121–130 of 166 posts
What does "steelman" mean in this context?
From the context, it might also mean "rebut this as strongly as possible", "criticize this" or "defuse this argument".
It's unfamiliar wording to me as well. Does anyone have a rough etymology of "steelman" as a verb?
Per their latest annual report: "As of January 31, 2022, we had 7,461 employees, of which approximately 67% were in sales, marketing and customer success, 20% in engineering, product development and customer operations and 13% in general and administrative. We had approximately 69% of our employees based in the U.S. and the remainder in international locations."
> 67% were in sales, marketing and customer success, 20% in engineering, product development and customer operations and 13% in general and administrative Ratios like this are fairly common. I think the confusion comes from engineers who look at a SaaS and assume it's mostly engineers like themselves. Engineering is a small portion of the headcount. A lot of customer-related needs scale with the number of customers.…
Unless you are Google, which is then again where a lot of people in engineering can get confused as most companies don't hate their users quite as much as Google ;P.
I feel the same way about most big corporations. Tech companies are not immune. I had a FB recruiter once brag to me about their Messenger team occupying a couple floors in Seattle and a couple floors in Menlo Park. Holy hell, what do you do on a project like Messenger with that many devs??
Scaling is likely to be the biggest problem, not app development.
What does "steelman" mean in this context?
A strawman argument is a weak argument to justify a position you disagree with; its purpose is rhetorical: It's meant to make your position look strong to onlookers (and perhaps to yourself).
A steelman argument is the strongest possible argument you can come up with to justify a position you disagree with; its meant to help you find the truth by taking seriously the people who disagree with you.
OP is using the word slightly differently than normal, in that the position OP disagrees with here is, "Docusign needs 7,400 employees". A strawman would be, "Docusign needs 7,400 employees because it needs to show the stock market that it's a serious company" -- weak and easy to demonstrate that it's stupid. A steelman would be, "Docusign actually needs that many sales people and customer service reps."
So each employee generates ~$320k annual revenue ($2.4B / 7,400), which sounds about right.
SaaS companies typically do low $100,000s per employee per year.
[1] https://www.docusign.com/press-releases/docusign-announces-f...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough business to cover their own salaries It won't be long before GPT-3 or its successors will be putting many people out of a sales or support job.
I feel like both sides think this, Engineer - Our company is so good word of mouth should be enough to bring in sales, if we need any more lets look to AI for a solution. Sales - We bring in the money, all engineers do is cost the company money, we could probably run the app/develop the product on a skeleton crew, can't wait for AI to make those jobs obsolete! Truth - Both engineers and sales are hugely successful to…
For SAAS companies that do B2B it's important to remember two arms of the company: 1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough business to cover their own salaries 2. Customer Support -> Big enterprise contracts generally have support written into them. Thus, for every enterprise customer Docusign may need anywhere from 0.1 -> 3 (or more) FTEs. If you price this right it's always worth…
Don’t forget that signing is primarily a legal activity. Every jurisdiction handle it differently, and it’s important to be able to articulate what your product can and can’t do. This was particularly relevant during the dark days of COVID lockdowns and quarantined, where those laws and practices were tested to their limits. They likely outsource a lot of that regional work, and do so on an ad hoc basis, but they sti…
Point being, it's up to the users to figure out if signatures on a digital platform will be legal or not in their jurisdiction. DocuSign probably has some fine print explicitly stating they're not responsible for improper use.
Has docusign become what google has to search? Like I say to my insurance agent, “do I need to docusign something”?