coders should get commision
Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
171–180 of 327 posts
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was still in the humanities (German Literature Major), my program was making a MAJOR push for all graduates of the major to be able to articulate to others and interviewers the skillset they'd gained during their time at university, and I found it quite useful and helpful, even though I can't remember too much about the specifics. I even talked to one of my professors personally about the push, in which I ment…
I think I know what you're saying all too well, if I understand correctly. In my Master's program, my advisor had to keep asking me to stop saying, "we" any time I described efforts. I didn't even notice I was doing it, but very naturally I would say, "we applied X." "We then did Y" instead of "I", being the sole researcher. It's very hard for me to be so bold as to flatly say, "I designed and built this, and I feel…
I think we are understanding each other very well! Yes, learning to "sell ourselves" and highlight our own successes well enough to influence social structures when we need to is a hard problem, we're trained quite strongly and mostly correctly that "rooting one's own horn" is quite rude, and even in cases where it isn't actually rude or is expected, we STILL have to tread lightly! (For example, resumes and interviews are functionally places where we're given ORDERS to tout our achievements- yet there's still an invisible line you can cross that'll mark you as a braggart if you go overboard!)
But on the other hand, people can only make decisions based on information that is actually available to them, and so the quiet industrious worker in he corner who rarely pipes up and silently gets the job done but does nothing to make certain his/her contribution is noticed is passed over, because the boss can't magically know that quiet worker is the excellent contributor they are without something imparting that info- good managers will try to understand who's truly contributing in ways like that but even very good managers are frequently subject to imperfect information!
Anyway, I'm glad your advisor told you that, and I'm glad you shared that with me, yours is a succinct way of describing that, I'm almost tempted not to post this reply, as I'm uncertain it adds anything more of value than an emphatic "yes I agree!"
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#173To me, it is obvious why sales people are paid by commission. It's because the most efficient thing for a company to do is pay someone their precise marginal value, not more or less, as that leads to the incentive of people doing the best they can given special constraints that only they personally know such as their own personal productivity function and how much they value their own time and effort. Companies would…
> It's because the most efficient thing for a company to do is pay someone their precise marginal value, not more or less [...]
But if they did so there would be no surplus value left for shareholders. Paying for labor less than its contribution to the value of the product is the basis of capitalism.
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about AWS ? I often see spend 10k+ Without much of a conversation with salespeople. But this is probably the exception rather then the rule. And of course there is high touch to grow accounts after they reach certain threasholds.
A huge portion of the small to mid-sized clients I have which end up using AWS do so because they've been approached by sales people handing out free credits like candy. Often it short-circuits cost/benefit evaluations completely. But AWS also often start as a $10/month product, and then one more, and one more. I think that's a huge portion of their success - it's easy to ramp up the cost slow enough and in small eno…
> People usually move off AWS first when if it gets to be enough of a cost pain-point to make higher ups take notice.
Isn't that the point of cloud computing? So you don't have to worry about datacenter capacity until it becomes a major cost center?
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#175Why do sales people get commissions and engineers don't? Because the sales person knows exactly how much money they bring in and can claim "if I didn't make the sale, that money would not be coming in" even though it's not always true it's a good story. An engineers actions are so far removed from revenue that they can't make a claim so directly. Also, if they did want to claim a portion of product revenue they could…
Sales is also a rather short-term, target-oriented activity. If you would incentivise developers on those same short-term goals, this would have a negative impact on the quality and innovation of your product, since they'd also start chasing the quick wins. This is not to say that developers do not deserve a bonus when performing well, I just don't think it should be tied to Sales.
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not going to sell to large businesses without salespeople. A $10/month product? Sure. But when you're selling a $10,000/month product, you need salespeople.
What about AWS ? I often see spend 10k+ Without much of a conversation with salespeople. But this is probably the exception rather then the rule. And of course there is high touch to grow accounts after they reach certain threasholds.
AWS has built up a very substantial enterprise sales force. Basically, there was a limit to how much and to whom they could sell based on waiting for people to click on their website.
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unfortunately the effects of a single teacher are so noisy and indirect that it's basically impossible to measure their performance. The lack of firm data is why the debate about teacher compensation is so fraught. The problem is not that it's hard to measure. The people is that teachers actually have very little ability to make a marginal impact on their students though their performance, except at the very tail e…
That's a myth. The real problem is that the average teacher (relative performance) is so far away from being close to maximally performant (as proved in studies which rigourously control teacher behaviour) that the impact of variation about that mean is swamped by environmental factors. People conclude that since swapping teachers doesn't make an appreciable difference, teacher performance can't make a difference. Wh…
If teaching is indeed universally bad (which I doubt but lets go with the idea as a thought experiment) - then surely the issue must lie with training/the accepted teaching methods?
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's essentially true for most sales people and traders as well. It's definitely not true in most sales positions, particularly the ones that are highly commissions-based. > But imagine how the teaching profession would change if 1) the gains could be accurately measured and 2) we assigned payment or prestige to teachers based on (1). We can, and we do. The fact is: the gains just aren't that large. If you want t…
That's right, we need more administrative staff, and laptops and iPads for all children. That should fix the problems in education.
> Public education by state rankings show that New York spent the most per pupil at $20,610. The next top five are District of Columbia ($18,485), Alaska ($18,416), New Jersey ($17,907), Connecticut ($17,745) and Vermont ($16,988).
http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/pu... https://archive.fo/DeBGH
A teacher's salary in New York isn't good enough but you can at least afford rent if you're smart. The reason why I tolerate laptop and iPad spending is because I don't know if/how we can cut costs and still get better results. Thus, when I see something that lets students learn without a one on one with a teacher, I imagine it saves money.
From the same page, we see that total expense is 617B or about (617 billion/18 trillion) three percent of GDP. I'll be honest. I have no earthly idea whether this number is too big or too small or if that's even the right question.
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#179A strong argument would at least consider the systemic consequences of commissions, rather than just extolling the assumed virtues in a circular argument. What is their impact on product? On support? Engineering morale? On the customer experience itself? Just a myriad of effects not even considered here when commissions are looked at in isolation, the system be damned. It's probably very true that it's not plausible…
Maybe it is lazy not to investigate better models than commission. But on the other hand, the world of enterprise sales, from software to jet planes to insurance, has worked this way for decades/centuries/millenia. So trying to find a better way is less "not lazy", and more heroically quixotic.
Mostly. Going back a ways to companies like Digital Equipment Corp., sales commissions weren't originally used--or at least they were limited. The theory was that you wanted to form long-term partnerships with customers, not encourage selling things they didn't need, etc. This was a minority practice though and DEC itself eventually abandoned it.
Although it's not directly related to commissions, as others have touched on, sales is generally a very performance-oriented culture. You don't hear about the challenges of interviewing for sales because it's really pretty simple. You often hire based on past performance and, if you hire someone who doesn't make quota for a quarter or two, you get rid of them. A useful quote is: "I've never met a sales manager who has trouble firing people."
Re: Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the sales person knows exactly how much money they bring in I agree this is the key factor. Any job where a person can argue a clear, direct, measurable link between their work and profit is a job that can be paid based on financial results. Other jobs where you see this: financial traders, consultants with direct client contact. To take the other extreme, look at teachers. They have the potential to generate huge…
I'll just put one citation into this discussion. Raj Chetty and his collaborators produce amazing research. I attended a talk when he visited New Zealand a few years ago. In this paper he's attempting to address the dream of measuring teacher value, by measuring changes in test scores against changes in lifetime income. Yes there are other ways of measuring teacher "value" too, but income changes are relevant to this…
> address the dream of measuring teacher value, by measuring changes in test scores against changes in lifetime income.
Of course, combined with the premise of this article, such measurement will incentivize teachers to turn students into sales-people :)