7 ms·

I went into tech sales as my exit. It feels like a highly paid vacation compared to SWE.

swozey 6y ago
I tried that this year and failed miserably. I don't know how it is at other places but I sat on zoom 6-10 hours a day with new clients giving them architecture pre-sales guidance and I have never had a week of work burn me out so much. I had no energy to talk to anyone after work, including my partner. It turned into me dreading going to sleep because at 8am I had to sit on zoom and try to summon all of my charisma for 6-8 hour long calls a day. I lost all agency of my own schedule. Couldn't pop off and go walk my dog in the park with my partner for 30 minutes without worrying about a client message I COULD NOT MISS (leadership). I'm glad I tried it, it's unfortunate I didn't do well as it really knocked my confidence down but I'm happy to have found a supportive and good environment after that back in SWE. Lots of bad companies/jobs, but there are some good ones. I'm hoping the same story goes with tech sales at some places and that ship was just on fire and I didn't realize it because I had no prior experience to look back on. edit: And then the culture. The enterprise sales culture. I'm sorry but I never want to encounter it again. The amount of slack messages I got that were "hey" and waiting for me to respond there was wild. But the biggest was nobody at all cared about what I had going on. Just a worker drone to shutup and generate revenue no matter how close to burn out you get.
- linuxftw 6y ago
  Maybe it was a bad year to make the jump. The normal sales job (from a non-sales person POV anyway) seems to be business class travel, eating the finest foods, drinking the finest booze, going out and entertaining the engineers for stuff they were going to buy anyway, and then cashing big checks.
  - swozey 6y ago
    Yeah, started right before the pandi, was 60% travel but before I ever got to travel we went into lock down and it became 100% zoom. I'm curious if being in person would have helped me, though. I'm not sure how much it it was zoom exacerbating my anxieties or my own anxieties/introversion burning me out. (or the terrible company) edit: I was a PSE not really tech sales, I did have to do engineering and got the hard technical questions all day long. It's not your run of the mill sales job, the sales person used me as their tech arm. It was mentally exhausting.
    - linuxftw 6y ago
      I find I can talk all day long in person, it's zoom meetings that drain my soul.
    - apohn 6y ago
      > I did have to do engineering and got the hard technical questions all day long. It's not your run of the mill sales job, the sales person used me as their tech arm. It was mentally exhausting. I had a role similar to what you are describing at one point. I got to the point where I was basically mentally exhausted and short-tempered all the time. I had a lot of in-person meetings and strongly preferred web meetings. With web meetings you only put on your game face for the length of the meeting. With in-person meetings you travel to, you need to put on your game face for much longer, including before and after the actual meetings. IMO the way to not destroy yourself in PSE roles is to basically be the type of person who is okay with having a very superficial technical understanding of the wide range of things you see at customers. Otherwise there are an infinite number of technical things you can become an expert on, and other people in your team and sales people will absolutely crush you under the weight of all the different questions your customers have. At least for me, I was an technical expert in a bunch of enterprise level technologies and duct tape stuff that basically translated into nothing if I moved a bit out of the software I was responsible for. Some people are okay with that. I was not and it really crushed my mental state after a few years.
  - TheCoelacanth 6y ago
    That would probably be nice once in a while, but doing it all the time sounds horrible.
  - apohn 6y ago
    And to people outside of Engineering, SWEs have flexible hours, can work from home, are paid really well, can take breaks whenever they want, can actually go on vacation without constantly checking their email, and can switch jobs easily. Sure, some SWEs at are making $500K a year, work 2 hours a day, and get their underwear washed with free laundry service. Some sales people have a royal life that they pay for by traveling like crazy and working crazy hours to deal with internal and customer politics. But a lot of sales people don't have unlimited expense accounts and their job is a slog to try and convince people to take a second meeting and buy something at some point.
mrfusion 6y ago
What exactly does that involve? How did you make that transition?
- Demonsult 6y ago
  These companies are generally looking for people with a good number of years experience in a domain. It also helped that I had a consulting background and had helped closed deals in the past. The interview was mostly about making sure I mixed well with other people. There was a coding challenge, but not leetcode style. I had to write a program that solved a real world sort of problem. A surprising number of people do fail this, even though naive O(n2) solutions can still pass. The transition was a bit of a shock. They just threw me in the water. Like many of you, I have impostor syndrome. Being put forth as a expert on a system I knew little about was very awkward. It took about 6 months for me to be comfortable with what I am doing. I do not spend all day on Zoom like others in the comment section. Instead, I deal with a smaller number of high value deals. That distinction in probably key to whether the job is better or worse than SWE.
zippergz 6y ago
If you don't mind saying, what is "highly paid" in this context? I have no concept of what sales people make compared to SWEs. How much (if any) pay cut would I be looking at if I took this route?
- Demonsult 6y ago
  I made almost 50% more this year. Also, the bonuses flow in continuously instead of once per year.
  - oedoedxef 6y ago
    Pffffffft I am resisting my natural tendency to get very angry at reading this. Sales is a profession where the top 1% of earners are like lottery winners and the bottom 99% of earners are like customer service. In software engineering, the gains are much more equally distributed and the contribution to society is more valuable.
    - Demonsult 6y ago
      Keep in mind that sales engineers usually have a good sized base salary, unlike pure sales people. With that comes a smaller commission than sales people. As for contribution to society, I don't agree. The big winners is software make some pretty toxic stuff.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
apohn 6y ago
Tech sales works if the company you are working for has a good product that sells and a good sales culture. Lots of people are in software sales jobs that are basically just dealing with internal sales politics and customer politics to get somebody to make a decision to buy something based on "vision", not really product merit.

I tried that this year and failed miserably. I don't know how it is at other places but I sat on zoom 6-10 hours a day with new clients giving them architecture pre-sales guidance and I have never had a week of work burn me out so much. I had no energy to talk to anyone after work, including my partner. It turned into me dreading going to sleep because at 8am I had to sit on zoom and try to summon all of my charisma for 6-8 hour long calls a day. I lost all agency of my own schedule. Couldn't pop off and go walk my dog in the park with my partner for 30 minutes without worrying about a client message I COULD NOT MISS (leadership). I'm glad I tried it, it's unfortunate I didn't do well as it really knocked my confidence down but I'm happy to have found a supportive and good environment after that back in SWE. Lots of bad companies/jobs, but there are some good ones. I'm hoping the same story goes with tech sales at some places and that ship was just on fire and I didn't realize it because I had no prior experience to look back on. edit: And then the culture. The enterprise sales culture. I'm sorry but I never want to encounter it again. The amount of slack messages I got that were "hey" and waiting for me to respond there was wild. But the biggest was nobody at all cared about what I had going on. Just a worker drone to shutup and generate revenue no matter how close to burn out you get.

linuxftw 6y ago
Maybe it was a bad year to make the jump. The normal sales job (from a non-sales person POV anyway) seems to be business class travel, eating the finest foods, drinking the finest booze, going out and entertaining the engineers for stuff they were going to buy anyway, and then cashing big checks.
- swozey 6y ago
  Yeah, started right before the pandi, was 60% travel but before I ever got to travel we went into lock down and it became 100% zoom. I'm curious if being in person would have helped me, though. I'm not sure how much it it was zoom exacerbating my anxieties or my own anxieties/introversion burning me out. (or the terrible company) edit: I was a PSE not really tech sales, I did have to do engineering and got the hard technical questions all day long. It's not your run of the mill sales job, the sales person used me as their tech arm. It was mentally exhausting.
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    I find I can talk all day long in person, it's zoom meetings that drain my soul.
  - apohn 6y ago
    > I did have to do engineering and got the hard technical questions all day long. It's not your run of the mill sales job, the sales person used me as their tech arm. It was mentally exhausting. I had a role similar to what you are describing at one point. I got to the point where I was basically mentally exhausted and short-tempered all the time. I had a lot of in-person meetings and strongly preferred web meetings. With web meetings you only put on your game face for the length of the meeting. With in-person meetings you travel to, you need to put on your game face for much longer, including before and after the actual meetings. IMO the way to not destroy yourself in PSE roles is to basically be the type of person who is okay with having a very superficial technical understanding of the wide range of things you see at customers. Otherwise there are an infinite number of technical things you can become an expert on, and other people in your team and sales people will absolutely crush you under the weight of all the different questions your customers have. At least for me, I was an technical expert in a bunch of enterprise level technologies and duct tape stuff that basically translated into nothing if I moved a bit out of the software I was responsible for. Some people are okay with that. I was not and it really crushed my mental state after a few years.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  That would probably be nice once in a while, but doing it all the time sounds horrible.
- apohn 6y ago
  And to people outside of Engineering, SWEs have flexible hours, can work from home, are paid really well, can take breaks whenever they want, can actually go on vacation without constantly checking their email, and can switch jobs easily. Sure, some SWEs at are making $500K a year, work 2 hours a day, and get their underwear washed with free laundry service. Some sales people have a royal life that they pay for by traveling like crazy and working crazy hours to deal with internal and customer politics. But a lot of sales people don't have unlimited expense accounts and their job is a slog to try and convince people to take a second meeting and buy something at some point.

mrfusion 6y ago

What exactly does that involve? How did you make that transition?

Demonsult 6y ago
These companies are generally looking for people with a good number of years experience in a domain. It also helped that I had a consulting background and had helped closed deals in the past. The interview was mostly about making sure I mixed well with other people. There was a coding challenge, but not leetcode style. I had to write a program that solved a real world sort of problem. A surprising number of people do fail this, even though naive O(n2) solutions can still pass. The transition was a bit of a shock. They just threw me in the water. Like many of you, I have impostor syndrome. Being put forth as a expert on a system I knew little about was very awkward. It took about 6 months for me to be comfortable with what I am doing. I do not spend all day on Zoom like others in the comment section. Instead, I deal with a smaller number of high value deals. That distinction in probably key to whether the job is better or worse than SWE.

zippergz 6y ago

If you don't mind saying, what is "highly paid" in this context? I have no concept of what sales people make compared to SWEs. How much (if any) pay cut would I be looking at if I took this route?

Demonsult 6y ago
I made almost 50% more this year. Also, the bonuses flow in continuously instead of once per year.
- oedoedxef 6y ago
  Pffffffft I am resisting my natural tendency to get very angry at reading this. Sales is a profession where the top 1% of earners are like lottery winners and the bottom 99% of earners are like customer service. In software engineering, the gains are much more equally distributed and the contribution to society is more valuable.
  - Demonsult 6y ago
    Keep in mind that sales engineers usually have a good sized base salary, unlike pure sales people. With that comes a smaller commission than sales people. As for contribution to society, I don't agree. The big winners is software make some pretty toxic stuff.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

apohn 6y ago

Tech sales works if the company you are working for has a good product that sells and a good sales culture. Lots of people are in software sales jobs that are basically just dealing with internal sales politics and customer politics to get somebody to make a decision to buy something based on "vision", not really product merit.