Comment by mekoka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mekoka | Hacker News Reader

As a professional of the tech field for the better of the last 7 years, I've had the opportunity to work with countless of these marketing, pr, bd people and to be frank, that "Greatness", I've only heard of, never actually witnessed it.

I am aware that the services are needed and can bring some tremendous results when well executed, but at this point I've settled to learn some of this stuff on my own, rather than investing too much time in finding someone to trust with the responsibilities.

Don't get me wrong, it would be absolutely awesome to find the rare pearl that the article mentions. But it's choosing between either continuously peruse for some Master of her domain, or rather investing all that energy into learning to do things myself.

Obviously, some things are more sensitive than others and I still gladly defer to the experts (I won't touch the legal stuff without consult). For others however, I've noted that there have been times when I sat with someone who was supposed to advise me on marketing or BD, and they ended up learning more about these than I did by the end of our meeting.

The whole thing reminds me of this post http://thinkvitamin.com/user-science/user-experience/ux-prof... where the author claimed that "UX Professional" isn't a job title. Ensues a torrent of comments with basically the same arguments that the present article emphasizes it's because you haven't seen a great one yet.

I guess the question is then, how to find greatness?

1) The 'great' marketing, pr, bd people make way way more money than 'great' tech people. It's unlikely that a startup can afford a killer marketing guy at $300k. They're probably hiring marketing people at $50k.

2) It appears you don't value those positions much. If you are the one doing the recruiting, I would say that explains it.

3) Marketing, PR, and BD make a lot more sense in industries where tech isn't the dominant factor. Just look at consumer packaged goods, movies, etc. Almost no tech worth talking about in CPG, but some amazing marketing and biz dev people. Those industries (and others) attract the best business people because they have a lot of impact on the success or failure of the product. In startups, if the developers suck there really is nothing the marketing guy can do about it.

3) Marketing, PR, and BD make a lot more sense in industries where tech isn't the dominant factor.

I won't disagree, but I'd be wary of overstating the importance of that point. Marketing definitely matters for technology (esp. when you take a broad, holistic view of what 'marketing' is). There are more than a few stories in the annals of the tech industry where a nominally superior tech lost out to an inferior product that had better marketing around it.

On that note, the book In Search of Stupidity[1] catalogs a pile of tech marketing disasters from over the years. I'd recommend it to anyone who thinks "marketing isn't that important" or anything along those lines.

[1]: http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/

In startups, if the developers suck there really is nothing the marketing guy can do about it.

That's assuming the consumer is tech-savvy and actually cares. I'm guessing AOL didn't have the best developers, features, etc., but they definitely had the best marketers.

Anti-virus companies also thrive due to PR and marketing, ranging from contacting news outlets about the Michelangelo virus, to scaring people with an animated gif reporting that your computer is infected. With the latter, the scammers made billions off of software that did nothing at all--that's the power of marketing.

As a related question, how to filter out mediocrity. I mention this because your experience, which probably gels with many of us, shows companies should be applying some kind of "fizzbizz" test for these candidates.

For example, a simple question I would ask of business development is what technology (car, phone, public transport tickets, etc.) they've used today, and how would they improve it. If they can't walk through the problems and opportunities, they're probably not suited for a role where they'll need to be pitching ideas to potential partners.

Seven years may feel like a long time, but it really isn't.

Work at a couple companies that grow from a handful to hundreds of employees, and you will find greatness.

5 years and counting. I agree with you.

Product manager, project Manager, UX expert and etc... Snake oil.

Laywers I can understand, that makes sense. Because although nothing says I can't learn Code and be a lawyer, the gap is too big to fulfill in my 23 years. But UX, Project Management, Product Management and etc... yeah not hard at all.

Agree on the whole, apart from Project Managers - I have worked with some damn good PMs and the difference is noticeable.

Of course not every project needs a PM though.

>"but at this point I've settled to learn some of this stuff on my own, rather than investing too much time in finding someone to trust with the responsibilities."

And how many times has a tech person decided to "do it on my own" and ends up producing terrible work but doesn't recognize it?

With programming, it's fairly obvious when a person can or can't do it. But marketing and copy writing, for example, are things the everybody thinks they can do, when in reality it's lack of knowledge on the subject that gives people that perception; "that's easy, I'll just learn it on my own."

That question is literally the thing that defines wether you are going to be a great entrepreneur or not. Great entrepreneurs, the one who can repeat success, know the answer and often they know almost nothing else.

To a certain extent, it's the question that folks like Paul Graham or David Cohen believe they know how to answer.

This is not helpful. Do you know the answer and if so, what is it?

"how to find greatness?"

This is exactly the question they have about developers after working with mediocre or poor ones. It's not a question you can easily answer - but you'll know it when you've found it. It will be like an ice cold glass of water at the end of a 5 mile run on a 90 degree day.

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