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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

#161

Post by aleph_minus_one »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #91
Brajeshwar wrote: post #39

Selling dev-tools to devs is like selling toys to kids - you target the parents (or the paying CxOs in the company). One should learn from the likes of Slack, Postman, etc. -- make it the de-facto tools for the devs/users and make them happy, then they go and ask their parents/approvers to buy them.

That's how you make parents feel good about themselves, that they did something useful, while their kids are unhappy with shit pseudo-toys they got. That's how amateurs and people who mistake priorities in edutainment do things. Pros know that you always target the kids - not just for toys, but for many other categories of wares too. Kids may have no spending authority, but they're much better at marketing to their p…

> Like, there's a reason you see Paw Patrol merch on every other kid everywhere - they release a highly addictive animated show for kids, and kids do the rest.

> The reason this doesn't work with devs is because unlike parents of kids, people with spending authority usually don't care, as devs are a cost centre and a number on a chart, not people generating value.

Perhaps the reason why this doesn't work with devs is that typical devs are much worse marketers than typical kids. :-)

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

#162

Post by mlrtime »

vinay_ys wrote: post #136

I've been a decision maker on $100M+ of engineering hardware/software/services spend per quarter and here's my perspective on this problem: 1. If you are making developer tools, make sure current/existing developers find it super useful and are strong advocates for your tool. 2. Make sure you don't tick any of the 'veto' boxes – there are a few – opaque contracts, lockins, data security/privacy challenges, sso/auth i…

#7 Is usually not so black and white. This is most difficult when the buying product is already in-house and you are looking to replace it or add new functionality.

The problem I have with #7 is the ROI on build vs buy. And, at what point do you determine this?

First, buying a product with very high integration cost is still "building". So I need developer time for integration, time that they could spend on something else or the product itself.

Hopefully this would come out during a POC integration, but then we still need developer time to execute.

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

#163

Post by animuchan »

al_borland wrote: post #128
zarzavat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Buying copilot on my own, using a personal account, would have me fired for violating our data security policies. No need to wait for a layoff. I have access to it now, but it’s through the company with whatever policies they put in place through Microsoft’s enterprise offering. Now that I have it, I don’t find it that useful. It has not been the productivity multiplier I was promised. A big part of this could be dow…

Its usefulness really depends on what you're writing: typical Kubernetes YAML files get fantastic suggestions, while algo-heavy code not at all.

Can't you rebind the tab key in the VS Code plugin to something else?

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

#164

Post by deprecative »

toenail wrote: post #119
pompino wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is who decides what really matters? Every department is biased towards their own needs. Upper management is usually clueless when it comes to technical needs, even if they've done the job before - because it was probably 10+ years ago.

The individuals decide what matters to them. If the company thinks their employees are too incompetent to know what they need it's time to move on.

Unfortunately, you just described 99% of employers. "Just quit" isn't an answer when there are no meaningful alternatives. Business views SWE/tech as a cost of doing business rather than an investment.

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

#165

Post by wongarsu »

olivierduval wrote: post #92
kmac_ wrote: post #40

It depends on the company. One company I worked for had a policy of "Just buy what you need that makes your work easier: books, licenses, and even hardware. Management time spent on decisions is too expensive, so we default to instant approval." Did developers go on a buying spree? No, the same amount of stuff was bought as before the policy. And it did make life easier.

Actually, it's just considering books, licences and hardware as disposables like pen and papers... and it can usually be true for some "small" local software (like an IDE, provided that either you trust the devs with admin rights or that corp IT can allow software installation). You can give either a "small" bugdet for everybody (and you wont be a software the same year that you buy a new laptop) or managed by the te…

Large expenses like laptops could just be treated the same way accounting will treat them: if you spend $2100 on a laptop that's counted as $700 spent now, $700 in a year, and $700 the year after.

Since you don't have to comply with tax codes for internal budgets you could even allow developers to choose (within reason) which deprecation period to use for each item.

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

#166

Post by ckdarby »

This is why the AWS marketplace is an incredibly powerful tool.

In most engineering departments they control their existing P&L which will include opex AWS spend. Spending within an existing vendor doesn't need budgetary approval as long as the opex doesn't exceed the budget.

It allows flexibility to find savings within the opex budget to spend elsewhere on better tooling.

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

#167

Post by cjk2 »

stevehine wrote: post #156
cjk2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same story with Precision and XPS. $3k laptops last 9 months if you're lucky. I literally have a pile of dead ones now. They don't even bother with servicing them.

This isn't everyone's experience - I've got two precision laptops - they are 12 and 10 years old and have never shown so much as a sniffle of a problem, neither has my Latitude laptop that I lug around for personal use. Maybe I just got lucky ?

You got lucky. We had about 1000 of them as a sample size.

Also yours are much older models. It's the new ones.

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

#168

Post by pompino »

toenail wrote: post #119
pompino wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is who decides what really matters? Every department is biased towards their own needs. Upper management is usually clueless when it comes to technical needs, even if they've done the job before - because it was probably 10+ years ago.

The individuals decide what matters to them. If the company thinks their employees are too incompetent to know what they need it's time to move on.

Most programmers are notoriously bad about estimating anything - ship dates, time to investigate bugs, time to close bugs, time to implement features, complexity, etc, etc. I wouldn't blindly believe a programmer about a tool increasing productivity by __ %. I would listen to their argument first, and look at their experience. I would believe them if they have made good decisions in the past, or if they were a senior/experienced person who understands these nuances. In any case, I hope you agree that there is a spectrum. Because disagreement is not about "incompetence".

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

#169

Post by al_borland »

animuchan wrote: post #163
al_borland wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying copilot on my own, using a personal account, would have me fired for violating our data security policies. No need to wait for a layoff. I have access to it now, but it’s through the company with whatever policies they put in place through Microsoft’s enterprise offering. Now that I have it, I don’t find it that useful. It has not been the productivity multiplier I was promised. A big part of this could be dow…

Its usefulness really depends on what you're writing: typical Kubernetes YAML files get fantastic suggestions, while algo-heavy code not at all. Can't you rebind the tab key in the VS Code plugin to something else?

> Can't you rebind the tab key in the VS Code plugin to something else?

That was my goal. I figured tab + some modifier would be great. I spent quite a while looking for ways to do it, tried about a dozen, but it doesn’t seem like the feature exists. Eventually I had to just turn it off so I could actually get my work done.

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

#170

Post by grumpy_coder »

chillfox wrote: post #33
elric wrote: post #25

I 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 a…

If you have to ask, then you don’t have authority.

Generally, nobody has authority. Even the highest executive has to fight procurement in a big corp. Own a VC-backed startup, the investors want you to get prior agreement on 'large' purchases. Maybe if you are the sole owner of a small firm without a purchasing department.

Politics always has people insert themselves in the flow of money.

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