Re: [Fsfe-uk] Funding Open Source

[Chris Croughton]

On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 02:40:13PM +0100, Paul wrote:

> This is why programmers should be kept to just that. I've worked as a
> salesman in a camera shop (it was my first job) and I really was awful
> at it. Why? I didn't fib about the quality of the goods. We had a 6%
> commission from camera company A and 3% from company B. B's products
> were vastly superior in every way to A's (and about 50 quid cheaper to
> boot). However, we were pushed to selling company A's products. While
> that made me a better person to ask for advice from, it didn't go down
> well with the bosses. I learned then that to be a success at sales, you
> had to be able to lie through your back teeth.

Ouch.  Someone I knew in that position decided to go out with a bang,
and told the customers about the pressuring as well -- that store lost a
load of good customers before the guy got sacked, and they couldn't even
sue him for defamation because it was all true and documented...

> Okay, that's from just my experience and I'm sure that Ian (and lots of
> others) didn't have to sell their souls to be as good as they are now.

It's my experience as well.  One place I worked we had a call routed
through to us from a customer to a specific programmer (which shouldn't
have been routed through, but these things happen).  We replied that he
was out at a customer site.  The customer blew up because he wasn't at
their site, and they had been told (by sales and management) that the
specific programmer was working solely for them.  Management then tried
to haul us over the coals for giving away their lie...

Like everything, of course, it isn't absolute, in some companies good
salesmen who don't lie are welcomed.  Usually those companies really do
produce the best products in their field, and are kept that way because
everyone knows they don't lie and they don't want to lose that trust...

> It's a case of each to what they do best. If you're better at
> programming and expressing ideas, then do that. If you're better at
> raising funds to pay for the programmers (who inturn create revenue
> [however that is done] to pay for the fund raiser) then do that. I've
> always found the big problems come when you get a programmer (say)
> moving into advertising (or worse, the other way around!)

The other way round can, in my experience, be done easier because they
can't get away with lying in programming (if you've written "x = 2" when
you mean "x = 1" it won't work!).  Either that or they quit faster.
Engineers and programmers put into management and sales will generally
try for a long time before being booted back to where they are happy
(one exception I know, the best manager I ever worked for got there from
having been a good programmer, he just had a talent for both -- and he
still didn't lie even when doing sales stuff).

Chris C