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When I was a developer I thought “without me all the people in the building have nothing to sell and they can all just go home”. Then I spent a few years in sa

When I was a developer I thought “without me all the people in the building have nothing to sell and they can all just go home”. Then I spent a few years in sales (long story) and flipped 180 degrees. Without salespeople (and the customers they bring in) there would be nobody paying our salaries and we all could just go home.

arcwhite 2mo ago
Two things can be true simultaneously. Neither function works without the other.
- chambored 2mo ago
  The conjoined triangles of success.
CodeMage 2mo ago
You should have stopped at 90 degrees ;) Without salespeople you can't sell software. Without developers, you can't make software. Since we all have to pay bills, selling software is of crucial importance, but that doesn't make the developers less important. It just means that the society we live in makes those who sell as important as those who make. Just like we strive to evolve software development, we should also strive to evolve the society. I've made software that people happily used without anyone selling it to them or me earning a single cent off of it. At my age, if I had the luxury of not having to worry about money, that's the kind of thing I would be doing all the time.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Sales is part of the capitalism layer that sits atop the actual work. Same as CEOs and finance. None of them do useful work, only decide what useful work gets done. In communism you couldn't sell software without a Party representative - that doesn't mean he's useful.
  - bumby 2mo ago
    A less cynical take is that sales connects the people who need a problem solved to the people who can solve it.
    - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
      Modern sales pipelines don't behave this way in my experience. A very common approach to sales nowadays is to invent a problem that someone does not have and then try to sell them your tool that fixes the problem Or they try to map the problem you have to the problem they solve, even if they are actually quite different problems The biggest problem that sales is trying to solve is that you aren't buying anything from them
      - bumby 2mo ago
        Yeah, I see this. I think in that case, both the sales and development team are deadweight (ie self licking ice cream cones)
        inigyou 2mo ago
        I think the development team's work in this scenario is more akin to basic research. There is still some chance they may discover something unexpected.
        bumby 2mo ago
        It’s not basic research in the vast, vast majority of business cases you’re describing. They aren’t Bell Labs doing novel work, they’re usually doing busy work on mundane apps. I’m not going to move our understanding of financial physics forward playing around with a social media or CRUD app. Hell, most work isn’t even testing a hypothesis other than “I hope this change doesn’t break shit” It comes across as “everyone else’s work is trivial and low value but my, MY, work is difficult and important”. We shouldn’t be so precious.
wonger_ 2mo ago
Anywhere we can read some of your story? I'm always curious about devs that went into sales, or sales from a dev perspective
janandonly 2mo ago
And without the farmers pulling the potatoes out of the ground, we would all starve and die. So who is necessary, really?

arcwhite 2mo ago

Two things can be true simultaneously. Neither function works without the other.

chambored 2mo ago
The conjoined triangles of success.

CodeMage 2mo ago

You should have stopped at 90 degrees ;) Without salespeople you can't sell software. Without developers, you can't make software. Since we all have to pay bills, selling software is of crucial importance, but that doesn't make the developers less important. It just means that the society we live in makes those who sell as important as those who make. Just like we strive to evolve software development, we should also strive to evolve the society. I've made software that people happily used without anyone selling it to them or me earning a single cent off of it. At my age, if I had the luxury of not having to worry about money, that's the kind of thing I would be doing all the time.

inigyou 2mo ago
Sales is part of the capitalism layer that sits atop the actual work. Same as CEOs and finance. None of them do useful work, only decide what useful work gets done. In communism you couldn't sell software without a Party representative - that doesn't mean he's useful.
- bumby 2mo ago
  A less cynical take is that sales connects the people who need a problem solved to the people who can solve it.
  - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
    Modern sales pipelines don't behave this way in my experience. A very common approach to sales nowadays is to invent a problem that someone does not have and then try to sell them your tool that fixes the problem Or they try to map the problem you have to the problem they solve, even if they are actually quite different problems The biggest problem that sales is trying to solve is that you aren't buying anything from them
    - bumby 2mo ago
      Yeah, I see this. I think in that case, both the sales and development team are deadweight (ie self licking ice cream cones)
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        I think the development team's work in this scenario is more akin to basic research. There is still some chance they may discover something unexpected.
        bumby 2mo ago
        It’s not basic research in the vast, vast majority of business cases you’re describing. They aren’t Bell Labs doing novel work, they’re usually doing busy work on mundane apps. I’m not going to move our understanding of financial physics forward playing around with a social media or CRUD app. Hell, most work isn’t even testing a hypothesis other than “I hope this change doesn’t break shit” It comes across as “everyone else’s work is trivial and low value but my, MY, work is difficult and important”. We shouldn’t be so precious.

wonger_ 2mo ago

Anywhere we can read some of your story? I'm always curious about devs that went into sales, or sales from a dev perspective

janandonly 2mo ago

And without the farmers pulling the potatoes out of the ground, we would all starve and die. So who is necessary, really?