5 ms·

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,

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.

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.