shath2018

There's still huge demand for these roles - two questions to ask yourself are 1) how do I stand out? and 2) do I enjoy it?

This is a great related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18862790#18865742

If you're interested in combining your coding skills with customer-facing/problem-solving responsibilities, Sales Engineers are in huge demand. Companies are desperate to recruit for this combo of talent because it's so rare.

I'm the founder of Flockjay (YC W19 - tech sales bootcamp that helps people break into tech, without code). We have students with coding experience who are doing incredible things - companies can't wait to hire them. Happy to chat more.

So pumped and proud to have you in class, and I love that we can help support you. Happy to chat w/ anyone as well re: engineer-to-sales transition. I started Flockjay for this exact reason.

You're definitely not alone. A big part of what drew me to customer-facing roles in tech was that I found purpose and impact from human connection.

Being able to master technical product, build relationships, solve problems, and find problems that customers didn't know they had has been a really rewarding experience. It comes with its own challenges for sure, and a whole new skillset and language, but the level of impact is huge, and the ability to code helps you relate complex concepts and learn from users.

There's some great research by Adam Grant that debunks the myth that customer-facing roles (ie: tech sales) are for non-technical extroverts. In fact, the most successful tech sales leaders develop technical skills to be thought leaders in their industries.

Happy to chat more - DM me if you have questions. I'm the founder at Flockjay (YC W19 - Tech sales education where the school doesn't get paid until you're hired) - we have amazing engineering talent in our current batch, and past graduates. We help with the transition from engineering/other backgrounds into sales.

Kelly Schuur is our Head of Sales - she was the first Account Executive at Intercom and has spent a decade building and training sales teams. She's poured her heart into the interactive curriculum, along with support from industry experts at Facebook, Google, etc. All our instruction is live, interactive, personal, and online - so it's via video conferencing and tools like Slack.

We're making the same point. Most people regardless of background don't have access to private school, let alone private school financial aid scholarships. Mentioning my upbringing was to emphasize how narrow my worldview was, including but not limited to schooling options.

Would love to chat. Send us a note at hello@flockjay.com. First batch ready in March.

We’ve found qualities like curiosity, conscientiousness, coachability, prior success, and work ethic to be best predictors of success in sales, not age. We’d love to chat if you are passionate about tech and interested in making that transition. Send us a note at hello@flockjay.com

It's really hard for great dev skills to be learned in a matter of months. Sales on the other hand, is a different story. People already have many of the core skills, they just need the tools and training to level up, and create a scalable process. A lot of that is learning to use sales enablement tools, and a lot of it is getting practice and personal coaching from experts.

Thanks for the question, it’s an incredibly important one, playing out on the national stage most recently with lawsuits against Harvard.

Diversity is notoriously hard to define, and few companies try due to the risk of such lawsuits. We take a deliberately broad view of diversity as you referenced, and we admit students based on a skills assessment evaluation that aspires to be blind to those criteria. No process is perfect, but this allows us to avoid the issues you mentioned. When companies hire from us, they then evaluate based on skills criteria and our certifications.

Happy to follow up if you have more questions.

Yes, there is currently a $5k upfront option. Most of our graduates earn 2x their current income in their new tech sales roles (>$75k or more) in year 1.

We charge a fraction of what comparable intense, live coding bootcamps charge. There are apprenticeship options for sales, but real training there is minimal, and you're not learning from experts, or able to fail safely. In many respects they're glorified staffing companies.

Sales reps are amongst the best paid in tech. Investing in the training to be the best is what we focus on.

We'd love to help. Ton of ageism in tech, and we're looking to help fix this (we have many students from those backgrounds). We focus on ADR/SDRs now, with the goal being that with our training, they get promoted 6-9mo faster than peers to AEs. We're doing some SMB AE work as well.

Email us at hello@flockjay.com and I'd be happy to personally share more. We're focused on fulltime, on-site positions for now, but over time will do more with remote.

"Make something people want" only works if people know you exist. I'll reach out to follow up.

Our classes are live, online, and interactive, from 5-8pm PST Mon-Thurs, with new ones starting every month. Most schools we've talked to (>250) don't offer courses with this training. We'll be expanding to more timings/options in the near future.

Cool thing about these roles is they're a killer combo of skills - best way to understand product-mkt fit is to talk to customers and truly listen to what they want (and what they need).

Ton of hard work ahead for us to do that doesnt end with YC - making sure we're building for and serving people from underserved, non-traditional, and disadvantaged backgrounds. Reaching them requires sharing our stories and listening to theirs.

Right now, we're focused on working with students who are eligible for full-time work in the US (residents, citizens, and those with visas already). We're investing upfront in an extremely high-quality education for our students, and we ask for nothing until hired. Email us at hello@flockjay.com and we can see if we can help.

We are doing both (and have already hired from our own training). We plan to be one of the biggest hiring partners from our program. We're posting externally due to timing - we need more help now, and our first public batch of candidates starts Jan 7.

Yes, more popular than you might think, especially as a)SaaS products get more technical and b) roles like sales engineering grow. Some of the best performers in sales become thought leaders in the industry they work in. We get applicants who went through coding bootcamps, who realize their skills are best served in sales roles, merging technical knowledge with understanding/solving complex business problems.

The goal is to shift costs over time to the employer, while still aligning incentives with students, so they have skin in the game. Companies struggle to predictably hire top sales talent, and our graduates come in with a big leg up - not only learning best practices for SaaS selling from experts, but learning tools like Salesforce and Outreach.

We emphasize personal, 1v1 mentorship and coaching, which is our way of getting the benefits of in-person learning. Over time, we'll be partnering with community groups and their spaces to offer IRL coaching as well.