Ask HN: Any software engineers here that switched to a business/sales role?
How was your experience during the transition? Why did you switched? Keen to hear stories.
17 comments
I did a long time ago. I was a very mediocore software engineer but naturally good at story telling especially when it came to explaining complex things. I first became a systems engineer (SE).
I worked at a large company accompanying sales people. I got the technical close (made our solution work for their problem) and the account executive got the financial close (got them through terms and conditions and signature). I eventually got the opportunity to switch to AE (switched because the comp was 2-3X of an SE). How hard can it be? There was a steep learning curve. My perception as an engineer was that once I got technical close, the deal was done. In most of the sales presentations I did 80% of the talking/convincing. But it turns out this wasn't the case at all. I later learned that the AE would cold call the champion after the preso. That's when they made the sale.
They AE motivates the champion to get the deal through the bureaucracy of their company AS WELL AS your own company. This has nothing to do with rational logic you learn in engineering, it's all soft social communication skills.
The best way I can summarize it is an SE/ENG is paid to know the answers. The AE is paid to ask the right (tough) questions at the right time.
I worked at a large company accompanying sales people. I got the technical close (made our solution work for their problem) and the account executive got the financial close (got them through terms and conditions and signature). I eventually got the opportunity to switch to AE (switched because the comp was 2-3X of an SE). How hard can it be? There was a steep learning curve. My perception as an engineer was that once I got technical close, the deal was done. In most of the sales presentations I did 80% of the talking/convincing. But it turns out this wasn't the case at all. I later learned that the AE would cold call the champion after the preso. That's when they made the sale.
They AE motivates the champion to get the deal through the bureaucracy of their company AS WELL AS your own company. This has nothing to do with rational logic you learn in engineering, it's all soft social communication skills.
The best way I can summarize it is an SE/ENG is paid to know the answers. The AE is paid to ask the right (tough) questions at the right time.
That was my experience as well trying to pivot into AE from the PM/Strategy role, I was very quickly humbled and finally understood why even some technically inept people can be successful AEs
AE?
Account Executive
Another interesting thing I had to unlearn was to try to optimize everything. As an engineer I want to automate anything I have to do more than three times. But that doesn't work as an AE. You just have to do the same things over and over (cold calling or sending emails, linkedin messages) knowing it's only going to work 25% of the time but that hit rate is good enough.
When I was doing sales, at least for cold email and LinkedIn, I absolutely automated that and there is a lot of software for doing so. There is no need to manually send emails and messages. For cold emails, that's a bit different, but I'm assuming we could automatically call and when someone picks up it would be transferred to us, similar to how telemarketers do it now.
I have not, but interestingly both the guys I started my career with made that switch. Both were technically smart but also enjoyed working with people, so they both went into sales engineering, supporting the sales process both pre and post-sales. Both have gone on to be very successful as sales managers and now directors.
But the key to their success was being technically strong enough to understand the customer's problem, and personable enough to work with clients as well as be able to explain very technical topics to less technical or non-technical people.
But the key to their success was being technically strong enough to understand the customer's problem, and personable enough to work with clients as well as be able to explain very technical topics to less technical or non-technical people.
Being in pre-sales engineering taught me everything I needed to know about sales. It was critical, almost a requirement, for me to have success with my own startup
I went to pre-sales engineering. Had to explain the value of technology to customers, answer questions regarding integration technology with existing systems, and building labs based on their existing architecture. So not very different from what I was doing prior to the switch. Also you get to see all types of good (and bad) infrastructure. It was a lot of fun, but left very little time for building (the labs part was a lot of regurgitation, existing built labs and checking boxes in a frontend i built to deploy common services found in enterprise environments).
You spend a lot of time in front of customers, so your verbal and written communications need to be on point. If you are juggling multiple projects, then you need to be able to context switch quickly and offload work to other teams (if you are working with a large organization -- i was working in smaller shops, so I was the person I offloaded my stuff onto -- hello 70-80 hour work weeks) The pay is great and its a good way to leapfrog yourself if you're trying to startup a project, but the travel is soul crushing and I stopped after a year to be with my children. The pay is really really great. The only time I've made a FAANG salary working for relatively no-name companies
Also to add, it was very hard to stop saying 'No' to questions that were an obvious No. Like one time I had to build out a lab using popular networking gear and a new software product that both claimed to integrate with k8s, however the network gear didn't support older versions of k8s and the software product only supported older versions of k8s. My boss told me that i could not say 'No' and to get it done. So I smoke-and-mirrored a demo where one day I showed network+k8s integration and another day k8s+software product integration. Never both together. It felt icky, but no one asked to see both and in the next release k8s was supported (before we got to the implementation phase). Sales people always say Yes, Engineers always say No. Pre-sales engineers say "Yes, And..."
You spend a lot of time in front of customers, so your verbal and written communications need to be on point. If you are juggling multiple projects, then you need to be able to context switch quickly and offload work to other teams (if you are working with a large organization -- i was working in smaller shops, so I was the person I offloaded my stuff onto -- hello 70-80 hour work weeks) The pay is great and its a good way to leapfrog yourself if you're trying to startup a project, but the travel is soul crushing and I stopped after a year to be with my children. The pay is really really great. The only time I've made a FAANG salary working for relatively no-name companies
Also to add, it was very hard to stop saying 'No' to questions that were an obvious No. Like one time I had to build out a lab using popular networking gear and a new software product that both claimed to integrate with k8s, however the network gear didn't support older versions of k8s and the software product only supported older versions of k8s. My boss told me that i could not say 'No' and to get it done. So I smoke-and-mirrored a demo where one day I showed network+k8s integration and another day k8s+software product integration. Never both together. It felt icky, but no one asked to see both and in the next release k8s was supported (before we got to the implementation phase). Sales people always say Yes, Engineers always say No. Pre-sales engineers say "Yes, And..."
Software Engineer -> Business Analyst -> Founder. I have done it all. I switched because I wanted to start my own business obviously and now I mostly do Sales and Customer stuff if not hiring.
I am a geek by nature but also love talking to people and building business. Since 2015 when I went full time into my business, I have probably spoken to at least 10,000 prospective customers and strangers. Many of them became customers and many I don't remember anymore (unless I go back in our CRM)
One thing I can tell you is that business/selling is mostly about understanding people and specifically the person/team you are talking to. We call them "Buyer Persona" more formally. You need to speak their language. For example, when I talk to a small business owner/founder/CEO, I focus on their overall business objectives and ROI from our software. When I talk to say a Prospective customer's tech team who may use our platform, we obviously discuss things like Integrations, APIs etc.
Few things about sales and business:
- People buy from people they like and trust. It is a fact. I have seen it personally over the years. Esepcially true if you are selling a complex solution.
- Sales is about solving your customer's problem, not the features you are selling. Yes there are people who know what they want exactly and feature shop but even for those people, it ultimately is about what problems they are solving.
I love to sell but more importantly, solve our customer's unique problems and challenges. I lose like 90% of deals but those 10% that we close, it is an amazing feeling.
I am a geek by nature but also love talking to people and building business. Since 2015 when I went full time into my business, I have probably spoken to at least 10,000 prospective customers and strangers. Many of them became customers and many I don't remember anymore (unless I go back in our CRM)
One thing I can tell you is that business/selling is mostly about understanding people and specifically the person/team you are talking to. We call them "Buyer Persona" more formally. You need to speak their language. For example, when I talk to a small business owner/founder/CEO, I focus on their overall business objectives and ROI from our software. When I talk to say a Prospective customer's tech team who may use our platform, we obviously discuss things like Integrations, APIs etc.
Few things about sales and business:
- People buy from people they like and trust. It is a fact. I have seen it personally over the years. Esepcially true if you are selling a complex solution.
- Sales is about solving your customer's problem, not the features you are selling. Yes there are people who know what they want exactly and feature shop but even for those people, it ultimately is about what problems they are solving.
I love to sell but more importantly, solve our customer's unique problems and challenges. I lose like 90% of deals but those 10% that we close, it is an amazing feeling.
Early in my career, I wanted to try one of SF's sales bootcamps because my idiot uncle was making > 400k in BD @microsoft. I was in my early twenties and all I saw was him wining & dining and making a lot of money doing it. Well for some reason, the sales bootcamp camp called a BD rep from a startup I was working at, and it turned out this guy and I didn't see eye to eye so he tanks my reputation to the bootcamp and I didn't get to move forward. I ended up having a nice career in tech over the last 15 years, I'm currently a staff engineer and interviewing for roles from senior staff to CTO level of startups but some part of me always wonders what if I was able to successfully pivot into sales...
Not software, but cyber. Currently working in a director of sales role in the federal space.
I mainly switched because I kept hitting the salary cap for cyber roles as a government contractor and got tired of being asked to move on to new contracts.
The transition has been difficult. Sales has a huge learning curve and even more so in government contracting. Selling to the government is it's own animal, since you can't talk to your customer directly (in most cases). So you have to do a lot of work to influence your bids indirectly.
I'm still undecided about whether I made the right move. I like having more influence in the day-to-day management of my org, but I jumped shipped right before remote work options and tech pay exploded, so a lot of my old tech friends are making as much money or more than I am for a lot less work.
I mainly switched because I kept hitting the salary cap for cyber roles as a government contractor and got tired of being asked to move on to new contracts.
The transition has been difficult. Sales has a huge learning curve and even more so in government contracting. Selling to the government is it's own animal, since you can't talk to your customer directly (in most cases). So you have to do a lot of work to influence your bids indirectly.
I'm still undecided about whether I made the right move. I like having more influence in the day-to-day management of my org, but I jumped shipped right before remote work options and tech pay exploded, so a lot of my old tech friends are making as much money or more than I am for a lot less work.
I was a straight-up software engineer and switched over to being a sales engineer. I was in the enterprise space, and wanted to understand our customers because frankly, I had no idea WTF they were doing.
It was fun. If you're single, young, and technical, being an SE is great. You get to talk about your product and how it'll help them, and help people get onboarded and make your product work. You get to see and learn a tremendous amount of infrastructure, process, and products. By the end of an engagement you should know your customer's infrastructure and process better than they do (and we did - they called us for help with other departments).
You also get to travel around and find all these great places to eat. If you're tier 3, though, you kind of go to the middle of nowhere which probably sucks a bit more.
Being an SE is a great way to understand the sales process as well. Your role as an SE is to either get the technical stakeholders to say "yes" or to not say "no." You get to work with salespeople (who are pretty hilarious), sales managers/directors, and customers.
The downside is that it gets boring after a few years. I worked on Tier 1 accounts, but after a while they all sort of look/sound the same...which they should, because at some point when managing a large infrastructure best practices tend to converge. Everyone that manages 100k servers tends to do the same thing, because it works.
It helps down the road as well because you now have insight into IT's thought process. In a startup full of youngsters they have this bizarre (ie: wrong) idea of how software deployment works in the Real World. They need to be disabused of those notions, gently.
You also get to understand the end-to-end of the software process. Sales is just the first step! There's implementation, support onboarding, training, etc. It's actually fun when it all comes together. And it mostly does come together.
The thing you realize is that sales is hard work. And the crappy salespeople you see in real life are just that - crappy. At some level you realize that everyone in your organization needs to be customer-focused (ie:in sales), because they're paying the bills. Various large organizations have forgotten who their customers are, but for a small company it's imperative that everyone (including software people) are totally customer-focused.
It was fun. If you're single, young, and technical, being an SE is great. You get to talk about your product and how it'll help them, and help people get onboarded and make your product work. You get to see and learn a tremendous amount of infrastructure, process, and products. By the end of an engagement you should know your customer's infrastructure and process better than they do (and we did - they called us for help with other departments).
You also get to travel around and find all these great places to eat. If you're tier 3, though, you kind of go to the middle of nowhere which probably sucks a bit more.
Being an SE is a great way to understand the sales process as well. Your role as an SE is to either get the technical stakeholders to say "yes" or to not say "no." You get to work with salespeople (who are pretty hilarious), sales managers/directors, and customers.
The downside is that it gets boring after a few years. I worked on Tier 1 accounts, but after a while they all sort of look/sound the same...which they should, because at some point when managing a large infrastructure best practices tend to converge. Everyone that manages 100k servers tends to do the same thing, because it works.
It helps down the road as well because you now have insight into IT's thought process. In a startup full of youngsters they have this bizarre (ie: wrong) idea of how software deployment works in the Real World. They need to be disabused of those notions, gently.
You also get to understand the end-to-end of the software process. Sales is just the first step! There's implementation, support onboarding, training, etc. It's actually fun when it all comes together. And it mostly does come together.
The thing you realize is that sales is hard work. And the crappy salespeople you see in real life are just that - crappy. At some level you realize that everyone in your organization needs to be customer-focused (ie:in sales), because they're paying the bills. Various large organizations have forgotten who their customers are, but for a small company it's imperative that everyone (including software people) are totally customer-focused.
I studied multimedia computing at university and every job I went for, I was recommended I go into sales rather than tech (web programming, FAE and others). So, I worked as an account manager at a well known hardware manufacturer for a couple of years, then went to a full on sales job at an online media company.
Anout 13 years ago, I moved into a sister company at an affiliate network - and then, whilst managing clients and a team, I also get involved with project planning, coming up with new features and working with our Indian tech team.
Software engineers get paid more if you work at Google etc, but I’ve done well imho - and I really enjoy what I do, being highly technical and commercially focused is a very good skill mix.
If you do go this route - I recommend signing up to Toastmasters, as it’ll give you skills to speak with people.
Anout 13 years ago, I moved into a sister company at an affiliate network - and then, whilst managing clients and a team, I also get involved with project planning, coming up with new features and working with our Indian tech team.
Software engineers get paid more if you work at Google etc, but I’ve done well imho - and I really enjoy what I do, being highly technical and commercially focused is a very good skill mix.
If you do go this route - I recommend signing up to Toastmasters, as it’ll give you skills to speak with people.
I switched from Sales & Entrepreneurship (still sales) to Software Engineering... I wasn't bad either... Presidents club for 4 years and ranked top-10 nationally one year.
Why did I switch? Totally by accident... I started a business doing marketing/ web development, and had problems finding/keeping contractors to do web development for me. So I just learned how to do it. I ended up switching to full-time W2 working for a company after a client got into a motor cycle accident and couldn't pay me (condensed version)... My career progressed pretty quickly so I haven't really had the motivation to go back.
Wild how things work out :)
Why did I switch? Totally by accident... I started a business doing marketing/ web development, and had problems finding/keeping contractors to do web development for me. So I just learned how to do it. I ended up switching to full-time W2 working for a company after a client got into a motor cycle accident and couldn't pay me (condensed version)... My career progressed pretty quickly so I haven't really had the motivation to go back.
Wild how things work out :)
Another definition of AE is Applications Engineer, the most commonly known kind being FAE - Field Applications Engineer.
This is a great hybrid engineering / sales role. Depending on the company it can be very technical, while generally reporting up through the VP of Sales it has job perks and responsibilities that are often only available to sales personnel. Things like stock options, bonuses, and higher saleries.
Seriously consider an FAE role if your interested in transitioning to a less desk bound but still technical role.
This is a great hybrid engineering / sales role. Depending on the company it can be very technical, while generally reporting up through the VP of Sales it has job perks and responsibilities that are often only available to sales personnel. Things like stock options, bonuses, and higher saleries.
Seriously consider an FAE role if your interested in transitioning to a less desk bound but still technical role.
Backend developer -> Product Manager . Experience was smooth. I have always worked with startups as PM . I get to code a few things for ad-hoc reports etc.
I learnt to deal with sales types and ensure that my engineers don't get crushed with conflicting priorities (my main job actually).
I learnt to deal with sales types and ensure that my engineers don't get crushed with conflicting priorities (my main job actually).