, UX researcher, designer, digital marketeer largely exist because of the narrow mindedness of engineers I'd argue it's a simple division of labor. Engineers need to stay focused on solving technical challenges. Also, when it comes to PM - it's more than just writing product stories or prioritizing them. Doing stakeholder interviews is as art. Asking the right questions is crucial. So while Engineers stay focused on the how, the PM stays focused on the what. And the UX translates the what into an interactive map easily understood by target audience.

sweetdreamerit 6y ago
well, no. They are different jobs, that require skills that an engineer is not required to have. It's not just mindest, it's about methods and skills and theoretical backgrounds. UX is about eliciting the needs, the knowledge, the mental models of the users and to contribute to create (digital) representations that help them (the users) to accomplish their goals. This is not what an engineer is asked to do, and not what (s)he has been trained to.
- egfx 6y ago
  I think a frontend engineer needs to have both a very strong aesthetic design ability as well as engineering abilities. Marketing on the other hand is a different animal. A good marketer can sell bad code, U/X. I worked in QA and I think this is similar. The best QA testers aren’t engineers because they don’t make assumptions. Marketers make assumptions but not about code but about human behavior like you said but I think this relates more to the U/X and marketing relationship vs the engineer to U/X relationship.
- phab 6y ago
  I completely disagree. Engineering at its core is about building useful solutions to real-world problems. If you're not considering the user (including the theory behind the user's interaction with your product), you're not embracing your role as an engineer holistically. If I was hiring engineers, that is exactly what I would be asking them to do.

juped 6y ago

I'd love to be good at marketing, I'm just... not. I'm good at empathizing with users, but that doesn't help if you don't have any because you suck at marketing.

mronge 6y ago
It’s a skill you can train just like any other. We all sucked at programming in the beginning too! Just keep at it and your marketing chops will improve.

tomcooks 6y ago

The reason for the grumpiness is that, marketing or not, software works and exists. The opposite doesn't happen. Cue in the stereotypical markethead rappresentation: vapid, buzzword filled, socially successful.

Sodman 6y ago
All of the "no code" websites you see (even on HN) asking for an email address to sign up for updates on a non-existent product (ie gauge interest) seem to disagree with you.