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Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to

Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs. Give a good salesperson a handwavy outline of something to sell, and they will sell it. They don't need technical accuracy for success. Yes, this is bad for customers, and makes life harder, and results in ridiculous, counterproductive, infuriating situations for IT staff, engineers, and other people who have to deal with the technical realities of every day business. A salesperson can just mash psychological buttons in manager's brains, and they'll make the sale. The consumer, in enterprise level markets, is hardly ever the team or individual in charge of operating the technology. The consumer is the manager, or managerial team, looking to check boxes and shuffle numbers and spend $X on Y department, for which they get rewarded for a wide array of arbitrary outcomes, almost none of which have anything to do with the practical impact of the product in question on the people who end up most affected by the purchase. If an engineer with a solid understanding of the product being sold is in charge, he's in the best place to rein in the sales and marketing teams, and to direct development based on customer reality. This probably results in lower profits, overall, but a better product, and a better reputation in the long run.

redserk 2y ago
Not sure if I agree with an engineer inherently being better here. The ideal case is having leadership who uses the product, or at least is willing to walk in the shoes of an end-user. Plenty of engineers do not do this either.
- sgarland 2y ago
  Anecdotally, having worked at multiple small-medium companies with a variety of leadership backgrounds, the worst have been sales background. Engineering backgrounds have ranged from OK to great.
palata 2y ago
> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. I assume you are an engineer? I am too, not judging :-). Everybody tends to think that they are in a better position to know how the product should look like, I think it's a normal bias. Not that salespeople are better. I hate the direction Sonos chose. Just saying that engineers are not always the best at understanding what customers want and need (if you asked me, I would say that everybody needs Yubikeys, and yet people actively fight to keep their right to reuse the same weak password everywhere :-) ).
GenerWork 2y ago
>Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. This is one of the key competencies of UX professionals, specifically UX researchers.
- usr1106 2y ago
  In all disciplines you find more not so brilliant people than truly brilliant people. I am a software engineer, but it happens that I cannot understand how our UX professionals have designed our product's UI. Or if I understand it I find it awkward. Now you could say that's because I am so much below average, that I am a hopeless case... But we get customer reports that they are more confused than I am. So having UX people is not silver bullet.
  - TulliusCicero 2y ago
    A subset of UX people want something that's beautiful or elegant or cutting edge more than they want something that actually makes sense for the user. Just like some engineers want something that's technically impressive more than they want what's good for the user.
dkokelley 2y ago
> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs. Why do you say that? My gut reaction is that the opposite is true. Salespeople must understand their customers' wants and needs in order to effectively sell! Engineers are generally a step or two removed from the customers. This may be an unpopular take on HN but I'd wager the people who spend time directly with the customers have a better chance at understanding what they want. Taken a step further, customer support probably has the best understanding of their markets' needs!
- atonse 2y ago
  I'd go as far as to say that the role doesn't matter, it's the attitude of the individual. I've worked with a few developers AND sales people that didn't give a hoot about what their customers thought. In the case of Sales, they only cared about making their targets. In the case of the devs that didn't care, they spent 99% of their time doing silly (in my opinion) arguments about frameworks, design patterns, and whitespace and formatting rules in CI. Not that things like design patterns are inherently silly. But if they don't result in a better customer experience (via more stable and maintainable software, for example), then it's a waste of time. I'm a developer by trade but have ALWAYS had an attitude of "it only matters if it's useful to the user" – and have butted heads sometimes with developers on which features to prioritize.
- majormunky 2y ago
  > Taken a step further, customer support probably has the best understanding of their markets' needs! People working in customer support, from my experience, sort of see the anti-survivorship bias working in action. Not many people call up to say how well something works. I would agree with you though on good Salespeople (ones that do try to understand what customers need and all that, not necessarily ones that sell the most) knowing what the customer wants/needs.
  - saghm 2y ago
    > People working in customer support, from my experience, sort of see the anti-survivorship bias working in action. I used to see this all the time at an old job where my team worked on open source client libraries for using the main product that our company sold. A decent number people seemed to think that an increasing number of tickets being filed against one of the libraries was a sign that users weren't happy with it, but it always seemed obvious to me that you couldn't easily conclude that; you might have 99 happy users with no issues for every 1 unhappy user who filed a ticket, or you might have literally only unhappy users and nobody without issues. On the other hand, getting literally zero tickets might mean that you have plenty of happy users, or it might mean you have basically no users at all. I'd often talk to younger engineers who were interning on the team or recently joined full-time about how this dynamic informed how I approached my job; usually, we'd only hear from users who had issues, so the "goal" in some ways to was to make the software so good that you'd never hear from them. If you did hear from a user, that was a valuable opportunity where you might learn something you could do in the future to make things better the first time.
jedberg 2y ago
> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs. I think you have that backwards. Sales people absolutely need to understand what they customer wants and needs, or they won't buy it. Engineers just know what they want to build because it's what they want. But really, Product Managers are the ones who are in the best position to figure it out. They get input from sales, customer service, and engineering, and produce competitive research, and then prioritize from there. A good CEO is going to listen to their the PMs.
karaterobot 2y ago
> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs. There's no reason to believe an engineer would understand the customer needs more than a salesperson. I know a lot of engineers who would do literally anything to avoid dealing with a real customer. At the companies I've worked for, engineers don't even talk to customers if there isn't a specific, technical issue they need to be there for. Meanwhile, salespeople actually talk to customers, probably more than anyone except support.
cjk 2y ago
I think the solid understanding of the product and its users is the important part, not whether you’re an engineer or not. That understanding (or lack thereof) can and does transcend role.
rodgerd 2y ago
> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. This is why programmer-driven open source projects are a paragon of usability and have taken over 90% of the mobile phone, desktop, and app market.
scarface_74 2y ago
> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs As an engineer, I had no idea about: - what the utility companies wanted when I was working for a SaaS company that printed and processed bills - what the field service techs wanted when I was writing software for ruggedized windows ce devices - what the railroad car owners or repairmen wanted when I was working for a company creating a SaaS (https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/CRB_ProceduresManual.pdf https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/CRB...) - I knew nothing about what the healthcare industry needed in the three SaaS companies I worked for including software for health care workers dealing with special needs kids - the various “enterprises” mostly in the edtech or state and local government space in consulting.
- rezistik 2y ago
  In all of your examples you're working at a company, ideally the person running the company had that domain expertise.
  - ako 2y ago
    No, the person running the company has expertise running companies. Customer understanding lies with designers, analysts, product owners, product management, but also sales: what is the pain we’re addressing, how can ensure the customers really understands the consequences of not addressing the pain, how can we ensure the customer sees our product is the best to address their pain.

redserk 2y ago

Not sure if I agree with an engineer inherently being better here. The ideal case is having leadership who uses the product, or at least is willing to walk in the shoes of an end-user. Plenty of engineers do not do this either.

sgarland 2y ago
Anecdotally, having worked at multiple small-medium companies with a variety of leadership backgrounds, the worst have been sales background. Engineering backgrounds have ranged from OK to great.

palata 2y ago

> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. I assume you are an engineer? I am too, not judging :-). Everybody tends to think that they are in a better position to know how the product should look like, I think it's a normal bias. Not that salespeople are better. I hate the direction Sonos chose. Just saying that engineers are not always the best at understanding what customers want and need (if you asked me, I would say that everybody needs Yubikeys, and yet people actively fight to keep their right to reuse the same weak password everywhere :-) ).

GenerWork 2y ago

>Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. This is one of the key competencies of UX professionals, specifically UX researchers.

usr1106 2y ago
In all disciplines you find more not so brilliant people than truly brilliant people. I am a software engineer, but it happens that I cannot understand how our UX professionals have designed our product's UI. Or if I understand it I find it awkward. Now you could say that's because I am so much below average, that I am a hopeless case... But we get customer reports that they are more confused than I am. So having UX people is not silver bullet.
- TulliusCicero 2y ago
  A subset of UX people want something that's beautiful or elegant or cutting edge more than they want something that actually makes sense for the user. Just like some engineers want something that's technically impressive more than they want what's good for the user.

dkokelley 2y ago

> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs. Why do you say that? My gut reaction is that the opposite is true. Salespeople must understand their customers' wants and needs in order to effectively sell! Engineers are generally a step or two removed from the customers. This may be an unpopular take on HN but I'd wager the people who spend time directly with the customers have a better chance at understanding what they want. Taken a step further, customer support probably has the best understanding of their markets' needs!

atonse 2y ago
I'd go as far as to say that the role doesn't matter, it's the attitude of the individual. I've worked with a few developers AND sales people that didn't give a hoot about what their customers thought. In the case of Sales, they only cared about making their targets. In the case of the devs that didn't care, they spent 99% of their time doing silly (in my opinion) arguments about frameworks, design patterns, and whitespace and formatting rules in CI. Not that things like design patterns are inherently silly. But if they don't result in a better customer experience (via more stable and maintainable software, for example), then it's a waste of time. I'm a developer by trade but have ALWAYS had an attitude of "it only matters if it's useful to the user" – and have butted heads sometimes with developers on which features to prioritize.
majormunky 2y ago
> Taken a step further, customer support probably has the best understanding of their markets' needs! People working in customer support, from my experience, sort of see the anti-survivorship bias working in action. Not many people call up to say how well something works. I would agree with you though on good Salespeople (ones that do try to understand what customers need and all that, not necessarily ones that sell the most) knowing what the customer wants/needs.
- saghm 2y ago
  > People working in customer support, from my experience, sort of see the anti-survivorship bias working in action. I used to see this all the time at an old job where my team worked on open source client libraries for using the main product that our company sold. A decent number people seemed to think that an increasing number of tickets being filed against one of the libraries was a sign that users weren't happy with it, but it always seemed obvious to me that you couldn't easily conclude that; you might have 99 happy users with no issues for every 1 unhappy user who filed a ticket, or you might have literally only unhappy users and nobody without issues. On the other hand, getting literally zero tickets might mean that you have plenty of happy users, or it might mean you have basically no users at all. I'd often talk to younger engineers who were interning on the team or recently joined full-time about how this dynamic informed how I approached my job; usually, we'd only hear from users who had issues, so the "goal" in some ways to was to make the software so good that you'd never hear from them. If you did hear from a user, that was a valuable opportunity where you might learn something you could do in the future to make things better the first time.

jedberg 2y ago

> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs. I think you have that backwards. Sales people absolutely need to understand what they customer wants and needs, or they won't buy it. Engineers just know what they want to build because it's what they want. But really, Product Managers are the ones who are in the best position to figure it out. They get input from sales, customer service, and engineering, and produce competitive research, and then prioritize from there. A good CEO is going to listen to their the PMs.

karaterobot 2y ago

> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs. There's no reason to believe an engineer would understand the customer needs more than a salesperson. I know a lot of engineers who would do literally anything to avoid dealing with a real customer. At the companies I've worked for, engineers don't even talk to customers if there isn't a specific, technical issue they need to be there for. Meanwhile, salespeople actually talk to customers, probably more than anyone except support.

cjk 2y ago

I think the solid understanding of the product and its users is the important part, not whether you’re an engineer or not. That understanding (or lack thereof) can and does transcend role.

rodgerd 2y ago

> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. This is why programmer-driven open source projects are a paragon of usability and have taken over 90% of the mobile phone, desktop, and app market.

scarface_74 2y ago

> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs As an engineer, I had no idea about: - what the utility companies wanted when I was working for a SaaS company that printed and processed bills - what the field service techs wanted when I was writing software for ruggedized windows ce devices - what the railroad car owners or repairmen wanted when I was working for a company creating a SaaS (https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/CRB_ProceduresManual.pdf https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/CRB...) - I knew nothing about what the healthcare industry needed in the three SaaS companies I worked for including software for health care workers dealing with special needs kids - the various “enterprises” mostly in the edtech or state and local government space in consulting.

rezistik 2y ago
In all of your examples you're working at a company, ideally the person running the company had that domain expertise.
- ako 2y ago
  No, the person running the company has expertise running companies. Customer understanding lies with designers, analysts, product owners, product management, but also sales: what is the pain we’re addressing, how can ensure the customers really understands the consequences of not addressing the pain, how can we ensure the customer sees our product is the best to address their pain.