Why is selling software so weird? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#91

Post by lr4444lr » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

The main problem here is that houses and software have wildly different marginal costs

It is "a" problem, I'll even admit a major one, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is the expectation of continual customization and improvement at the input of the customer. Imagine if houses were built by you contracting with the developer, and after the initial blueprint and plans were agreed to, every two or 4 weeks you came back with requests to do new things like "add a basement bathroom", or "push out the back another 5 feet and add a glass skylight there for a sunroom", or "change the roof tiling to something 30% heavier".

Even without the regulatory hurdles and permits, nothing would get built as a sheer matter of physics. Blueprints and architecturally sound structures take some basic customer requests at the outset, and then make dozens of important, non-easily reversible technical decisions known to an expert to be required to support those requests. You can't just add on new customer-desired trappings without vastly compromising the quality of those assumptions for the original design.

But that is the situation in modern "agile" software development, and why selling it is so weird - because nothing else we'd say requires professional skill is built this way, and the real profit comes from annual recurring revenue - not a one time sale. Even wedding cakes have limits to change after the initial tiers are baked.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#92

Post by xyzzy21 » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #49

> Low volume software is not a good business to be in. I disagree very strongly with this based on my experience so far. Being in the business of low volume software is fantastic if your customers are other businesses . The advantages of low-volume/complex B2B software biz are incredible to me. Contract terms are measured in half-decades. Your users can actually be trained and held accountable in many cases. You don'…

Ditto! B2B is alive and well. I absolutely prefer it because it's a far more rational interaction and sales process. Margins can be higher and it's a better class of customers most of the time.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#93

Post by emteycz » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:29 PM UTC

verinus wrote: post #88

emteycz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of Eastern Europe pre-1989, and most of the same countries for few years post-1989, until they realized this is going nowhere and privatized.

not only eastern europe. here in Austria we had several companies that were state owned. Problem was, that then there is politics coming into play and hiring is not about business facts but politics. This resulted in highly inefficient companies as the objectives did not align any more...

Exactly. Also, firing established people who stop contributing is impossible (they'll plead "it's political"), and hiring new people for good wages is impossible too because "that's not according to our tables of wages" (both of these problems are not theoretical, every state company here today has them).

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#94

Post by codeflo » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

leftnode wrote: post #68

chrisseaton wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your users can actually be trained and held accountable What does it mean to hold a user accountable?

Not the OP, but also selling B2B software. You can hold a user accountable that they'll actually use the software purchased. The company is spending a lot of money on it, finds value in it, and wants to ensure it's being used and implemented correctly. B2B software with figures like the OP means you're building a professional relationship with a customer (as opposed to a transactional one), and can push back when the…

Also, users are sometimes simply ordered, by their bosses or IT, not to press buttons in ways that are known to break the software. This is sometimes considered cheaper than fixing bugs, or at the very least, mitigates the problem until the next scheduled deployment window. It’s a very different world.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#95

Post by bob1029 » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

leftnode wrote: post #68

chrisseaton wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your users can actually be trained and held accountable What does it mean to hold a user accountable?

Not the OP, but also selling B2B software. You can hold a user accountable that they'll actually use the software purchased. The company is spending a lot of money on it, finds value in it, and wants to ensure it's being used and implemented correctly. B2B software with figures like the OP means you're building a professional relationship with a customer (as opposed to a transactional one), and can push back when the…

For our product, a user not using our software properly would be like any arbitrary office worker incorrectly using Microsoft Word.

At some level, it is still our responsibility to provide a reasonable UX (and we have weekly meetings with our customers about this). But, our customers are also fully aware of the various contractual obligations and take ownership of problems caused by poor training or hires on their end.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#96

Post by phkahler » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:32 PM UTC

Most software is rented. As the author says it has effectively zero marginal cost. Commercial software is ostensibly using sales to fund future software development, but in many cases it's not really doing much of that.

More and more I'm viewing software as infrastructure, and Free Software as one of the best ways to protect that. But that leaves a big challenge funding development.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#97

Post by Jaruzel » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #54

Jaruzel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had exactly this experience many many years ago when I was just starting out. I'd written a small tool that enabled pop-up messages between [Windows] users on a network. It was protocol agnostic - as long as the users had a shared file area, it would work. This was back in the day when even internal email was new and mostly non-existent in the workplace. I sold it as shareware originally, but then a Big Fish came a…

"The people with money assume they can ask for whatever they like and have no concept that sometimes it's simply unprofitable for the little-guy to deliver it." Thats a question of negotiating, isn't it? They can ask for whatever they like and you can reply with whatever you like. And then you find a agreement, or not. The problem in your case seems to have been more lack of confidence and experience on your part, be…

> The problem in your case seems to have been more lack of confidence and experience on your part

yeah, I was like 23 at the time, and totally inexperienced. Had it happened now, 20+ years later, the conversation would have been totally different.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#98

Post by datavirtue » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

I was thinking "building software is more like writing a book" and a few paragraphs later they slide into the publishing analogy.

I spent an entire year, 16 hours a day, grinding on a software project all by myself...and I shipped at the end. Having completed it, or shipped rather, I realized/felt that I now knew what it was like to be an author...working alone building something through discovery and pure creativity.

I have been chasing that feeling again, for years. It doesn't come from building someone else's desired solution as a team member on a project. That is a totally different experience for the developer than building from the heart.

At work, building software is sort of like building a house. In my home office it's like writing a book.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#99

Post by nradov » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #91

The main problem here is that houses and software have wildly different marginal costs It is "a" problem, I'll even admit a major one, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is the expectation of continual customization and improvement at the input of the customer. Imagine if houses were built by you contracting with the developer, and after the initial blueprint and plans were agreed to, every two or 4 week…

Talk to any general contractor who does high-end home remodeling work. Some customers literally do come in with extensive weekly change requests, sometimes even more extreme than moving an interior wall or adding a skylight. This isn't necessarily a problem; it's a hassle but gives the contractor an opportunity to charge a lot more than the original price quote.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#100

Post by zeptonaut22 » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

ZetaZero wrote: post #79

zeptonaut22 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had this as a planned footnote in the article, then cut it because I haven’t added support for footnotes yet lol

Footnotes(1) not supported? (1) This is a footnote. You don't need any fancy software to write a footnote.

The best footnotes I've found provide nice bidirectional linking for easily jumping to / back from the footnote so that it disrupts the reading as little as possible.

The beautiful / fun part about having a blog is that it's your own little garden: you can adjust things just like how you see fit, and footnotes were just a case where I figured I'd do without until I could implement it in a way I was happy with.