Comment by phtrivier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phtrivier | Hacker News Reader

This article could have been written 20 years ago (source : I was there), probably 50 years ago, and will probably be written for ever. (Although future éditions will have fun about AI.)

What I would love is to read more of the story from the perspective of the salesperson (we're all too sympathetic to the engineers, and potentially ceo - but I suspect their part of the story goes beyond "I'll just say yes to everything and cash my variable share of the deal". Otherwise, pour rational next move would be to all become salesperson and build oven on the side for fun.)

Also, I would love to read the perspective from the customer side ? ("What do you mean they sell oven that don't rotate ? We clearly specified that we needed an ISO-98765 compliant oven !!! OF COURSE it has to rotate !! why did the boss just went with the cheapest supplier again ?")

Or even the perspective from BigOven ("guys ! I read on linked in that this little startup has built a candle button, why don't we have that already ?")

More seriously - do you know of startups that got away with salespersons saying "no, sorry, we can't make rotating ovens, you should see our competition, or come back in three years." Aren't those dead as dodos, by virtue of not having any customer to pay the bill ?

I'm a healthcare worker, so I'm not immersed in this world at all. I can only speak as person who has to use the oven, but doesn't get to pick which oven is purchased.

My bosses don't buy the ovens that are the most dependable, the most efficient, nor ones that are even compatible with the other steps in the cooking process.

They're impressed by the AI oven that cooks the pizza mostly right 30-40% of the time. "It'll be more consistent if you let the oven decide how long to cook." But we ignore that because of how stupid it is.

They buy ovens that suck because sales people impress them with baking jargon they don't understand. At least, that's how it comes off when they talk about it. I'm sure getting a good deal is a much bigger factor than they say.

They don't eat pizza. They can't even tell whether it's burnt. They tell me "soon the oven will do everything for us and you won't be needed."

They don't seem to comprehend that an oven can't knead dough or mix ingrdients. And that's even ignoring the fact that the auto-cook features are wrong except in the best of conditions.

The ovens break constantly because of the humidity levels needed to keep the dough nice. They spend more on repairs than they ever did on the ovens. We keep telling them to get the moisture-resistant ovens. They say it's too expensive.

It's amazing how much of the world runs on confident CEOs convincing gullible investors to give them money and confident salespeople convincing gullible customers to buy their junk. I wish I re-did my character creation and put all my skill points into charisma.

No. When the chips are down and your back is to the wall, I don't want the charisma guy, I want the indefatigable reality guy.

The art world is the same. Plus all the rich nepo babies who put on their own shows and can afford to lose money their entire life..

i.e. the world running on scams, or rather, despite scams.

Seller here. There’s no justifying the sales fails in this story. It’s strictly cautionary.

In this story specifically they needed to bring technical stakeholders to Mallorca.

"Aren't those dead as dodos, by virtue of not having any customer to pay the bill ?"

Not if they're building inverting ovens for another big corporation. If you do one truly worthwhile thing better than everyone else, do you still need to chase after marginal opportunities to stay afloat? I'm sure there are many, many small companies (not "startups") who are just quietly filling a niche.

For me the worst scenario is when a kitchen sink of non-existent functionality the customer never asked for was sold. And in all likelihood it will never be used. But some project manager is hellbent on getting it through the pipeline and checked off!

I (maybe idealistically) believe that when you give the people building agency and connect them with the end-user, you get better outcomes.

from my friends in sales, sales perspective could be: going from meeting to meeting just getting yelled at.

- previous customer yells at you for not delivering required features. You ask the engineer about the status of that feature

- engineers write a manifesto on #general complaining about you for asking them about the status of the new feature

- PM calls you in to yell at you for trying to jump the roadmap

- you start prepping for weekly call with the CEO. at least doubled your numbers this quarter!

- while you're prepping you get a response to one of your cold emails from the day prior, someone calling you "gauche" and "annoying"

- go into CEO meeting. CEO yells at you for being 80% under the quota, because the psychotic quota was set to 10x last year's numbers.

- long day! go home. husband yells at you for working late

etc.

Yeah, sales take part in the blame game too, otherwise they would miss on the fun. I don't see many salesperson quit their job to become carpenters, though, so maybe the huge paychecks help. Go figure.

That being said, engineers usually don't complain about being asked for the status of the feature.

What we complain about is being asked why the feature we never committed to deliver is still not there yet.

Even worse if we get cornered into uttering words that are then ret-conned into a commitment.

(A very "efficient" techniques I've heard of if for salesperson to "ask the same question over and over again with enough variations until the engineer and PMs cave." May be helpful if you have already decided to answer "yes" to the feature request / RFP checkbox anyway. Doesn't end well for most people, but sometime a quota gotta be quota-ed....)

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