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to me the article is rather narrow-sighted rant of an engineer with presumed inner-thoughts and inner-workings of a typical sales guy. Interestingly, the same a

by niuzeta 13y ago

to me the article is rather narrow-sighted rant of an engineer with presumed inner-thoughts and inner-workings of a typical sales guy. Interestingly, the same argument could be said by a sales guy to an engineer that even if you do your magic your work will be worthless if you don't know how to sell, which is one of the most repeated-to-the-point-of-truism at HN: let people know what you're doing and why it's important. I agree with the first paragraph where a sales person needs to know more about engineering than he presumably does. The other part which I would like to add is that an engineer (or a competent one, at least) needs to know how his product is sold, marketed, and presented as a sold commodity. Am I the only one to read the typical stereotype of arrogant prig engineer characteristic between the line? A kind which a sales person would think of.

bitops 13y ago
I thought the same thing as I started reading through the article - this attitude is endemic to anyone who thinks that what they do is the most important function and that the business couldn't survive without them. The truth is that you need all parts of the business to succeed, working well together. That said, I think there are stages in the progression. In the beginning, you can't sell anything if you don't have a product. But once you have a reasonably good product, you need good marketing and sales to have people become aware of it. I worked closely with the marketing department in my last job and it definitely made me see how big an impact a good team can have. They did a lot of creative work to sell the product.
Swannie 13y ago
The thing that stuck out for me, is that the mentions of product managers is almost non existent. Beyond calling out "reality" that most product managers hate sales (really?). A strong product manager is qualifying the product requests, is pushing a roadmap that's opaque where it needs to be, is making judgement calls on revenue vs. "win the customer" probability, (in some firms, work with marketing to) is preparing white papers on what is possible with the product, and often ends up recording demo videos, or writing demo scripts for pitches that show what is possible. If anyone but a small percentage of the most senior engineers, has spoken to sales - you're probably doing it wrong. I've worked with some excellent, and some terrible, product managers, as a developer, team lead, delivery lead, and as pre-sales. The worst think their job is all about features, and a great product, but completely miss the product <-> market fit, rarely talk to customers, and have an attitude towards sales that is not productive.

by niuzeta 13y ago

bitops 13y ago

I thought the same thing as I started reading through the article - this attitude is endemic to anyone who thinks that what they do is the most important function and that the business couldn't survive without them. The truth is that you need all parts of the business to succeed, working well together. That said, I think there are stages in the progression. In the beginning, you can't sell anything if you don't have a product. But once you have a reasonably good product, you need good marketing and sales to have people become aware of it. I worked closely with the marketing department in my last job and it definitely made me see how big an impact a good team can have. They did a lot of creative work to sell the product.

Swannie 13y ago

The thing that stuck out for me, is that the mentions of product managers is almost non existent. Beyond calling out "reality" that most product managers hate sales (really?). A strong product manager is qualifying the product requests, is pushing a roadmap that's opaque where it needs to be, is making judgement calls on revenue vs. "win the customer" probability, (in some firms, work with marketing to) is preparing white papers on what is possible with the product, and often ends up recording demo videos, or writing demo scripts for pitches that show what is possible. If anyone but a small percentage of the most senior engineers, has spoken to sales - you're probably doing it wrong. I've worked with some excellent, and some terrible, product managers, as a developer, team lead, delivery lead, and as pre-sales. The worst think their job is all about features, and a great product, but completely miss the product <-> market fit, rarely talk to customers, and have an attitude towards sales that is not productive.