Ask HN: What engineer job involves a lot of sales? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What engineer job involves a lot of sales?

13 pointsleafinthewind20 comments

I’m trying to find a programming job where I can also develop some sales skills (ideally enterprise sales). Are there any such jobs out there?

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Yes, usually they are called pre-sales tech, or solutions architect, integration consultant etc. Solution architect can also be an inside role too so you have to check how that JD is written.

Usually what you want to do is get in to one of the pre-sales teams so you are part of the sales process but can still stay technical. This will let you see the sales process and start developing new skills. This is usually focused on the enterprise market where the pricing justifies a more expensive sales process.

You can also do this at a startup but it won't teach you sales typically. Startups are learning how to sell themselves usually, so they don't have a mature sales process or people so if you are wanting to develop those skills go to one of the big consulting firms, or CRM companies etc.

This is how my previous company was structured. The technical presales team were also called Application Engineers. They would essentially do quick and dirty implementations and proof of concepts of custom modifications to convince the customer we could meet their needs.

I always envied them for not having to spend the time to "productionize" their work.

True though a lot of those roles would be a large demotion for me

If you are looking to learn new skills usually the fastest and most successful way is to make yourself somewhat uncomfortable which helps motivate you (e.g. take a less senior role, or less money at first). If you want to learn enterprise sales you need to dedicate real time to that process, it can be a super intense and sometimes frustrating process which requires time in the seat, so generally people have to immerse themselves into the process to really learn it. There are other ways to get some basic sales skills, but you asked what roles would help you develop the skills and still write code, these are the best roles for it that I know of which fit your basic criteria.

I am curious why you feel it is a demotion? Money, title, prestige or ? Not judging, honestly curious.

Mostly money - don’t really care about title or prestige

A lot of sales engineer jobs pay well... but often in sectors like electrical engineering or medical.

It's because the skillset is rare; hospitals aren't going to buy some medical equipment from some sweet talker in a suit. They prefer a nerd who understands exactly what they're selling and what the advantages and disadvantages are, maybe even explain training needed. I had one oscilloscope sales job offer, where the boss insists that the hardest part is understanding the tech, and the sales part is easy to train.

Many sales roles give commissions, which can come up to a hell lot.

Software probably doesn't involve the dirty details anymore, but I imagine things like selling a database, AWS-type service, military technology, machine learning, and so on.

Demotion from what? Sales is the main goal of any commercial venture and effective salespersons could become filthy rich. You can try small sales like the ones usually associated with the roles above but also big sales if you have a network and can sell bulks to big b2b firms or win contracts.

Yes, become a co-founder or act as one by entirely, completely, unapologetically owning the product by going way beyond the distance regular people go: code, architecture, features, marketing, UX, the business side of things, the pitch, legal, relations with prospects, knowledge management, documentation, building tooling for colleagues, building deployment pipelines, making it easier for co-workers to do their work, disseminating knowledge, living good engineering practices, enabling colleagues in areas where you're better, simplifying onboarding, training documents, sales copy, story of the product, everything and I mean everything down to the minute details legal documents have or the phrasing of responses to non-pursuit towards job applications. Own everything.

As far as I can tell, many things are limited only by the amount of complexity people are willing to handle and the workload they can support. If you're okay pulling a work-day with co-workers and then another one when they leave, then we understand each other. Some people can pull off 16 hour work days or more, even during the week-ends, even during holidays and think about the product all the time. Some are great and can do that in 4 hours, I personally can't.

Find things that suck, fix them, institutionalize that knowledge, document everything, prepare for the eventuality of your disappearing, build an organization, train people to think like that, read a whole lot, become good a things, add a lot of value, become someone you would fear if they were a competitor, have very high expectations of yourself and be afraid to disappoint yourself tomorrow, experiment, demonstrate by building things and implementing things, not just as "ideas" but actual outputs, either codes/graphics/copy/documentation/training manuals/videos. Go for it.

Sales Engineer is a very real title and role. Basically, you work with salespeople to spec out a system and help the customer understand what would be involved in rollout and how their system would be integrated with yours. This is most common in enterprise sales.

Programming is usually very far from sales, I haven't seen such a position yet (well unless you're a founder as somebody else mentioned). However, as others mentioned already, you could be a technical salesperson. It does not involve programming, but you need to understand the tech well enough to be able to talk about it with actual developers on the client's side.

Typically, you will look for a "Sales Engineer" role where you are involved in Sales process discussing detailed technical requirements with the prospects.

Consultancy work, especially if you are at senior/lead/principal level in many cases involves sales work.

Try Searching: jobs, engineering + enterprise sales + Chicago

*Yes, I looked you up. I'm that good.

Promise not a stalker!

What did you look up exactly?

I imagine he found your tweet to producthunt on 8/27/18 where you say you're in Chicago

Founder.

What about something that doesn’t involve being a founder? Sales is a skill!

Yes, sales is a skill, and most tech companies only hire sales people with experience selling tech in the same sector their company is in.

I was going to say the same thing - Sales Engineer at a B2B startup is probably the next best thing.

Similarly, I think Customer Success is also sales-related and often requires developer skills.

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