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Comment by Strilanc | Hacker News Reader

> However, the reality is that sales needs engineering more than engineering needs sales. Sales people come and go but engineers build what matters.

and then sales people make it possible to make money off of that thing...? I'm not seeing how engineering doesn't need sales just as much. It's as if the author just said:

>~ However, the reality is that farmers need well diggers more than well diggers need farmers. Well diggers come and go but farmers grow what matters.

No farmers: everybody starves. No well diggers: everybody dies of thirst. Acting like one is 'more essential' is the wrong distinction to make. (How about: cost to replace, return on investment, comparative advantage?)

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So funny! I came in here to post the same thing. Or at least that quote stuck out at me. I really don't like these kind of articles on HN because they feed into the paranoia some developers have. As hard as it is to fathom both sides need each other pretty much equally to maintain long term success.

So funny! I came in here to post the same thing.

Same here. Earlier in my career I had that same sort of "we don't need no stinkin' sales-people" mindset, but once I started a startup and really started focusing on what it takes to sell something, I started to see things a bit differently. I've gained a new-found appreciation for the value of good sales-people, and I've always learned a lot about why bad sales-people are so damned annoying.

FWIW, for anybody coming from an engineering background, who is interested in learning sales, I'm a big fan of the book Mastering The Complex Sale by Jeff Thull. His approach is based on NOT doing the stereotypical "bad salesperson" stuff and actually having intense focus on delivering real value to customers.

We think that the traditional enterprise sales model is dead. And we don't necessarily think that your analogy is always true – see self-pick farms where end users come and choose the produce that they want. There are numerous examples of this as well now in the world of software — see Atlassian, 37signals, Palantir as good examples. Maybe it's just that we should not think about these disciplines so differently. We could probably all agree on that.

The whole Palantir no sales people mantra is kind of not true. You don't sell 7 or 8 figure deals without a sales cycle/process.

Also, yes, there are some businesses where aggressive sales aren't that important. But most companies want to move up into the larger deal size at some point...at which point you definitely need a sales person. So let's cut the BS about sales people being less or more important than any other function in the company. It's so tiring.

What Palantir is doing (at least in the way they talk about it publicly) seems to be more about the mentality than anything else. If you consider that everyone in the company who touches the customer is responsible for selling then you can change the culture of how you sell.

For example, I see customer support as the most important aspect of sales now for SaaS companies. It is likely to be the first, and one of the most common, touch points for any customer. So getting the customer support team to realize they are selling too is crucial to success.

If you have money and resources, sure perhaps the sales cycle in Enterprise is dead. The part I think is missing from this article is that rarely are systems this simple. Most Enterprise level systems require some sort of "integration" where there are several moving parts. A good salesmen is able to pitch why your product, or company can perform this. Perhaps Atlassian has enough momentum now to not need a salesforce, but what about smaller companies that are trying to get customers? How do you convince them to buy a product that is still in development? Your article speaks to features specifically-- I've seen first hand a good sales person can portray a positive story that makes users gloss over missing "must-haves" and trust your team can deliver these as part of a project.

Self pick farms are in a different business - they sell people (usually families with kids) the opportunity to spend a day outside pretending to be a farmer, they aren't a substitute for agriculture. They're amusement parks, not functional agriculture. It's like saying the restaurant business is dead because there are cooking classes.

The enterprise sales model is still alive and kicking for big contracts, especially in large organizations (enterprises). It just doesn't apply to products that are so cheap that procurement departments don't pay attention to them. Atlassian and Palantir both have sales forces, even if it's not what they call it - even Fog Creek, which was a sort of anti-Atlassian for a long time, has a sales force.

When customers write BIG checks, they want someone on the other end to answer questions, help them find the right solution, and assuage their fears.

> I'm not seeing how engineering doesn't need sales just as much.

Sales is hard if you don't have innate talent or a decent amount of experience.

Design, development, implementation and testing of modern technology is pretty much impossible without engineering education and experience.

Independent consulting engineers may find they don't make as much money as they could with a little more salesmanship.

A salesman, however, with nothing to sell, goes broke.

The relationship is not symmetric.

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