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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3877 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 20, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Until recently, one used to often hear people say that while software engineers had high salaries, they were actually only paid a small fraction of what they were really worth. If that were true, these mass layoffs probably wouldn't be happening, and they certainly wouldn't be causing stock prices to rise, as they did when Meta announced its layoffs.

Were the people who said software engineers were underpaid mistaken? Why did they believe this? Was it based on some naive calculation of profit per employee, ignoring the cost of capital, as is really common among people with no formal economics education?

Until recently, one used to often hear people say that while software engineers had high salaries, they were actually only paid a small fraction of what they were really worth.

Do you mean people here? Or just in people general? Can you link an example?

This is a bizarre statement to make.

Were the people who said software engineers were underpaid mistaken? Why did they believe this? Was it based on some naive calculation of profit per employee, ignoring the cost of capital, as is really common among people with no formal economics education?

If you put a gun to my head, and told me to make the best argument I can think of in favor of that statement, I'd go with something like: A lot of companies are bloated. You could fire a good chunk of the workforce, and be none the worse for it, which would imply you are overpaying the people who remain hired, and underpaying those that would remain if you got rid of the bloat.

...but of course, that doesn't necessarily mean software engineers would be disproportionately spared from being fired...

What would sales for a small startup look like?

Lets assume Startup X in making enough money to sustain 10 engineers and 1 sales person. So the 10 engineers hire an MBA. What does the MBA do?

I'm asking this because the activity of sales is completely opaque to me. I can intellectually understand that for a company of sufficient size, that work needs to be offloaded to someone who only does that. But for a small company I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.

As an actual salesperson in the tech space, I think a lot of the other comments are misguided. Gone are the days of salespeople doing easy fun shit with clients like golfing or going to the pub to drink. Nowadays salespeople have to challenge their customers, essentially change their beliefs about what they know/need in their business.

Look up the Challenger Sale, it explains the history of sales well.

The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions.

The idea is that sellers and buyers are in a perpetual arms race. Relationship building used to be the way to sell, and that's how it is now in the cultural consciousness. Unfortunately that idea is way behind the times. Excellent salespeople now have to be able to toe the line between pissing off a customer and convincing them that the salesperson is the authority, and knows better than they do, if they want to sell in a tough market or sell a lot.

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