A few thoughts on being in a sales org
I joined a sales org a couple years ago, and I’ve been at it long enough now to have a few consistent thoughts about it.
Quick background. I started my career in tech as a software engineer. After only a couple years, I unwittingly stumbled into an offer for a management role. I accepted it with some trepidation, eventually grew to embrace the role (it took a few years), and went on to be some form of engineering manager for the next decade.
A few years ago, I once again stumbled unwittingly, this time into an opportunity to be a sales-engineering manager at a very large tech company. Since I was fed up with my job at the time, feeling a bit stagnant, and admittedly excited about the chance to make big-co money, I went for it and got the job.
Pro: the people. In my last job, I was managing an infrastructure team that was toiling away in the back of the backend. The senior-level talent was talented indeed, but they were also tired and grumpy and pretty entrenched in the victim mindset. Our lives are hard because everyone else is bad. That sort of thing. I’ll tell ya, as the manager responsible for corralling the team in a positive direction, that shit got old.
Coming into sales engineering, I was intrigued by the idea of working with technical people who have chosen to be customer-facing. I’d hoped they’d be a dynamic bunch, and that’s turned out to be largely true. My team is awesome, and it feels good to spend my days working for their growth and success.
Con: the sales philosophy. More, more, MORE. Always more. Sell more, always, forever. Because more is virtuous and less is shameful.
I don’t like this. In fact, I’ve concluded it’s directly opposed to my own values and philosophy these days, which are in part about being happy with less.
Now, you’re going to get a version of this in just about any tech company. If you’re pre-IPO, you need to do more to be IPO-worthy or be sold at a good price. If you’re a public company, you need to endlessly do more to impress the market with bigger and better numbers.
But in software engineering, at least in my experience, that inevitable reality often fades away behind the day-to-day endeavor to build good products wisely. In sales, however, you’re meant to be thinking about it at every moment: MORE.
Con: sales quotas. Are they correct? Are they fair? Can they be explained? Will we hit them? What products qualify? How does our comp plan work? Are their gotchas in the fine print? What are the accelerators and multipliers? Is our attainment report accurate? What will happen if we miss 100%? Will we get bad ratings? Will we be fired?
Sales quotas consume so much energy that should be devoted to doing the actual job. As the manager, I have to manage that energy, find answers to all the questions, investigate when our flaky reporting looks wrong, make sure no one’s getting screwed, or explain that we’re getting screwed and there’s nothing we can do about it, and so on.
This challenge is particularly acute in the first quarter when the new year’s quotas are announced and we’re scrambling to make sense of them. But it sucks all year. What a waste.
Pro: measurable contribution. It’s relatively easy to tell if you’re being successful in sales. The numbers go up. See above re: MORE!!!
In contrast, it’s really fucking hard to measure productivity of software engineers.
Pro: I’m not in an on-call rotation. Never again.
Summary: glass half full. It’s hard being a manager at my company, in part for the reasons stated above, and for many more that I won’t go into.
But on the flip side, I’m growing a lot here. The near-constant challenge provokes growth. This is a trite observation, I know, but I do try to remind myself of that when the going gets tough. I’m not stagnating, that’s for sure. I’m holding on for dear life and becoming more battle-hardened in the process.
So, on the whole, while it’s very easy to complain about my company, my org, my role, etc., I appreciate them. Quite a lot, actually. I do hope to get out of sales at some point due to the values mismatch. But for now, I have a great team, I’m growing as a manager, I’m making good money and providing for my family, and I’d be an ass to let the downsides overshadow those gifts.