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> Sales people have their own culture, and if you don't understand it you'll have a hard time recruiting and retaining an effective sales team.

Every time I hear something like that, I can't think of a positive comparison. Feels like the stereotypes like "boys will be boys, that's just how they behave", "of course soccer will always involve fights", etc. When I hear about ultracompetitive sales I'm reminded of all the sales people that try to scam you, promise things that are not possible, and chase with multiple follow ups to private comms.

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

I gave it an upvote for you, even though I responded to it.

first of all, it's not literally "boys will be boys" -- female sales people are the same. I don't think you were implying otherwise, but I want to be clear.

> I'm reminded of all the sales people that try to scam you

Yep, there are a lot of people like that and you need to get rid of them as soon as you realize you hired one. You experience them in the company too. Build your comp plan so that you pay out for the successful deals (to the degree that is within the salesperson's control -- it's not their fault if engineering does actually screw up.). Pay out more for long term customers (often companies pay less, figuring it's less work to renew, but this incents the sales person to sign a good deal and make sure the customer is happy).

I've seen all sorts of screwy attempts: contract contains development terms not signed off by engineering ("hey, the prospect already signed it, how can you refuse to sign it???). Don't book a deal until you have both a signed contract (by both sides) and a signed purchase order. I've seen plenty of sales people send in one or the other, or both but with a signature missing ("they guy went home but will be back in the morning") on the last day of the quarter in the hopes of hitting their target or getting into the escalation zone. Refuse to put up with that crap.

It's like having a child. Any pretty much any of the good sales folks, if you told them that they'd probably nod, say "yeah", and laugh. And then go earn more money than the CEO.

I grew up hanging around a Ford dealership where my best friend's dad was a salesman, and I later worked alongside various sales teams in other businesses. It was all as you describe.

> to the degree that is within the salesperson's control -- it's not their fault if engineering does actually screw up.

In a previous role, I was the engineer who had to install what the salesperson sold (regardless of whether it fit the customer's actual needs). Even when it was the salesperson's fault, the engineer got the blame.

Engineering should never sign off on the salesperson's contract without believing it's worth it.

And a principle of good management is that the situation symmetrical: if the engineering is impossible it's the responsibility of the person who signed off on it, not the team trying to deliver.

What if they can have an engineer work 60h/week to try to deliver the promises, and not being able to say no (someone else signs off) and also gets to take all the blame if things too long? Wouldn't that be great

There are a lot of jobs for developers and engineers right now and if people leave the crappy ones it will send a signal.

> when I hear about ultracompetitive sales I'm reminded of all the sales people that try to scam you, promise things that are not possible, and chase with multiple follow ups to private comms

This is in the same bucket as those who write off several personalities that do well as coders as some combination of neurotic, antisocial and/or weak. Can you find humorous or even personal anecdotes matching the stereotype? Sure. Will carrying that stereotype harm your ability to interact with those people, even biasing your interactions to the worst in their lot? Obviously.

There is an unfortunate tendency for VP of sales to promote scammers and snake oil peddlers as long as they meet their numbers.

If sales folks were promoted based on their numbers over a rolling multi year window I imagine the dynamics would be a lot different.

>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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

It’s simpler than that.

If you promise a lavish trip to the Virgin Islands to your sales staff for hitting certain numbers, you must deliver that lavish trip when they hit those numbers.

Imagine if you were promised a specific bonus check if your team hit certain goals. Your team works hard to hit those goals. Then management tells you times have changed and you won’t be receiving that bonus check despite keeping your end of the bargain. Most people would start looking for a new job immediately, or at least lose motivation altogether. Nobody wants to continue working somewhere after a bait and switch like that.

Reading the article, it didn't sound as if there was any such promise

> This trip is not necessarily a bad thing to have done, and more likely than not a good thing.

I find people often underestimate how much employees cost and overestimate how much things like a Vegas offsite cost.

Even if you send a team of 20 to The Virgin Islands at say $10,000 a head, that's only $200,000. That pays for what, 1-3 salaries for the next year?

Layoffs don't happen when companies are broke and cannot afford to spend money on anything. They usually happen to _prevent_ companies from going broke.

Now, would you rather take a dip in morale of 20 people, or the rest of the company? And how does that translate into long term list revenue?

> would you rather take a dip in morale of 20 people, or the rest of the company?

If a sales team taken on rev-em-up blows someone’s morale the company’s culture is broken. The reaction betrays a lack of trust in management. Suspicion they’re acting for non-company promoting reasons. Management needs to figure out why that trust gap is there and address it directly, not put forward another act where feel-good measures that compromise the company are taken because they’re easy.

>Suspicion they’re acting for non-company promoting reasons.

Well, those would seem to have been well-founded suspicions in this case.

When a company sends me on a business trip in luxury transport in a luxury hotel so I can sit in meetings I have no reason to attend, then refuses to give me a 100$/month raise because there's no money, the only thing I'll be estimating is how many months I have left at the company.

the article said DataRobot missed sales goals by 75%.

nice reward for missing sales by that large margin.

what you said is true and needs to be done in a healthy organization, but DataRobot seems to be not in a healthy state

The sales folks that went on the trip were most likely the ones that made their number.

Except the sales executives of course.

>DataRobot missed sales goals by 75%

Having been on the receiving end of their sales team, I'm not surprised. Approaching a clueless executive and feeding them all sorts of BS to get their product foisted onto the data science team I was with was very disagreeable.

> The effective companies are where they respect each other and realize that their cultures are different but that they need each other. I'm surprised how infrequently I see that.

Effective companies have compensation structures which incentivizes such respect.

Sales should make a tonne of money upfront, especially those hitting significantly higher than OTE. But a sales person's work is of very little use to the company after they leave the job. Engineers should be paid significantly more equity - their work has significant residual value to the company long after they leave the job.

When this dynamic is explained to both functions, they learn to respect the other:

* engineers are not rushing to implement whatever hack you are suggesting because they own significant equity in the company and want to see it grow in value; they are not getting a cut of your commission check.

* sales is being paid high because it takes a certain kind of person to close the deal, and us hitting those revenue goals is how your equity will grow in value.

> Sales should make a tonne of money upfront, especially those hitting significantly higher than OTE.

Sales should make a tonne of money for closing good, big deals. But actually I never pay it all out up front; I pay it out as the deal progresses, including renewals. I've even paid out after the sales person has left, because the payments were set up only to pay out as the customer and company continued to be happy.

The sales folks typically don't like that of course -- most are quite transactional. But if they make more money that way, they'll be happy (or will leave).

I'm always sorry when a dev leaves, even if it's for good reason. A lot of devs often feel an emotional investment in their employer, which often lingers to some degree after leaving. A sales person, on the other hand, thinks their company is the greatest until the day they depart, after which they often don't care at all. I am less often unhappy when a sales person departs, unless they were a huge earner.

> I am less often unhappy when a sales person departs, unless they were a huge earner.

In my experience huge earners mostly just got handed the best customers.

Engineering (and even organizations in areas like marketing) also have very different hire/fire practices than sales. For all the griping about interview practices, engineering orgs are really trying to hire the "right" people. Sales is too, at some level. But it's also a fairly common observation that sales management has no problem firing people who don't make their numbers even if it's because their account had a major reorg and the new guy likes some other vendor.

Another point to add is that these junkets are announced well in advance as performance incentives.

To cancel such a trip would effectively be retroactively eliminating a bonus for top performers.

Because they can't say, "Look, this might not be the best thing right now, but we do recognize that this is typically viewed as a performance incentive, so we're making it up this year by..."?

Yeah, "We're ok with making people redundant, but cutting a top performer's bonus? That's crossing the line!"

Direct-sales startups live and die by their sales people. Taking promised money away from the folks that have the least allegiance and most capability to move on is a quick way to make every employee redundant.

> The effective companies are where they respect each other and realize that their cultures are different but that they need each other. I'm surprised how infrequently I see that.

This is so very important. All of the teams in a business are critical to success. The best product in the world (engineering) is useless if noone knows about it (marketing), can't buy it (sales), or can't make it work (training and support).

There are multiple legs to the stool, and as I see it, it's the CEO's job to make sure all of these different personalities, tensions and constraints are balanced - and that everyone understands why everyone else is there.

Sadly, CEOs are often just sales people with a fancy title, which can lead to all sorts of nightmares.

If they've promised it, they have to give it, but they could always say "We're having to do a round of layoffs, the optics of a traip would look bad, so instead for this year we will give you a one-off bonus equal to the value of the trip of $Xk."

I wonder which came first though. Engineers shitting on sales, or engineers hearing about companies that laid off nearly all of engineering and kept nearly all of sales. Stories like that can darken an image pretty damned fast.

What always pissed me of most about 'sales vs. engineering is':

Engineering: Works hard (45 hrs/wk), knowledgeable and experienced at their craft, specialized skill-set, net compensation... $150,000.

Sales: Works hard (55 hrs/wk), knowledgeable and experienced at their craft, specialized skill-set, net compensation... $600,000.

That always felt like bullshit to me. Two hardworking, skilled people, but just because the sales people are closer to the money, they get paid a shitton more.

In fact, (and I say this knowing that I'm biased, but it's still keenly, emotionally felt), it often felt like thee engineer is far more skilled, rare, and value-producing than the salesperson. They just, again, aren't the ones directly bringing in the money.

Money doesn't lie. If that $600k is what you want, then stop developing and start selling. The fact that you either can't or don't want to will answer the question.

I also lack both skills and desire to sell. The job sounds like a nightmare to me. So I don't begrudge those that are good at it and earn those commissions. I envy the comp, but it'd be silly to be jealous when I wouldn't actually switch places with them. $150k is great money in its own right.

Good points. No, I don't think I would want to do that job, even for more compensation.

How about we just agree that companies should pay me more doing the exact same job I already know and enjoy? :]

100% agree on that. I forgot in my original comment that I also agree it feels like bullshit. What I wrote above is what I have to constantly remind myself.

And that's not normal comp for salespeople. It's the sort of thing top performers can make (or more). Not a top performer? Even because of factors totally outside your control? Too bad. Good luck finding a new job.

Yeah, it's a meat grinder. I've been on countless calls where Sally–who smashed records last quarter—is being called on the carpet for small miss this quarter. Miss 2 in a row? Nice knowing you, good luck in your future pursuits.

Another thing I forgot to mention, your best sales people can and will take their customers with them if they go across the street and work for your competition. I've also seen that happen with disgruntled high-performers. We basically lost an entire region a few years back when the star sales rep there decided to go independent and steer her enormous client base to a rival provider.

Everything is extreme in sales. The best earn more, the worst barely make rent.

I suspect for a lot of engineers, the fact that it isn't about how hard you worked or how great a product you created, but what revenue income/it generated is tough. And don't meet those metrics and too bad is tough.

> your best sales people can and will take their customers with them

And this has been validated by multiple court cases: the sales person owns their "rolodex" (that shows how long this has been the case).

Want to know why every company has a CRM? The CRM companies will tell you about all the integrations etc but the real reason is that they can keep their hands on all the contact info when the sales person leaves.

Is the $600k salesperson really as common as the $150k engineer?

Of course not. Parent comment is certainly cherrypicking based on whatever anecdotal experience they heard or experienced.

Even if the Sales team happens to hit a home run in a particular quarter, you can bet that Finance will raise targets for the next cycle, and it'll be twice as hard to hit it again. So on a functional company you won't be hitting all goals every time, and the annual income for sellers evens out.

Worth mentioning that, depending on the pay arrangement (individual vs. team-based goals), one specific individual may make a lot more than the average, but the team as a whole won't be making the same.

Ultimately the main difference is between being on a Sales plan (with lower base + higher variable/risk), vs. a more traditional plan with base + stocks + performance bonus.

Also, the average "$150K engineer" is more like a "$300K engineer", at least in the US [1].

[1] https://www.levels.fy

SaaS engineering is hard to quantify value.

E.g. You spend a week optimizing the database. How much is that worth? Does it allow the front end designers to abuse the db more to push more in features?

It's clear that without you the features couldn't be written, because the frontend folk haven't understood query optimization to save their lives. Meanwhile the sales team skipped the infrastructure planning meeting to go on their golf outing.

But sales have direct dollar amounts. It's easy to quantify. That money wouldn't exist without the sales person. On the other hand, those features wouldn't exist without your backend knowledge.

The variance in sales compensation is huge. The variance in engineering comp is compressed. At my previous firm, the sales base salary was $60k and the highest earner earned 12x that. The lowest earner earned $60k.

>The lowest earner earned $60k.

And was probably fired in a year or two for not making their numbers. Whereas assuming a reasonably financially stable company, the lower end of band engineer is probably trundling along.

A sales person making $600k probably has a base salary of $50-100 the rest is all commission. Sales can be a grueling slog that requires wit, emotional intelligence and significant research into your target. It's both strategic and tactical in a way that can only be practiced through repeated failure. To be bringing in a revenue that justifies a $600k salary is a rare person indeed. We all tend to oversimplify other people's work or problems. This is a good example.

Well, we don't reward engineers who find a way to increase sales or decrease overhead by half a million either. Maybe both teams could copy some habits from the other and delete a few.

Actually we do. They are usually called consultants and have _sold_ a company on their ability to do so.

The CEO is "close to the money" but in many, possibly most companies makes less than the highest performing sales people.

The sales person's job is quite precarious and the tenure is often quite short.

Sales people (except the VP) rarely get options. It's all cash.

As an engineer, your $150k is pretty much guaranteed. In sales, though, it's entirely possible to spend several years wheedling the large client that would get you the $600k payday... and the day before the board is supposed to sign off on the deal, their CEO changes and the new guy puts everything on ice. This happens a lot, and it's brutal.

In the tech industry, you'll probably find a lot more engineers making $600k/yr than sales people.

I’m not sure what “tech industry” means but we’re talking here about enterprise B2B, which rarely pays those kinds of salaries anyway.