February 17, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Matt Miller (#4) (2/17/2012)
We finally achieved 4-9s uptime this year, up from 3-9s last year! The new DBA rocks! That's 9 less hours of downtime spread over a whole year. (That's about 1.5 minutes of reduced downtime per day. Totally awesome improvement.)
One of our salespeople just doubled our revenue. The new salesperson rocks! Double-bonuses for the C-level execs!
That's a more real difference between stellar DBA vs competent DBA and stellar salesperson vs competent.
This in itself is a bit of a silly comparison. That said - this does illustrate a common reason why IT gets looked at in the way it does.
The DBA accomplishment doesn't bother to explain what value the company might get out of it. (e.g. this opens our company to bid in the high-performance tier of XYZ product, which has 20 gazillion simolions in unfilled contracts today). No attempt whatsoever to tie it to the bottom line.
The sales accomplishment apparently took the effort in terms of how much net revenue was brought in. It is in fact an exceptional accomplishment, so it does in fact deserve to be recognized.
Again - stop presuming that the C-levels can in any way understand what value to just added. Spell it out.
The sad part is that it technically is EASIER for IT to contribute to the bottom line than sales can: every 1$ in cost savings contribute 1$ back to profit. In most markets, each 1$ in sales might contribute .20$ or less to profit.
Very true.
I'm trying to create a more vivid comparison. It's not perfectly accurate, it's just meant to be clear that a person on PTO isn't comparable to all your servers being down at the same time, no matter who the person is, in most cases.
The real equation should be simply cost to replace. But that needs to include ALL costs, opportunity, actual, monetary, competitive, and all the rest. Definitely not just the salary of the person.
Of course, cost of retention of the personnel would also be part of that.
And, yes, most execs suffer a disconnect from the day-to-day of the company. It's usually proportional to the size of the company and their "height" on the org chart.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
February 17, 2012 at 1:15 pm
RobertYoung (2/17/2012)
GSquared (2/17/2012)
RobertYoung (2/17/2012)
GSquared (2/17/2012)
Heather May (2/17/2012)
If you ask a salesperson, they will say the salesperson should make more. If you ask a developer, they will say a developer should make more. The only objective answers would come from someone who has done both (and even that wouldn't be totally objective since the person was probably better at one than the other).In other words, everyone thinks that their own job is more important/requires more skills than the other guy's.
I've done both, and I think they should both earn what they're worth to the company.
The problem, of course, is that in the vast majority of instances the top of the totem pole is occupied by those who came up the Sales Path. The value judgment is established by them, to their benefit. They tilt the playing field towards their end.
I don't have stats to either support or deny that assertion. Most companies I've worked for, the top execs went up the "I own the company path".
Forbes thinks so:
"Until about ten years ago, most technology company CEOs career paths led through the CMO’s office. The prevailing belief was that marketing touched all aspects of the business, knew how to build market share, and understood emerging trends. Marketing also helped to inflate what now, in hindsight, was only a bubble.
A decade ago, when that bubble burst, the tables turned and the path to CEO was rerouted through sales. "
Note that "productive" positions aren't even mentioned. This is the generic CEO, not specifically software.
Cool. Thanks.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
February 17, 2012 at 1:17 pm
If the DBA goes on PTO for a day
I was talking about a database going down, not a DBA being out for a couple of days. DBA's are important too. That's all I'm saying. Its my opinion and I have right to it. You don't know everything. Why are you being so difficult on this? Or do you like to argue just to argue? 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
February 17, 2012 at 1:19 pm
TravisDBA (2/17/2012)
If the DBA goes on PTO for a day
I was talking about a database going down, not a DBA being out for a couple of days. DBA's are important too. That's all I'm saying. Why are you being so difficult on this? Or do you like to argue just to argue? 😀
No. You asserted that the DBA is more important than a salesperson because a salesperson being gone for a day isn't as important as a server being down for even a few hours.
I'm just pointing out that that's not a valid equation to use in determining whether a salesperson or a DBA should be paid more, which is the question on this thread.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
February 17, 2012 at 1:24 pm
No. You asserted that the DBA is more important than a salesperson because a salesperson being gone for a day isn't as important as a server being down for even a few hours.
In my company that is the case. Please let other people give their opinion here. You are not the forum know-it-all. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
February 17, 2012 at 1:27 pm
First let me say that I have done both Sales and Programming, and managed in both fields for a number of years.
Neither profession is better or more valuable than the other.
What seems to be missing here is appreciation of why the commission structure for paying employees exists in the first place.
This is an IT forum, I'm sure a Sales forum would have similar misconceptions concerning various aspects of the IT world.
So, in a nutshell:
Programmers are on average paid well.
Sales people are on average are paid well.
Programmers earn salaries because their skill set has a clear value to an organization.
Sales people earn commission because their value is less clear.
Quantifying a programmers skills, though challenging, is possible. The rate of turnover, though high in IT, is not as dismal as it is in sales.
Here is why: Quantifying the soft skills involved in sales turns out to be extraordinarily difficult. So difficult in fact, that all sales managers have hired someone they fully expect to be the next Zig Ziglar, only to find that person fails in the first two weeks. Conversely, the prospective employee who seems to have a mouth full of marbles turns out to be a star producer.
Commission is simply a risk based pricing model for obtaining employees, a model which virtually eliminates the risk for an employer. It turns out that as an employer, I can hire anyone, literally anyone, on a full commission basis, and have almost zero risk. The burden of determining whether someone can do the job has been shifted to the employee. In a partial salary situation, the burden of risk has been mitigated partially. Regardless, as an employer, I've just created a selection bias for an employee who believes that he can do the job. He must believe he can do the job, or he would go elsewhere.
While it is tempting for those of us with "real skills" to dismiss the soft skills of the average sales person and say that you can hire and train as many sales people as you like, that is an oversimplification. You CAN HIRE AS MANY SALES PEOPLE AS YOU LIKE; but, as the turnover figures will tell you, MOST WILL FAIL, and fail miserably. People who are mediocre at sales, do not stay in sales. They opt out. They find "better" jobs.
Which brings me to the point, "Exceptional Salespeople" are really just that, exceptional. Of course, these are the folks whose salaries get touted in these types of arguments regarding the relative value of employees. So, when we say sales people are paid too high, it is of course the top 20 percent we are speaking about. And when you factor in the number of people who've tried sales and opted for a less painful career, you are really looking at the top 2 percent.
What do the top 2 percent of programmers make? Maybe they don't make what the top sales people make; but, it's going to be a much closer comparison.
Still doubt that commission isn't just a sneaky way to pay sales people a ton of money for having no talent and no real skills?
Let's perform a simple thought experiment, What if I told you that there is a job available today that can pay you double what you are earning? Interested?
It turns out that there are thousands of these jobs available right now and they are hiring. What's the catch?
They are 100 percent commission.
February 17, 2012 at 1:30 pm
It pains me to say it, but the most important (and therefore highest paid) people are not programmers or sales, but marketing. You can have the most technically superior product out there, but if it isn't marketed properly, it's going to flop anyway. Same with the sales - somebody has to drive traffic to your sales force and once again, that is marketing.
February 17, 2012 at 1:46 pm
TravisDBA (2/17/2012)
No. You asserted that the DBA is more important than a salesperson because a salesperson being gone for a day isn't as important as a server being down for even a few hours.
In my company that is the case. Please let other people give their opinion. You are not the forum know-it-all. 😀
I'm letting people give their opinions.
Part of what you asserted is true:
1. All of a company's web presence being down is bad - true
2. A DBA has a responsibility of keeping database servers up - true
3. A salesperson taking a day of PTO is usually not bad - true
4. Hence, a DBA is more valuable than a salesperson - logical disconnect
You follow some valid data to a conclusion those data do not support. Had you concluded that your company's web presence has more value to the company than the salesperson has, that would be a valid conclusion, but you could leave out step 2, and it becomes:
1. All of a company's web presence being down is bad - true
2. A salesperson taking a day of PTO is usually not bad - true
3. Hence, the company's web presence has more value than any single salesperson - valid conclusion
But that still doesn't connect that directly, causatively, to the financial value of the DBA.
First, a company with that kind of value on its web presence should (and usually would) have a DR/BC plan with enough automation in it that the loss of a single database server would cause, at most, a very brief loss of web presence. Clustering, automatic failover, remote datacenters with monitoring solutions (mirroring or otherwise), and so on, should all be in place.
Second, in the case of unpredicted loss of a DBA, the question is not "how long will the servers be down because the DBA got run over by a bus". It's, "What will it take to replace the DBA? How long? How much money? How much effort?" The loss of the DBA doesn't equate to the loss of web presence, except in a very poorly run shop where the DBA is manually attending to tasks that should be automated, and no backup plan exists for the loss of that DBA. In larger companies, the loss of one DBA will be covered, at least temporarily, by either other DBAs, or by at least partially trained other personnel, which mitigates the loss even more. But, honestly, that's irrelevant to this discussion, except as it bears on your assertion that the DBA somehow *is* the web presence.
The web presence is not usually that dependent on the presence or absence of a single particular DBA. Nor is the company revenue usually completely dependent on the presence or absence of a single salesperson. (It can be, but that's a bad thing in its own way.)
The correct equation for this particular discussion is not the value of the web presence vs the value of a single salesperson. The correct equation is, would it be more expensive to replace a DBA with another DBA, or more expensive to replace a salesperson with another salesperson, including ALL associated costs.
My only assertion on this, is that most companies will get more value from a stellar salesperson and a competent DBA or dev, than they will from having a competent salesperson and a stellar DBA or dev. Most companies, not all (I feel the need to repeat that here).
This isn't complicated. Nor does it make me some sort of self-asserted know-it-all. I'm just objecting to faulty logic, that's all.
I guess at your company, if the DBA goes away for a day, the web presence goes away for a day. You might want to look into that, because that's not how it's supposed to work.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
February 17, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Just let people give their opinions/experiences here without resorting to calling there opinions "silly". Please treat people with respect without resorting to calling them or their opinions names. You want to disagree, fine then use logic, not name-calling. Everyone comes from a different vantage point in life. You haven't got the corner knowledge on everything. That's all I'm saying. Once again, I never said anything about a DBA being gone, I was talking about a critical database being down. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
February 17, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Heather May (2/17/2012)
If you ask a salesperson, they will say the salesperson should make more. If you ask a developer, they will say a developer should make more. The only objective answers would come from someone who has done both (and even that wouldn't be totally objective since the person was probably better at one than the other).In other words, everyone thinks that their own job is more important/requires more skills than the other guy's.
I don't know that I agree with that. I was a developer (I don't do it for work now, but still associate myself with it...) I had my own contracting company about 8 years ago. Until I got a great salesperson involved, my company was stagnant.
Maybe I just know that sales is not my cup of tea and so I'm willing to pay someone more to do that. I don't think they have more intrinsic value than a developer, but they do have more value to the public face of the company.
And I agree with one of the previous posters that being able to sale is one of those things that cannot be taught (at least not at the levels that I think of as "great").
If you find an excellent developer, you can get the best, most sublime code... that you still need to sale. You find a salesperson that can sale heaters in Hades and you are in high cotton.
Regards,
Joe
February 17, 2012 at 2:41 pm
Joe Johnson-482549 (2/17/2012)
If you find an excellent developer, you can get the best, most sublime code... that you still need to sale. You find a salesperson that can sale heaters in Hades and you are in high cotton.
Regards,
Joe
This in my mind the the arugment that can boil down to: A chair needs at least three legs to stand on its own. All of hte arguments are valid in some way - but without ALL of those functions, you end up with nothing.
As in, in order to be successful (long-term):
- a product that people need and/or want
- a way to make people WANT to buy your product (marketing) for more than it costs you to make it.
- a way to produce the product for a price people are willing to pay for (operations/back-end services)
- a way to get people to actually buy your product (sales)
Without all of those things with some level of success, you have a hobby, a not-for-profit or a bankruptcy, but you don't have a business.
In this light, BOTH functions are critical.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
February 18, 2012 at 2:55 am
Sales should be paid based on their ability to bring in new business. If a developer, NOT a programmer, can bring in business then pay them both equally. The name of the game is "feed the stud." If the developer can bring in new business then compensate them accordingly. If a salesperson can bring in the the business then compensate them accordingly.
I have 15+ yeas of IT experience. The majority of my time in the field has been spent as a consultant. Dressing, talking, and being a knowledgeable business person is the name of the game. The majority of managers and and recruiters I encounter have leadership and sales skills that just can't match my skills. The computer scientist in me had to understand that meeting the needs of business leaders for money was my job. Sales wins hands down. The only way Sales loses is when programmers acquire sales skills in addition to technology skills.
February 18, 2012 at 9:55 am
emmchild (2/18/2012)
Dressing, talking, and ...
Umm. I think you've made the point.
February 18, 2012 at 9:57 am
Ron Hinds (2/17/2012)
It pains me to say it, but the most important (and therefore highest paid) people are not programmers or sales, but marketing. You can have the most technically superior product out there, but if it isn't marketed properly, it's going to flop anyway. Same with the sales - somebody has to drive traffic to your sales force and once again, that is marketing.
I'll disagree with that. Marketing is nothing more than a part of the team. Without a superior team, you have poor product or poor sales or poor marketing. The weakest link in such a chain of required talent is frequently the "governor" of income. HR is important because they determine pay scales and some of the factors for keeping good talent. Likewise for management. It takes a team to make a company experience profit and no department is any more or less important than another.
--Jeff Moden
February 19, 2012 at 7:05 am
emmchild (2/18/2012)
Sales should be paid based on their ability to bring in new business. If a developer, NOT a programmer, can bring in business then pay them both equally.
What about those developers that create products and services for an internal organization? For example, if someone works for HR in a major company as a developer. These people work just as hard as developers that create products and services for sales to external companies. Shouldn't they also be compensated equally for their hard work even though they do not bring in any additional money for the company?
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