Why coders avoid salespeople

If I get a call or they want to do it over a call, I refuse and do not use the product -- period.

When dealing with anyone in sales, I need EVERYTHING fully documented, on paper, preferably crypto-signed. Because every sales person lies.

Some dumb anecdotes:

I use Gandi.net - they have never called me once, everything just works, I've never had to use support, panel has everything self-service. Even supports DNSSEC.

Internet.bs - they have never called me once, everything just works, I've never had to use support, panel has everything self-service.

Godaddy called me 4 times upon registration to advertise shitty, worthless products like "email hosting". Not a single salesperson I ran into knew ANYTHING whatsoever about the product.

Register.com refuses to give up EPP code without a minimum 1 hour sales pitch by phone. They can go shove their phone up their asshole. The "give me EPP code" link in their panel just says "we will consider your request and maybe give you it in a few days, after you've gotten a call from Retentions" -- "You recently requested an auth code to transfer ... Your request has been processed and at this time it has been declined"

Network Solutions: Nonstop spam, telemarketing, email spam. 193+ emails from them. No, seriously.[0]

It's pretty obvious why some companies are well rated in certain demographics.

[0] http://i.imgur.com/gCp00Cu.png

Several good points: sales critters don't know their own product, need to research things that they ought to have memorized, and use lousy social-engineering tactics that feel as greasy as a batch of frozen fries cooked in cold oil.

It took me eleven go-rounds with a sales critter for a CDN/DDOS network to establish what I told him in the first phone call: there is no way that they will accept liability for disclosure of my clients' confidential data. He kept calling me by my first name, once every two sentences, asking me if we could make a deal if only we could get past this tiny technical objection, and assuring me that his manager would be able to help. The manager was just as useless.

I used to do sales engineering. The most important long-term function of a pre-sales engineer is to know the field so well that they can recommend something that will work for the prospective client, even if that's not something available from the engineer's company. Trying to sell something that doesn't work is a bad deal for everyone.

Read Crossing the Chasm. Twice.