Comment by lbotos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lbotos | Hacker News Reader

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> You could say the same thing about paying everyone a flat salary that you attract the middling ones.

This depends on where your flat salary lands right? 200k base pay for remote is a very good salary for most of America.

The hiring process will weed out the middling ones.

> You think the quality of Anthropic’s salespeople had much to do with them crushing their numbers as Claude exploded?

You are right -- a rising tide raises all ships.

> it’s dumb that non-salespeople can’t participate in that abundance.

I think most people can't stomach the risk of the variability. Or else they'd become sales people :D

    > You think the quality of Anthropic’s salespeople had much to do with them crushing their numbers as Claude exploded?

This raises an interesting point. I think B-to-C sales for small amounts (ignore car sales for a moment) is very different than B-to-B sales where the amounts are normally 10-1000x larger than B-to-C. It is much easier to distinguish the great from good from mediocre, etc. To be more specific about Anthropic, the B-to-C sales team is probably more of PR & marketing to build hype around the product. However, the B-to-B sales team is trying to sell contracts to large corporations for 100s or 1000s of new users. Again: The scale of economic impact is incomparable, especially when deciding how to compensate staff.

Also, in my personal experience, the best sales really shine when there is an economic downturn, but they manage to outperform everyone -- existing and new accounts. Or, in the words of Warren Buffett: "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."

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