6 ms·

As someone who works in tech sales - the real bullshit here is that this is some right-out-of-college 22 y/o entry level sales person (SDR) who was likely told

As someone who works in tech sales - the real bullshit here is that this is some right-out-of-college 22 y/o entry level sales person (SDR) who was likely told to to take this list and message everyone on linkedin 1x1. The negative impact of this goes on his shoulders where the positive responses from this get passed off to someone else who is outside the blast radius. Stuff like this is the norm when sales is viewed as an extension of marketing ("we need more leads") and not as a function that helps companies coordinate the evaluation and purchase of software ("we need to find out if this is the right fit for them") and the ones who pay the highest price are at the lowest levels when it's executives who are giving the orders.

fireball_blaze 6y ago
> The negative impact of this goes on his shoulders Well, in this case, people are mad at Azure/MS and Canonical for betraying developer trust, not the individual salesperson. He's just a pawn in the game. It's not like this guy went rogue; this is his job. The system is setup in a creepy way to enable this type of upselling, which makes people uncomfortable. Whether or not Azure or Canonical change policies, we shall see.
- BlueTie 6y ago
  > Well, in this case, people are mad at Azure/MS and Canonical for betraying developer trust, not the individual salesperson. He's just a pawn in the game. It's not like this guy went rogue; this is his job. It's still his linkedin profile plastered all over twitter right now though more than Azure's EULA/T&C's.
  - fireball_blaze 6y ago
    But no one is calling this guy a villain. For example, his name is not mentioned once in all these HN comments. It's not his fault. And indeed the Azure T&C's are definitely referenced a in the Twitter discussion with the OP. Such as: https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168 https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies."" My reading of this statement is that they are scapegoating the guy.
      - johnsoft 6y ago
        They are trying to scapegoat the guy. Thankfully, people are not falling for it.
        cptskippy 6y ago
        This. Typical Marketing and Sales tactics involve using the lowest level employee both because they're naive and because they have nothing to lose because they're already lowest on the pecking order.
        srndsnd 6y ago
        I pulled up his LinkedIn. He started at Canoncial three weeks ago, fresh out of undergrad. I really hope he comes out of this unscathed.
      - daveFNbuck 6y ago
        I think an attempt to scapegoat would look more like "in violation of our established policies and rigorous training, a Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn." The actual quote acknowledges that the company's training and policies are at fault. I'd also expect a scapegoat to be publicly fired or disciplined, did they say that elsewhere?
        jacurtis 6y ago
        > "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies." This was their official statement regarding this matter. They provided this to The Register to defend their actions when this story got written up: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubuntu_data_sharing/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubunt... Edit: Yes so just to be clear, according to their official statement they are scapegoating the salesman. They call him a "new Canonical Sales Rep" to imply he isn't experienced and made a mistake. The only responsibility that Canonical took is that they will "review its sales training".
  - kodah 6y ago
    > It's still his linkedin profile plastered all over twitter right now though more than Azure's EULA/T&C's. This is pretty disgusting that someone didn't think to cover his name or image while complaining about what is essentially privacy and having a central beef with two companies. That said, while it's disgusting to me, it can easily be shrugged off as "thoughtless" by others because privacy is not a mainstream concept.
  - aasasd 6y ago
    Frankly, using a personal profile for work activity in this vein is just not a good idea. Regardless of whether Linkedin ‘forbids’ creating secondary accounts.
duxup 6y ago
I think LinkedIn is kinda ... tainted so mass spam is just considered par for the course on there, sadly. Nobody thinks twice about spamming on there. I log on there and it's all spam-ish content. And really all I want to know is what people I worked with are doing now / how they're doing....
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah spam, people kowtowing to their company's PR gospel, and the usual "inspirational" messages from sponsors. It's a sickening mess of PR giddiness but unfortunately it's needed to get a job nowadays. I hate it so much though, never post anything and I only accept people I actually know.
scoutt 6y ago
It could be also that the sales person did this on his own initiative for a couple of extra points. It might not be standard practice, but we'll never know.
- hobofan 6y ago
  If a random sales person can easily go ahead and access PII on their own initiative, that's 1000x worse.
  - that_guy_iain 6y ago
    Your PII will be in their CRM and they will have access to their CRM. Literally all they need to do this is your name and linkedin. If you think sales people won't have access to names of potential leads then I am not sure what you think sales people do on outbound sales.
    - hobofan 6y ago
      Even in an CRM there should be checks on who can access what PII and when. There is a difference between "you are assigned 100 leads for the duration of lead qualification" and "you can yourself pick out leads (and can get access to their PII) out of any of the thousands of possible leads".
      - that_guy_iain 6y ago
        I think your expectations of how a company handles Leads are unrealistic. A company just needs to keep your data safe. A sales person having access to Leads makes complete sense. A sales person being able to see if a lead has been chased makes sense. A sales person being able to find Leads to chase that they are best qualified to chase makes sense.
      - SilasX 6y ago
        Yes, and MS claimed that their agreement with Canonical required them not to share that info with sales.
aeturnum 6y ago
This reminds of of a 2019 paper on "moral crumple zones"[1] which talks about how the human component of automated systems are increasingly there to act as the focus for moral failures. Did your giant automated system do something bad? Blame the one human who was assigned to somehow stop that from happening, no matter how impossible that might be. [1] https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260 https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260
- aftbit 6y ago
  Also see Normal Accidents[1] which discusses "human error" as a PR cover for systems that are simply too complicated for unaided humans to monitor and understand. 1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192408.Normal_Accidents https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192408.Normal_Accidents
  - aeturnum 6y ago
    Normal Accidents is a real classic of the genre of disaster studies and points out some very useful realities for tightly coupled systems. Engineers building highly complex systems would do well to read the book and take its lessons to heart.
- tt433 6y ago
  The film "Brazil" was mentioned on another comment on another story a few days ago that touched on this theme, very good movie.
- SilasX 6y ago
  Interesting, that’s a great concept. But I’m not sure of the applicability to this case. I’d expect most people to feel icky contacting a lead on this basis, and so that feels like it’s well within the kind of thing a low level employee should throw a red flag at.
  - aeturnum 6y ago
    The aspect that reminded me of the paper (and the concept) was how the low level employee can really only screw up. If they do well, then it's a credit to their boss, but if they do something wrong it's on them and they'll be fired.
eznzt 6y ago
I think it really is a disgrace that his photo and name are out there linked to this. It's most likely not his fault.
michaelcampbell 6y ago
This feels like some modern day "Glengarry Glen Ross" type stuff.
- rchaud 6y ago
  Modern day? The pressure of sales jobs never went away. Ask your local bank teller. Their jobs exist in this day and age, not to help Grampy who prefers interacting one-on-one, but to sell her credit cards, expensive chequing accounts and loans she doesn't need.
raverbashing 6y ago
> is that this is some right-out-of-college 22 y/o entry level sales person (SDR) who was likely told to to take this list and message everyone on linkedin 1x1. We don't know that It could also have been that this person, just in the company and wanting to make a sale has used leads he wasn't supposed to act on. I can definitely see an inexperienced person doing that kind of mistake. Not blaming the guy, he was just trying to do his job and meet his targets. But I've seen a lot of "stupid" things done by new people at a company with various degrees of "making the customer or other departments annoyed" (in sales and in technical positions)
ycombinete 6y ago
I like this distinction that you’ve made between marketing and sales. As a technically minded person in a business development roll, I’d like to know more about it. Do you have any resources that you can suggest?

fireball_blaze 6y ago

> The negative impact of this goes on his shoulders Well, in this case, people are mad at Azure/MS and Canonical for betraying developer trust, not the individual salesperson. He's just a pawn in the game. It's not like this guy went rogue; this is his job. The system is setup in a creepy way to enable this type of upselling, which makes people uncomfortable. Whether or not Azure or Canonical change policies, we shall see.

BlueTie 6y ago
> Well, in this case, people are mad at Azure/MS and Canonical for betraying developer trust, not the individual salesperson. He's just a pawn in the game. It's not like this guy went rogue; this is his job. It's still his linkedin profile plastered all over twitter right now though more than Azure's EULA/T&C's.
- fireball_blaze 6y ago
  But no one is calling this guy a villain. For example, his name is not mentioned once in all these HN comments. It's not his fault. And indeed the Azure T&C's are definitely referenced a in the Twitter discussion with the OP. Such as: https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168 https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies."" My reading of this statement is that they are scapegoating the guy.
    - johnsoft 6y ago
      They are trying to scapegoat the guy. Thankfully, people are not falling for it.
      - cptskippy 6y ago
        This. Typical Marketing and Sales tactics involve using the lowest level employee both because they're naive and because they have nothing to lose because they're already lowest on the pecking order.
      - srndsnd 6y ago
        I pulled up his LinkedIn. He started at Canoncial three weeks ago, fresh out of undergrad. I really hope he comes out of this unscathed.
    - daveFNbuck 6y ago
      I think an attempt to scapegoat would look more like "in violation of our established policies and rigorous training, a Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn." The actual quote acknowledges that the company's training and policies are at fault. I'd also expect a scapegoat to be publicly fired or disciplined, did they say that elsewhere?
      - jacurtis 6y ago
        > "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies." This was their official statement regarding this matter. They provided this to The Register to defend their actions when this story got written up: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubuntu_data_sharing/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubunt... Edit: Yes so just to be clear, according to their official statement they are scapegoating the salesman. They call him a "new Canonical Sales Rep" to imply he isn't experienced and made a mistake. The only responsibility that Canonical took is that they will "review its sales training".
- kodah 6y ago
  > It's still his linkedin profile plastered all over twitter right now though more than Azure's EULA/T&C's. This is pretty disgusting that someone didn't think to cover his name or image while complaining about what is essentially privacy and having a central beef with two companies. That said, while it's disgusting to me, it can easily be shrugged off as "thoughtless" by others because privacy is not a mainstream concept.
- aasasd 6y ago
  Frankly, using a personal profile for work activity in this vein is just not a good idea. Regardless of whether Linkedin ‘forbids’ creating secondary accounts.

duxup 6y ago

I think LinkedIn is kinda ... tainted so mass spam is just considered par for the course on there, sadly. Nobody thinks twice about spamming on there. I log on there and it's all spam-ish content. And really all I want to know is what people I worked with are doing now / how they're doing....

GekkePrutser 6y ago
Yeah spam, people kowtowing to their company's PR gospel, and the usual "inspirational" messages from sponsors. It's a sickening mess of PR giddiness but unfortunately it's needed to get a job nowadays. I hate it so much though, never post anything and I only accept people I actually know.

scoutt 6y ago

It could be also that the sales person did this on his own initiative for a couple of extra points. It might not be standard practice, but we'll never know.

hobofan 6y ago
If a random sales person can easily go ahead and access PII on their own initiative, that's 1000x worse.
- that_guy_iain 6y ago
  Your PII will be in their CRM and they will have access to their CRM. Literally all they need to do this is your name and linkedin. If you think sales people won't have access to names of potential leads then I am not sure what you think sales people do on outbound sales.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    Even in an CRM there should be checks on who can access what PII and when. There is a difference between "you are assigned 100 leads for the duration of lead qualification" and "you can yourself pick out leads (and can get access to their PII) out of any of the thousands of possible leads".
    - that_guy_iain 6y ago
      I think your expectations of how a company handles Leads are unrealistic. A company just needs to keep your data safe. A sales person having access to Leads makes complete sense. A sales person being able to see if a lead has been chased makes sense. A sales person being able to find Leads to chase that they are best qualified to chase makes sense.
    - SilasX 6y ago
      Yes, and MS claimed that their agreement with Canonical required them not to share that info with sales.

aeturnum 6y ago

This reminds of of a 2019 paper on "moral crumple zones"[1] which talks about how the human component of automated systems are increasingly there to act as the focus for moral failures. Did your giant automated system do something bad? Blame the one human who was assigned to somehow stop that from happening, no matter how impossible that might be. [1] https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260 https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

aftbit 6y ago
Also see Normal Accidents[1] which discusses "human error" as a PR cover for systems that are simply too complicated for unaided humans to monitor and understand. 1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192408.Normal_Accidents https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192408.Normal_Accidents
- aeturnum 6y ago
  Normal Accidents is a real classic of the genre of disaster studies and points out some very useful realities for tightly coupled systems. Engineers building highly complex systems would do well to read the book and take its lessons to heart.
tt433 6y ago
The film "Brazil" was mentioned on another comment on another story a few days ago that touched on this theme, very good movie.
SilasX 6y ago
Interesting, that’s a great concept. But I’m not sure of the applicability to this case. I’d expect most people to feel icky contacting a lead on this basis, and so that feels like it’s well within the kind of thing a low level employee should throw a red flag at.
- aeturnum 6y ago
  The aspect that reminded me of the paper (and the concept) was how the low level employee can really only screw up. If they do well, then it's a credit to their boss, but if they do something wrong it's on them and they'll be fired.

eznzt 6y ago

I think it really is a disgrace that his photo and name are out there linked to this. It's most likely not his fault.

michaelcampbell 6y ago

This feels like some modern day "Glengarry Glen Ross" type stuff.

rchaud 6y ago
Modern day? The pressure of sales jobs never went away. Ask your local bank teller. Their jobs exist in this day and age, not to help Grampy who prefers interacting one-on-one, but to sell her credit cards, expensive chequing accounts and loans she doesn't need.

raverbashing 6y ago

> is that this is some right-out-of-college 22 y/o entry level sales person (SDR) who was likely told to to take this list and message everyone on linkedin 1x1. We don't know that It could also have been that this person, just in the company and wanting to make a sale has used leads he wasn't supposed to act on. I can definitely see an inexperienced person doing that kind of mistake. Not blaming the guy, he was just trying to do his job and meet his targets. But I've seen a lot of "stupid" things done by new people at a company with various degrees of "making the customer or other departments annoyed" (in sales and in technical positions)

ycombinete 6y ago

I like this distinction that you’ve made between marketing and sales. As a technically minded person in a business development roll, I’d like to know more about it. Do you have any resources that you can suggest?