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>This trip is not necessarily a bad thing to have done, and more likely than not a good thing. You need your sales team properly motivated. You need the rest o

>This trip is not necessarily a bad thing to have done, and more likely than not a good thing. You need your sales team properly motivated. You need the rest of your team motivated, too. Optics are a thing. I understand your point and don't wholly disagree, but send them to something within the country or even within the same state. If you weather the layoffs and right yourself as a company, then send them to the Virgin Islands again. Instead, now you've got a company whose sales team is motivated, but every other department is confused, nervous and anxious. Hell, there's probably even some animosity being built up towards the sales team, which will add to the interdepartmental bickering that you alluded to. Edit: In the context of the article/DataRobot specifically, I'd argue that the trip only adds to DataRobot's existing pile of shit in a way that overshadows any potential benefits. Morale seems to have been really low pre-trip.

gumby 4y ago
> You need the rest of your team motivated, too. Optics are a thing. I understand your point and don't wholly disagree, but send them to something within the country or even within the same state. If you weather the layoffs and right yourself as a company, then send them to the Virgin Islands again. If everybody respects each other they'll understand (I say this from experience). It's more like, "yuck, I'd hate to be one of those people but wow, I'm sure glad they are bringing in the money that pays everybody's salary". Frankly I was glad I've never been asked to / had to attend n entire sales meeting. It's really not my thing (I have "carried a bag" -- i.e. lived off my commission, when I had a mortgage and a wife who didn't have a work visa to support). And remember a sales person's job is far more precarious than a developer's, or almost anyone else's. Miss a quarter and you can be canned on the spot. Miss a big deal you've been working on for 18 months can mean the same. Actually, depending on the company's sales cycle, being too far behind after the first month of the quarter can get you ejected. From that article, the new management of datarobot weren't trying to build a solid business, but rather extract the maximum amount they could.
- iamacyborg 4y ago
  > I'm sure glad they are bringing in the money that pays everybody's salary Err yeah, 'cause Sales are solely responsible for that and not every department in the company as a whole.
hinkley 4y ago
It's not just the trip, it's what the trip means, and what it doesn't mean. In these situations people are trying to read something into anything they hear, and this one is a powderkeg. Everyone thinks you can get large trips refunded at the last minute and it's common for someone to point out that's not how the world works. But what they'll be missing here is how far out were the reservations booked, and if we're doing layoffs now, what does it say about the executive team's ability to forecast? At least they weren't yet willing to admit to themselves that next year was going to be tough, or someone has been lying to the rest of the team about how things are, in an effort to... what? Get one more bonus? Keep morale up? If people get demotivated by that, then they were one incident away from demotivation already and you fucked up a long time ago. Which is unpleasant to do and so people will procrastinate.

gumby 4y ago

> You need the rest of your team motivated, too. Optics are a thing. I understand your point and don't wholly disagree, but send them to something within the country or even within the same state. If you weather the layoffs and right yourself as a company, then send them to the Virgin Islands again. If everybody respects each other they'll understand (I say this from experience). It's more like, "yuck, I'd hate to be one of those people but wow, I'm sure glad they are bringing in the money that pays everybody's salary". Frankly I was glad I've never been asked to / had to attend n entire sales meeting. It's really not my thing (I have "carried a bag" -- i.e. lived off my commission, when I had a mortgage and a wife who didn't have a work visa to support). And remember a sales person's job is far more precarious than a developer's, or almost anyone else's. Miss a quarter and you can be canned on the spot. Miss a big deal you've been working on for 18 months can mean the same. Actually, depending on the company's sales cycle, being too far behind after the first month of the quarter can get you ejected. From that article, the new management of datarobot weren't trying to build a solid business, but rather extract the maximum amount they could.

iamacyborg 4y ago
> I'm sure glad they are bringing in the money that pays everybody's salary Err yeah, 'cause Sales are solely responsible for that and not every department in the company as a whole.

hinkley 4y ago

It's not just the trip, it's what the trip means, and what it doesn't mean. In these situations people are trying to read something into anything they hear, and this one is a powderkeg. Everyone thinks you can get large trips refunded at the last minute and it's common for someone to point out that's not how the world works. But what they'll be missing here is how far out were the reservations booked, and if we're doing layoffs now, what does it say about the executive team's ability to forecast? At least they weren't yet willing to admit to themselves that next year was going to be tough, or someone has been lying to the rest of the team about how things are, in an effort to... what? Get one more bonus? Keep morale up? If people get demotivated by that, then they were one incident away from demotivation already and you fucked up a long time ago. Which is unpleasant to do and so people will procrastinate.