6 ms·

The company I worked for used some Oracle tech and I was trying to get some high level information about a product but their website kept requesting my e-mail j

by mrtksn 5y ago

The company I worked for used some Oracle tech and I was trying to get some high level information about a product but their website kept requesting my e-mail just to show me some documentation. Once I provided them with my e-mail, I started receiving "You must take us to your leader" messages in a tone as if I was their employee and they were commanding me to take them to my CEO. I can't imagine myself chasing the CEO in the building because some sales people in Oracle told me to do so :) To be fair, after being in meetings with theirs sales engineers(who wore the best shirts I've ever seen) a few times I grew to respect their stubbornness and the way they structured their corporate machine. It's a valuable lesson to have an exposure to corporate dealings I believe, before that I used to do freelance stuff and had no idea how a simple webpage can cost millions and why a large corporation won't buy that easily from a small company with similar or better product at the fraction of the cost.

blastonico 5y ago
> You must take us to your leader. LOL, it sounds like General Zod in Superman II (1981). You should have asked if they want you to kneel before them as well.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  It was both funny and scary as if I was reached by demanding aliens who were watching me :) I didn't know what to do, so I simply start marking it as spam and moved on. I guess they had a sales pitch based on the stuff I looked at.
aenis 5y ago
Funny, similar thing happened to me. IBM along a few other behemots pitched for a serious project at a company I worked for as enterprise arch. All companies brought their top salespeople, and all tried nasty things, but IBM was by far the worst. Their top guy started their pitch by saying he chatted with our CEO over the christmas holidays. He mentioned - and I am not making this up - that he should be talking to people higher in the org. (The most junior person in the room was me, the rest were board-2/-3s). It soon emerged their thing could not work, and I killed it in the first round of pitching. What followed was my bosses' boss, the CIO of a very large company, called me and gave me an earfull since he himself has to explain to CEO why we had the audacity to not choose IBM. I'd not touch anything IBM ever. Bunch of assholes.
- wildzzz 5y ago
  It's because they want to talk to the most power in the decision but with the least information as to how the problem could be solved without the help of Oracle/IBM/whoever.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    This, 100%. Think about it another way: IBM et al. sales only lose by talking to lower-title folks. Best case, they lose control of the narrative as it's reported up internally, and someone higher up still has to approve it. Worst case, some engineer who actually knows their shit very quickly outlines why this can never work for the given problem. Once you're into the VP level, there's (usually) less technical knowledge, because folks at that level have full days crammed with higher-level decisions. So it's more plausible for sales to pitch {insert whatever buzzwordy, batshit crazy idea} and have it fly.
    - openknot 5y ago
      To add on, it's also a standard negotiation tactic for a negotiator to try and speak to the highest-ranking person possible. This tactic was specifically recommended by a guest speaker at a Stanford Business School seminar about how to negotiate uploaded to YouTube (timestamped to 31:59 for the relevant bit). [0] [0] (Seminar from 2007) https://youtu.be/rCmvMDrCWjs?t=1919 https://youtu.be/rCmvMDrCWjs?t=1919
      - geomark 5y ago
        Yep. I used to do technical sales support. I would come in after the sales manager had broken the ice and arranged for some of the customer's technical team to listen to our proposed solution. But the sales training we got told us to always sell at the highest level possible, preferably the person who would sign the purchase order, not lower level technical people. That didn't always work out. We sold a lot of stuff to Hewlett-Packard and they always forced most of the decisions down to the engineers. They would rarely let us talk to the people who could sign the purchase order. The sales people didn't like it much since they didn't have the control that they were used to. But it was kind of great for all of us technical people because we could sit around with the HP engineers and talk about technical stuff without a lot of sales-speak getting in the way.
raverbashing 5y ago
A little psychological manipulation and marketing gimmicks (including overdressed people and marketing directed to CXOs) goes a long way.
sjg007 5y ago
What are these shirts? I must know!
- mrtksn 5y ago
  I don't know but my manager was a non-technical guy with passion for fashion and even his shirts weren't as nice!
  - digisign 5y ago
    Unfortunately, still don't know what you're talking about. Probably because I don't have expertise in the area. Am imaging some kind of white-collar business shirt that's... platinum plated? If the design is not extravagant, how would anyone know?
    - sgt101 5y ago
      These are the best ones I've ever worn : https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/products/white-west-indian-sea-island-cotton-shirt-with-t-a-collar-and-double-cuffs https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/products/white-west-indian-se...
      - Daneel_ 5y ago
        For the price you'd want them to be.
      - akudha 5y ago
        640$, lol My entire wardrobe costs less than that, and no, I am not lying. It must be nice to have enough money to spend on such luxury. Is it really that much better than a $10 t-shirt?
        mrtksn 5y ago
        Oh, it is much better than a $10 shirt but its utility doesn't come from it's comfort or purely aesthetics IMHO. Maybe it's silly but people do judge from appearance because it tells something about you. I have been watching this famous fashion photographer and he was talking about using an iPhone for last photoshoot and he noted that he can do it and charge full price for it only because he already has a name in the industry and a nobody will need to flash large and expensive cameras to justify the price asked. Think what it it tells about you to wear really nice shirt. Firstly, it implies that you already sold something to someone for a lot of money and you got paid and bought that shirt, right? Secondly it implies dominance at least in one area, you are the person with the best shirt in the room so who knows what else you are best at. Silly but our primate brains easily get intimidated and extrapolate. There are also many other fallacies that our brains easily fall in, so looking impressive is a superpower actually. Also, everything is a costume. If you are interviewing for a nerdy position you better look like a nerd but you can always be the nerd with the best nerdy shirt.
prepend 5y ago
My first Oracle experience was similar. Back in the 90s, I was tasked with replacing our old mssql6.5 generic custom built rack log server with something stronger as the product was successful and we had money. Oracle put me in touch with their eval solutions people who took all my info on number of users, transactions, size, etc and came back with an estimate of a $2M Sun+Oracle box. I told them that the current solution ran on like $10k of licenses and hardware and they revised the spec down to $250k. They were totally clueless but projected absolute competence.

by mrtksn 5y ago

blastonico 5y ago

> You must take us to your leader. LOL, it sounds like General Zod in Superman II (1981). You should have asked if they want you to kneel before them as well.

mrtksn 5y ago
It was both funny and scary as if I was reached by demanding aliens who were watching me :) I didn't know what to do, so I simply start marking it as spam and moved on. I guess they had a sales pitch based on the stuff I looked at.

aenis 5y ago

Funny, similar thing happened to me. IBM along a few other behemots pitched for a serious project at a company I worked for as enterprise arch. All companies brought their top salespeople, and all tried nasty things, but IBM was by far the worst. Their top guy started their pitch by saying he chatted with our CEO over the christmas holidays. He mentioned - and I am not making this up - that he should be talking to people higher in the org. (The most junior person in the room was me, the rest were board-2/-3s). It soon emerged their thing could not work, and I killed it in the first round of pitching. What followed was my bosses' boss, the CIO of a very large company, called me and gave me an earfull since he himself has to explain to CEO why we had the audacity to not choose IBM. I'd not touch anything IBM ever. Bunch of assholes.

wildzzz 5y ago
It's because they want to talk to the most power in the decision but with the least information as to how the problem could be solved without the help of Oracle/IBM/whoever.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  This, 100%. Think about it another way: IBM et al. sales only lose by talking to lower-title folks. Best case, they lose control of the narrative as it's reported up internally, and someone higher up still has to approve it. Worst case, some engineer who actually knows their shit very quickly outlines why this can never work for the given problem. Once you're into the VP level, there's (usually) less technical knowledge, because folks at that level have full days crammed with higher-level decisions. So it's more plausible for sales to pitch {insert whatever buzzwordy, batshit crazy idea} and have it fly.
  - openknot 5y ago
    To add on, it's also a standard negotiation tactic for a negotiator to try and speak to the highest-ranking person possible. This tactic was specifically recommended by a guest speaker at a Stanford Business School seminar about how to negotiate uploaded to YouTube (timestamped to 31:59 for the relevant bit). [0] [0] (Seminar from 2007) https://youtu.be/rCmvMDrCWjs?t=1919 https://youtu.be/rCmvMDrCWjs?t=1919
    - geomark 5y ago
      Yep. I used to do technical sales support. I would come in after the sales manager had broken the ice and arranged for some of the customer's technical team to listen to our proposed solution. But the sales training we got told us to always sell at the highest level possible, preferably the person who would sign the purchase order, not lower level technical people. That didn't always work out. We sold a lot of stuff to Hewlett-Packard and they always forced most of the decisions down to the engineers. They would rarely let us talk to the people who could sign the purchase order. The sales people didn't like it much since they didn't have the control that they were used to. But it was kind of great for all of us technical people because we could sit around with the HP engineers and talk about technical stuff without a lot of sales-speak getting in the way.

raverbashing 5y ago

A little psychological manipulation and marketing gimmicks (including overdressed people and marketing directed to CXOs) goes a long way.

sjg007 5y ago

What are these shirts? I must know!

mrtksn 5y ago
I don't know but my manager was a non-technical guy with passion for fashion and even his shirts weren't as nice!
- digisign 5y ago
  Unfortunately, still don't know what you're talking about. Probably because I don't have expertise in the area. Am imaging some kind of white-collar business shirt that's... platinum plated? If the design is not extravagant, how would anyone know?
  - sgt101 5y ago
    These are the best ones I've ever worn : https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/products/white-west-indian-sea-island-cotton-shirt-with-t-a-collar-and-double-cuffs https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/products/white-west-indian-se...
    - Daneel_ 5y ago
      For the price you'd want them to be.
    - akudha 5y ago
      640$, lol My entire wardrobe costs less than that, and no, I am not lying. It must be nice to have enough money to spend on such luxury. Is it really that much better than a $10 t-shirt?
      - mrtksn 5y ago
        Oh, it is much better than a $10 shirt but its utility doesn't come from it's comfort or purely aesthetics IMHO. Maybe it's silly but people do judge from appearance because it tells something about you. I have been watching this famous fashion photographer and he was talking about using an iPhone for last photoshoot and he noted that he can do it and charge full price for it only because he already has a name in the industry and a nobody will need to flash large and expensive cameras to justify the price asked. Think what it it tells about you to wear really nice shirt. Firstly, it implies that you already sold something to someone for a lot of money and you got paid and bought that shirt, right? Secondly it implies dominance at least in one area, you are the person with the best shirt in the room so who knows what else you are best at. Silly but our primate brains easily get intimidated and extrapolate. There are also many other fallacies that our brains easily fall in, so looking impressive is a superpower actually. Also, everything is a costume. If you are interviewing for a nerdy position you better look like a nerd but you can always be the nerd with the best nerdy shirt.

prepend 5y ago

My first Oracle experience was similar. Back in the 90s, I was tasked with replacing our old mssql6.5 generic custom built rack log server with something stronger as the product was successful and we had money. Oracle put me in touch with their eval solutions people who took all my info on number of users, transactions, size, etc and came back with an estimate of a $2M Sun+Oracle box. I told them that the current solution ran on like $10k of licenses and hardware and they revised the spec down to $250k. They were totally clueless but projected absolute competence.