So true. Getting a Copilot subscription for $10/mo was an uphill battle. My daily supply of coffee alone costs the company more that that.
Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
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Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#22If you have to fight for a 50$ book, you‘re probably just at the wrong place. That being said, some developers wanted to test Notion internally, so they got an informal account with a credit card. Turns out they built an important overview in it and send the link around, so everyone who wanted to take a look at it (half the company) implicitly created an account and our CFO got hit by a 10k bill next month. And that‘…
How does anything think setting up a system where you can get billed for clicking a link is a good idea? Along with no sensible monthly limit on the credit card. The whole setup is beyond ridiculous, and it's hard to believe this is how "devs having no purchase authority stories usually start".
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#23Hasn’t this begun to change though? I did a brief stint at Sinch (the Swedish Twilio) and “developer go-to-market” was an established term there. My impression is that developers have started using so many cloud services and APIs that the old school approach (“nobody in engineering buys anything!”) is starting to crumble.
Author been living under a rock?Engineering/dev first companies been popular since the 2000s. Developer salaries are often the most expensive thing, so everyone in the c-suite cares that their people are more efficient. Developer love is table stakes if you want to be put in front of someone who can purchase.
If only sales were as easy as emailing the CEO or CTO and having them agree to a meeting
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#24It's pretty much like all enterprise software: you sell to the people with the purchasing authority. Meaning sales are often closed on the golf course.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#25I only had this issue the one time while I was an employee: I wanted a Thinkpad, but management insisted I got a shitty Dell. In the end, they got me a Thinkpad.
Other than that, whenever I've asked for a book or some tool, I simply got it, even expensive split keyboards.
Now that I'm self employed, I just buy what I need. Which isn't much, really. Very few "developer tools" are useful enough to spend money on, let alone try to integrate them in my workflow. That last part has become much more important to me over the years.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#26So true. Getting a Copilot subscription for $10/mo was an uphill battle. My daily supply of coffee alone costs the company more that that.
Wow, they must use expensive coffee beans.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#27There's plenty of consulting companies where developer = owner. Also, JetBrains, Ida, Visual Studio Pro, VMware Workstation, Docker Enterprise, Colab Pro, HuggingFace, ... There's lots of paid tools primarily targeting developers.
The tweet says that companies will be more successful if they can find a way to market dev tools to non-devs (coo/cfo) in the organization that have the authority to approve larger purchases and can push these tools down the hierarchy
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#28If you have to fight for a 50$ book, you‘re probably just at the wrong place. That being said, some developers wanted to test Notion internally, so they got an informal account with a credit card. Turns out they built an important overview in it and send the link around, so everyone who wanted to take a look at it (half the company) implicitly created an account and our CFO got hit by a 10k bill next month. And that‘…
How does anything think setting up a system where you can get billed for clicking a link is a good idea? Along with no sensible monthly limit on the credit card. The whole setup is beyond ridiculous, and it's hard to believe this is how "devs having no purchase authority stories usually start".
Billing by active users is quite common.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#29Unless you can put on azure/AWS/Google cloud. I can't buy a pencil without approval, but I can spend thousands in our cloud without asking anyone.
And there's the magic of the Amazon marketplace. Let's you buy non-AWS services while still ending up on the AWS bill and contributing to any potential spending commitment the company has.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#30If your management doesn't get you the stuff you need to be productive your company is a failure. Move somewhere else.
Depends on the tool. I've seen engineers ask for an IDA license to try to debug a pretty simple memory overrun crash. The manager rightfully told that engineer to go use Visual Studio first. Otoh, if management isn't willing to drop $50 on a one time purchase that increases your productivity, it's definitely a flag. Maybe not a red one, but at least mauve.
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