Ask HN: Are web agencies considered software companies or not?
Ostensibly they seem like a software company, in that their main source of revenue from building websites or apps for different clients. Client wants a piece of software, agency builds that software for them.
On the other hand, they are highly "sales-driven". The sales process feels tightly coupled with the flow of the development of the websites. Salespeople close deals, due to the promises of features or estimates that the product team make to them. The developers are swimming deep in deadlines to hit the estimates made by the product managers, so barely any time to establish good development practices. No time for writing tests, or to have a CI/CD pipeline set in place. At least with the agencies I've seen.
If most agencies are not like this, you can correct me. But I'm generally having to trouble categorizing this type of business if its primary products are software but done in a very "non tech" approach.