For the sales engineers on HN, what is it like? Is it a lot of stress and pressure? Do you have to be “on” all the time? Is it a good long term career or do people usually move onto other roles? Is it a good opportunity to learn how to sell to people?
Personally, I have grown to really enjoy the role. You have a high degree of autonomy, the money is good, I get to travel quite a bit (I'm single, late 20s, so that suits my lifestyle), and I get to meet lots of really interesting people and customers and develop those relationships which can be a fun part of the job if you enjoy working with others. There's also no on-call and not much regular after hours work, but you do trade that for time spent travelling and with clients after hours you may or may not enjoy.
Downsides: I enjoy hands-on technical work, and I often find myself frustrated not being able to do that. The technical work you do get to do is usually nothing more than a marketing exercise. You rarely get to go deep on things, and that's simply because it's not an effective use of your time when you are focused on selling. Also, Sales organisations have been a massive culture shock for me coming from engineering. There's lots of internal politics, optics, and territorialism. I also found engineers are quite efficient at using their time, happy to work asynchronously, etc. Sales folks on the other hand tend to dislike that style, and will drag you into endless meetings, call you for the simplest questions and interrupt your flow, etc. You will learn to manage it, but it can be frustrating at first.
Also in terms of career growth, I think it's pretty limited. My plan is to spend a few years, learn how to do sales and improve my soft skills, and move on.
Do you have an email address or a contact method?
PS: RFPs are the worst part of the job. but depends on how big the team is and how much help you get.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37852982
My experience moving from sysadmin/engineer with some programming experience to sales engineer (systems engineer at the time) at Sun included.
I did a lot of user support at university, plus experience at an investment banker, so I had experience dealing with people and their computing needs, and hands-on with the hardware.
I did a bunch of homework, met with customers, prepared presentations, proposals, configurations. Stressful part was when my sales rep left for greener pastures and after some double-duty, breaking in a green sales partner. Wasn't fun.
My job was to conduct mini integrations of our technology with the customer and to built out feature demos. The format was always similar: The bank would assign somewhere from 6 to 15 people to work on a proof of concept with me. Usually within something they'd refer to as an "innovation lab" - basically a space where the rest of the bank would leave you alone with their processes and concerns.
I'd spent 3-6 weeks with the banks team in a mix of discussion, education, sales and training - including lots of presentations to upper management and decision makers. My job was to get the team's buy-in to the technology, to showcase a concrete, working vision that looked a lot like the finished product (as long as you didn't look to deep under the cover), to help flash out the structure of what would be a very complex solution+product+professional services sale, to build up internal champions and to understand the dynamic among the decision makers.
The actual closing of the deal was then done by a dedicated sales person that looked better in a suit and could drink more than me.
Here's what I loved about the job:
- I got to travel to lot's of interesting locations. Big Banks tend to be in big cities, so I went to Sydney, Singapore, New York, Johannesburg and to lots of places across Europe.
- I got a lot of independence. I usually traveled alone or in teams of up to three. When I needed help or resources I called home, but mostly I just ran my own show and made my own decisions.
- I got to very quickly create things without having to fix bugs, write tests or document anything. Basically, I got to do just the fun parts of programming.
- There was a huge non-technical component. Relationship building, strategy, company dynamics.
- I got to work across a wide range of technologies, programming languages and systems.
As with anything, there where however also downsides:
- The travelling got a bit too much. I basically lived in hotels most of the year. My social contacts back home slowly deteriorated and there was no hope of having a family in this job.
- I like a good night out. But having to entertain drinky clients five out of seven nights in a week gets to you even at twenty.
- I initially was terrified. The technologies where so many and so different that I felt I constantly looked like a clueless fool. The board rooms full of old bank managers with important titles intimidated me. And it took me time to get the finance background.
Bottom line: If you're young, don't have many obligations and enjoy a bit of travelling and social interactions, it's a great choice.
Hope this helped, let me know if I can add details.