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I think the most useful concept is to think of you as a business and whoever pays you as your customer. Then think in terms of providing value to your customer

I think the most useful concept is to think of you as a business and whoever pays you as your customer. Then think in terms of providing value to your customer. As long as you provide value, your customer (or another like them) will keep paying for it. If you work for BigCo pushing paper around, figure out why BigCo thinks that's worth money, and then figure out how to provide them better value. Whether it's pushing paper faster, reducing the amount of paper that needs pushed, training others to push paper more efficiently, or whatever, the point is that if you're providing clear value to BigCo that's worth more than what they're spending on you, you can keep them as a customer as long as you want. Even if BigCo goes under, as long as HugeCo and all of their competitors need the same thing, you can get them as customers. That's where real "job security" comes from -- having skills that customers are willing to pay for.

jleader 14y ago
Sales people instinctively understand that you can't just rationally provide value to your customer; you also have to persuade the customer's decision-makers that you're providing value. At BigCo, this means you can't just do what's good for the company, you also have to make sure your boss is happy about what you're doing. This pitfall is especially tempting to hyper-rational programmer types, who think that providing value is sufficient, and that no company (including their personal "company of 1") should ever need sales or marketing departments.
- rprospero 14y ago
  There is a strategy to the rational approach, but it's rarely stated: if your organization can't recognize value without undue effort, then it's going to lose to one who can. To put it differently, if your job is the ship's lookout, you don't try and convince the captain that he needs a lookout. You try to find a new captain who won't sink the ship.

jleader 14y ago

Sales people instinctively understand that you can't just rationally provide value to your customer; you also have to persuade the customer's decision-makers that you're providing value. At BigCo, this means you can't just do what's good for the company, you also have to make sure your boss is happy about what you're doing. This pitfall is especially tempting to hyper-rational programmer types, who think that providing value is sufficient, and that no company (including their personal "company of 1") should ever need sales or marketing departments.

rprospero 14y ago
There is a strategy to the rational approach, but it's rarely stated: if your organization can't recognize value without undue effort, then it's going to lose to one who can. To put it differently, if your job is the ship's lookout, you don't try and convince the captain that he needs a lookout. You try to find a new captain who won't sink the ship.