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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

#81

Post by jimnotgym »

tw04 wrote: post #32
jimnotgym wrote: post #5

Nearly right. I don't think many sales and finance people have that kind of authority either. That's why you see everyone using the company tools or free tiers. You need to sell to peoples bosses. Save time, make projects more transparent, take away freedom, that sort of thing. This is probably why Excel is so ubiquitous. Also that Excel is the most powerful tool that Corporate IT will let you have. Try and get Corpo…

Excel is ubiquitous because literally anyone can use it. Unlike a database, there is a direct visual representation of what you’re building. It is included in all m365 licenses and has been relatively cheap for a perpetual license for years. As for allowing WSL for sales, have you ever actually worked with someone in sales? At 99% of companies, even the most technically literate sales person can just barely send an e…

Yes I have been on the senior management team of several companies and have worked with sales. Your lazy stereotype is as bad a suggesting programmers all sit in dark rooms with starwars T shirts and Body Odour issues.

I have seen sales people create very complex excel models, and use low code tools to build their own pipelines because corporate IT were too pig ignorant to help them. I have seen them use screen recorders to beat the lack of API access. Ihave seen finance people use WSL, Cygwin, Python, Anaconda and more.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#82

Post by fbdrgvv »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #75

Ha. I used to work in a sales-oriented subsidiary of an engineering company. In the early days, I could take people out for a $100 lunch, no problem, but I couldn’t buy a $30 card for my computer. In the parent corporation, on the other hand, they could fairly easily get a $5,000 test rig, with no issue, but needed to fill out forms in triplicate to take you out to a fast food greasy spoon. Towards the end of my tenu…

[dead]

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#83

Post by cuu508 »

zarzavat wrote: post #69
atq2119 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I wouldn't just approve an individual Copilot subscription either. The problem isn't the money, it's the copyright and whether trade secrets are being leaked. Those things can surely be solved, but it's far from trivial.

Okay imagine you’re an employee. You are ranked against your coworkers based on individual productivity, either explicitly or implicitly. You can choose to either spend $10/month to get a big productivity multiplier, or you can play it by the book, not use it, and be the first one out the door the next time the company decides it needs to find efficiencies in a down market. What do you choose?

I would choose to play it by the book.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#84

Post by Hammershaft »

pflenker wrote: post #48
genocidicbunny wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My own stance as a lead is that it costs more than 50€ just discussing the thing, so we might as well just buy it.

50€ can be literally less than 30 minutes of discussion over the item being bought.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#85

Post by olivierduval »

jimnotgym wrote: post #5

Nearly right. I don't think many sales and finance people have that kind of authority either. That's why you see everyone using the company tools or free tiers. You need to sell to peoples bosses. Save time, make projects more transparent, take away freedom, that sort of thing. This is probably why Excel is so ubiquitous. Also that Excel is the most powerful tool that Corporate IT will let you have. Try and get Corpo…

> a huge job to get anything self hosted last IT with their policy of 'we are in charge of the computers and we will decide how you run your business'

... because we are also in charge of:

- the bills for the servers/networks/storage to "self host" your new shiny application

- the installation/upgrade/administration/support of the servers/networks... and of your application (because the finance department doesn't know how to do it)

- the integration of your "self hosted" application into the AD (for the SSO), mail system, slack, backup/restore system (in case of crash or hack)... and the maintenance of all of it

- eventually ensure that the application datas can be exported to other apps or migrated (when the new shiny self hosted app will be less new... and a new new new shiny self hosted app will be bought)

- the cybersecurity of your "self hosted" application... and of the whole corporate IT !!!!! Remember: a single application is enough to compromise the whole corp IT (OK... it can be segmented, 0-trusted, and so... be it increase attack surface and cybersecurity cost anyway)

In fact: BUYING a "self hosted" application is the EASY part, the HARD part is to make it RUN, DAY-TO-DAY, for AS LONG AS REQUIRED for the business (including legal requirements sometimes to keep datas for long time)

OK, when "local IT" ask for application, they usually can manage part of it technically but... either they wont (because they just dont have time! Remember: they want the tools to do their job, but the tool is NOT their job) or they cant (because they're devs and not admin sys/net sys and they dont know)

At most: they can use some "sandbox" unconnected to "corp IT", but then they either need to forget all nice things (like backup systems or AD) or to implement it and maintain it (shadow IT)...

IMHO, that's part of the explanation for the "SaaS" and "Cloud" development: externalizing all of these costs

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#86

Post by bjt12345 »

I purchase my own software licences and claim it on tax.

Because it's a false economy.

I've won awards at work, became indispensable on certain projects, and have been given pay rises, choose the work I want to do, through finding the affordable right tools for the job and purchasing them.

My Jetbrains licenses are a classic example of this. I couldn't imagine refractoring code without it.

If the cost cutting stopped, I'd have more competition in the workplace.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#87

Post by nabla9 »

Typically there is a price limit.

Below the limit, there is an assigned budget for the dev team. You can buy online and the price is visible. Above that sum you must do sales negotiation and the price is not public in the sellers site.

If buying the tools for the whole team costs a few grand, you can buy it online. If the sum is higher the price is negotiated and costs the company at least five figures.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#88

Post by jimnotgym »

Epa095 wrote: post #12

Unless 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.

Indeed. I asked a dev to set up an ftp server. He was a decent Linux admin and had done this plenty of times on a £10 vps. This time he chose an AWS service that cost over a grand a month. It caused me lots of trouble when I got my credit card bill, and we were already well into the next month of charges. After that I had to take tighter control.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#89

Post by jsdwarf »

tw04 wrote: post #32
jimnotgym wrote: post #5

Nearly right. I don't think many sales and finance people have that kind of authority either. That's why you see everyone using the company tools or free tiers. You need to sell to peoples bosses. Save time, make projects more transparent, take away freedom, that sort of thing. This is probably why Excel is so ubiquitous. Also that Excel is the most powerful tool that Corporate IT will let you have. Try and get Corpo…

Excel is ubiquitous because literally anyone can use it. Unlike a database, there is a direct visual representation of what you’re building. It is included in all m365 licenses and has been relatively cheap for a perpetual license for years. As for allowing WSL for sales, have you ever actually worked with someone in sales? At 99% of companies, even the most technically literate sales person can just barely send an e…

Excel is so ubiquitous because it is the only IDE/Programming Language/Database Environment business users can run in a restricted corporate IT environment.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#90

Post by jongjong »

"Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority"

Wow, I said almost this exact sentence to my co-founder just a few days ago to explain to him why my no-code serverless platform which allowed me to build our entire startup, bug-free, in record time cannot be anything more than a side project or tool for my own usage and cannot be monetized.

It doesn't matter than I can build something 10x as fast and avoid 99% of bugs. Those with decision ability are brainwashed to think that the way to reduce bugs is TypeScript and the way to build software fast is React.

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