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Who is Winning the Web Talent War
jg21 writes "Ever since Fortune wrote an article about it, mentions have been occurring hither and yon about how Google is having problems retaining employees, and the latest comes in Web 2.0 Journal, where Dare Obasanjo interestingly tracks and interprets a couple of blog entries that he says leads him to hypothesize that "Google's big problem is that the company hasn't realized that it isn't a startup anymore." Of course Obasanjo works for Microsoft; it will be interesting to see if an equally prominent Googler posts a counter-theory."
it will be interesting to see if an equally prominent Googler posts a counter-theory
No it won't. It will just prolong the pointless bickering between the two companies.
This guy's the limit!
I don't know if I'd really call this a dupe because I think all the links in this post were AT the other article instead of IN the slashdot post.
-fragbait
There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.
Good marketing and sales guys have one skill, and that is "schmoozing" (also know as "people skills"). I don't consider that a skill worthy of big promotions. Raises, surely, but not promotions. It's not a skill that makes one an effective manager. The opposite is probably true, actually. Most marketing/sales people, the good ones anyway, live in their own little magical world where the normal rules of logic don't really apply. They should be kept FAR AWAY from any kind of technical positions, and should NEVER be allowed to manage technical projects.
"Microsoft's big problem is that it doesn't realize its not the only game in town anymore"
I disagree. I think that Microsoft is well aware that it isn't the only game in town. What they don't understand, is how to remedy the situation.
You are right in inferring that MS was the only game in town for a long time, and it is because of this that they seem so dumbstruck now. They know they're being overtaken, but they have no idea what to do about it, because they've never had to compete directly before.
Anybody want my mod points?
Marketing in charge of technical products gets you Vista, Windows ME, MS BOB, Clippy, and a host of other software written by lot's of different vendors.
I wish i had Mod points for you.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I agree. We certainly wouldn't want them to be aware of technical limitations with a product that might interfere with the reckless promises they make customers. How would they get those fat bonuses if they had to stick to the facts? Pissed off customers are customer service's problem.
That one skill is quite important for sales and marketing people. Their next most important skill (breathing doesn't count) is knowing when and how to keep their mouth shut when the technical people get involved in a sale or project.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I think the reverse is also true, though.
From what I observe as a business-geek is that the best ceos can relate to any position moderately well. A "Jack of All Trades".
When you are high up in the organization and you have to come out of your cube for more than 50% of your day, what you disparage as "people skills" count for the majority of work.
Truth is, you gotta be able to relate to everyone, and if that means having technical or "schmoozing" skills, then you gotta have it.
And don't forget the nunchuck skills, because girls only like guys that have skills.
It's interesting that whenever a MS vs. Google debate shows up on /. about which company is better to work for (or perhaps, more accurately, better run), I usually see posts about how engineers are treated better than marketing people in Google, and that shows up as a point of superiority on Google's part. Not saying that's what you're saying, as you're obviously just putting a link up with those opinions.
I don't think, however, that this "us vs. them" mentality is fair. It represents a very ethnocentric frame of mind. Bureaucracy isn't always a bad thing. It prevents a lot of screw ups that may otherwise occur without that system in place. From a business owner and consultant's point of view, I can appreciate the value of a bureaucracy. It may not be the most efficient system, but efficiency is hardly the goal. Sustainability and stability, in a business philosophy perspective, are the primary goals of a corporation that must be fulfilled before a business can achieve true success. That is, they are necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for a successful business.
When viewed in that light, it's hard to say how successful Google is. Google has rarely (if ever) released a final non-beta product. Their revenue is heavily dependent on online advertising. The one critical service that Google has is its search. If people stop searching with Google, their revenue will drop significantly to the point of possibly being unsustainable. If people stop using Gmail, their revenue will drop further. It seems unthinkable now, but it's happened before (cf. Yahoo).
With all this in mind, Mr. Obasanjo's viewpoint appears to be right (I didn't RTFA because of all the obnoxious ads). If Google wants to avoid Yahoo's fate, they'll have to find some way to make their business stable and sustainable. Android seems to be a step in the right direction.
Microsoft, and its bureaucracy, appears to have the two necessary conditions pinned down pretty well.
It's always kind of funny when companies wonder about retaining staff. It shouldn't be that hard to answer that question.
If people are happy with their compensation and their work, they will stay. If they are not happy, they will leave.
And this is different for everybody. Some people want to work 40hrs. Some people are ok working more if the compensation is there. Some people want to work on prototyping with new technology. Some people want to work on designing large scale solutions.
When you are small, it is arguably easier to treat everybody differently. Once you scale, you start having these "one size fits all" reviews and compensation packages that don't really capture what people think is important.
Free lunch is cool, but will it make up for the fact that your manager isn't any good? Spending 20% of your week on your own project is cool, but what if you already worked 50hrs on something that's overdue where you didn't come up with the estimate?
I'm not sure why you got modded up... Managing people and getting paid more and getting promotions based on merit is orthogonal to "managing technical projects." Why would a promotion of a sales person create a technical manager out of them?
And if Google or whoever don't pay or promote according to merit, they're not going to retain very good sales or marketing people. They are only hurting themselves.
Many people (technical or not) "live in their own little magical world" and don't pay attention to what customers want, how to get the job done, or manage their time well. Technical people write software like Debian Linux. Having good relationships with customers (sales) and people to promote software (marketing) is what made Microsoft a lot more successful than we'd like to admit, although I wish they weren't so ruthless and avaricious.
Technical people often have a disdain for people who don't understand technical things, which is why this board is full of responses similar to yours. It's some sort of elitism I wish nerds would knock off.
Actually the point of that blurb is that Google doesn't do anything profitably other than search and the ads attached to that. Which makes Google essentially a one-trick pony. Which is always dangerous, yet at the same time diversification sometimes brings loss of focus. All companies go through that sort of thing. Some make it and some don't. I don't see Google not making it though.
I'd disagree with that. There are a lot of Google "products" I dislike, and even a few I've enjoyed using they've ended up shuttering (like hello.com). On the other hand, there are lots of Microsoft products I enjoy using, like most of their server SKUs, .NET, Visual Studio, etc. Of course there are MS products I won't touch as well.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
"Remedy the situation" is an interesting choice of words, as it could be interpreted two ways---the way that you probably meant it and the way that is more accurate but less flattering. IMHO, it's not that they don't know how to survive and thrive as one of many players, but rather that they don't know how to get back to a monopoly state. Microsoft's fundamental problem is that their corporate goal does not seem to merely be doing well for themselves as a company, but rather making sure nobody else does/can. It's a completely backwards corporate mentality and will eventually be their downfall in much the same way that treating their customers as likely criminals has hurt them significantly. The goal of a company cannot be to eke out every last possible cent.
Put another way, the goal of a company must be to remain reasonably profitable while behaving responsibly, reasonably, and treating their customers, suppliers, and even their competitors with due respect. Sure, sociopathic corporate behavior serves companies well in the short term, but as Microsoft is seeing now, it eventually comes back to bite them in the you-know-what.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No, google's problem is the exact same as... (Score:1, Troll) by juuri (7678) Alter Relationship on Wednesday July 02, @12:19PM (#24032409) Homepage ,,, Microsoft's is (was?).
Outside of a few exceptions google has managed to quite quickly develop an intense monoculture of people afraid to buck the system or trends. This is to be expected with rapid growth; too bad for them.
They're a one trick pony, like MS (who had 2 tricks, OS and Office) who have been given gobs of money in the hopes that they weren't. But they are.
They decided to start "monetizing" their garage offering and make "me too" apps, just like MS, and they've been going downhill ever since.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
IMHO, it's not that they don't know how to survive and thrive as one of many players, but rather that they don't know how to get back to a monopoly state. Microsoft's fundamental problem is that their corporate goal does not seem to merely be doing well for themselves as a company, but rather making sure nobody else does/can.
That is my point. All MS knows how to do is create and monopolize a market where no pre-existing competition exists. Now that there is competition, from Goole on the web and from Linux as an OS, MS is lost. They don't know how to "survive and thrive as one of many players", because that has never been their goal.
Anybody want my mod points?
I was a salesman *and* first line technical support for a specialized computer-aided-design software company, starting 20 years ago. Did it for seven years. Being sales *and* first line tech support, you get a very clear picture of what customer service or lack of it can do to your sales. I quickly got my technical knowledge up and that just increased my ability to sell. After self-teaching myself programming (two languages) I moved into the division that handles the programming of my company. From my own experience, sales and marketing people in a technical area *need* technical knowledge of what the heck they are selling *and* need to increase that knowledge, just like technical people need to keep up on top of technical issues, techniques, etc. In fact, it is *vital* for the success of a company that this occurs.
I had an offer from Microsoft and Google. In the end I chose Google.
Both companies offer different environments. The Google environment suits me better. Some of my friends enjoy the Microsoft environment better. In the end computer science students are the winners. More competition, more money = good.
There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.
What an incredibly bone headed thing to say. Have you ever tried selling an expensive product to a customer? What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't? Do you know the right time to ask for the signature on a contract? How many objections can you overcome to get the close? Do you even know what an objection is? (Hint: it has nothing to do with the customer saying "No.")
You should try working in sales for a year, and see if you still have this attitude. When you find out just how hard the job really is, you might start appreciating those who can do it well.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
My biggest grudge against these places is the "life suckage" they employ...
I mean.. I want to do something other than code 12 hours a day (ya know... sometimes?)
I've been coding since I was 10 years old... I find it fun and enjoyable. That's why I contract... let me decide how to live my life, and I'll provide you timely, reasonable service.
I still relish the thought of doing massive parallel systems dev... I do small clusters now, and I really love it.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Protip: if you're having to overcome a bunch of objections, it's probably because the person doesn't actually need what you're selling. That's why so many of us think marketing people are scum: they make a living off of conning people into buying things they (or sometimes anyone at all) have no use for.
By what name do you wish to be mourned?
The Submarine.
Look, how is Microsoft going to compete with Google? What, historically, are their best tactics?
Yeah.
I think we're going to see a lot more articles like this appearing in the press for the forseeable future. Some of the sources will have direct and obvious connections to Microsoft, others won't.
Tweet, tweet.
Here's a thought...if the customer really doesn't need your product or it's not worth what you are charging, maybe your product sucks. How about hiring better engineers that can develop a product so good that sells itself instead of paying top dollar for slick sales guys that can talk executives into buying crap.
Not sure why you get modded up. Does it _really_ matter to you whether you are sales peon I or sales peon II or sales peon XVIIVMC?
In a sales department, there will only be so many territorial managers. There will only be so many sales directors.
What kind of promotions did you have in mind?
The reason the tech people can get more "promotions" is that they have a lot more projects, and these projects open up fresh lines for others. I'm sure if they open up GoogleMoonbase, there will be lots of sales promotions too.
Color me someone who never got the "Oooo, I just got promoted for doing the same job over and over again".
This is the same piece of trash that was posted two days ago.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/30/2240206
I won't repost my entire comment from that discussion, but the entire thing is based on the comments of three people. One interviewed with Google and never worked there, the other two worked at Microsoft, tried Google and had a culture clash, and fled back to Microsoft.
Many slashdot readers might not reconize that it's a dupe since each article links to a different site (with near identical text) and no one bothers to RTFA. Though how can you blame them when the editors don't even read their own site much less the articles on it.
Why doesn't he focus his energy on the company HE works for ? ... I think I'll spend tomorrow seeing if I can't fix our competitions problems for them.
He is focusing his energy on the company he works for. This isn't a genuinely friendly suggestion for improvement -- in fact, it's likely it's presented that way to mask what he's really trying to do.
Google's stellar image hurts Microsoft as much as the quality of their products. It influences people to choose them for search and as an ad broker. It encourages top talent to look for employment there instead of MS or elsewhere.
So if there is any cost to offering Google criticism that might end up being constructive to them, it's balanced against the benefit MS may derive if they can successfully tarnish Google's image.
As it happens, in this case, I think there's not even a chance this might be constructive criticism. The engineering-centric culture at Google is considered a feature, not a bug, and it's improbable Google will change this. Everybody writing these articles knows this.
Tweet, tweet.
which is why this board is full of responses similar to yours
I think it's more likely because people like you, take the original post, copy and paste it and then replace a few words so it speaks on your own behalf.
I'd have to agree here. Most customers have no idea what they want. You're talking to someone that's high enough up to be able to make the decisions and that usually means they're out of touch with what happens on the shop floor (where my company's software gets used).
I once had a customer tell me that they thought it was perfectly reasonable to assume that joe blow in the shop would read the information off of a container and type it into our software... In reality this meant that joe would be dragging a 50 gallon drum over to a workstation buried in the corner of the shop so that he could copy it. It took forever to convince them that that just wasn't going to happen - for a myriad of reasons. Even when you have a product that perfectly meets the customer's needs you still have to get past their unfounded complaints.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Having worked in sales, I can comment on this. I was a salesman for years. I wasn't very good at it, because I was focused on solving the customer's problems. Those problems could frequently NOT be solved by using our services. The people who were very 'good' salesmen were great at figuring out their customer's problems, ingratiating themselves to the customers, and promising up and down that our stuff could solve their problems, regardless of the reality.
I've known a few legitimately good salesmen. My father is one. He sells industrial pumps and seals. When he was hired the first thing he requested was a month to work with the engineering and maintenance people. He was granted that, and studied the technical aspects intensely. He went on to become the best salesman in the company, and later split off to start his own company doing the same thing.
Is being a 'good' salesman hard? Yes, lying effectively can be a challenge. I have, however, no issue will a 'glass ceiling' for those who do not want to learn the technical aspects of their jobs.
So they're scum for selling the products you created? That's what keeps your job around. You can call them scum all you want, but they're the ones earning the money to write your paycheck.
I shudder at the thought of letting any of our "technical people" anywhere near prospective customers...
I think one thing that may have flown over you head at MS is the size of the company and how experience can very from group to group. Everyone likes to think that their experience is the norm. In contrast to what you say I have met managers at MS that use iPhones and make running jokes about certain MS products in the open. I have never met anyone who was fired for any reason at any employer I have been with but I am not going to claim that no one gets fired. Telling the guy above you that he is lying because of the experience in your group is entirely stupid. If you think this stuff is all the same in every group then you don't have a clue as to what goes on.
Since you call marketing people scum, I very much doubt you're one of them, and thus couldn't really give protips on marketing, right ?-)
Anyway, you're wrong. "We can't use Linux, because it has no office applications" is an objection. "Actually, OpenOffice is available for Linux, and Microsoft Office can be made to work through Crossover Office" would be a counterargument to that. Handling objections isn't about conning people, it is about getting them to express their reservations and concerns about the deal and addressing them.
Obviously it's possible to be dishonest in handling objections, but in no way is the process of handling objections in itself evil.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Marketing also deals with such things as appropriate pricing models ... to find out the best way to market and sell something.
Wait...so how are marketing and sales on opposite ends of the spectrum if part of marketing's function is to figure out the best way to sell something? I'm not flaming, I'm just curious, because I liked your post. Just this part of it contradicts what you are claiming, and is literally why I have a problem separating marketing from sales.
There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.
What an incredibly bone headed thing to say. Have you ever tried selling an expensive product to a customer? What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't?
If that's what you're doing you don't deserve to get paid at all. In fact, you should suffer the same misery that you bring into this world, for using your talents to convince people to buy things that they don't need. An ethical salesperson should make their money by discovering the actual needs of customers and helping to fulfill their needs in the best way possible.
This the 6th or 7th post i've read moderated +5 from some ignorant elitistic techie going about how technology people are somewhat superior to Sales and Marketing.
Honestly, i'm ashamed of being on the techie side of the fence.
Open your eyes people and get out of your high-horses:
- A successful company is a gestalt of different people with different skills doing what they do best.
So yeah, people skills are really important if what you're trying to do is selling things to people, while logical skills are really important if what you're trying to do is construct really complex functional structures. That doesn't mean one is better than the other one.
And yes, a successful company needs both people that can sell well and people that can make great products to sell:
- A great product that is not sold is worthless
- A great salesforce with nothing to sell is worthless
More potential sales have been destroyed by techies talking too much in a meeting with prospective clients than empty beer bottles in Ireland.
Example:
Sales guy-"I'm telling you, Lotus Notes can do that right now, and in addition it can-.............."
Technical dude-"Well, yeah, but not really, its kind of a hack, but we hope in the next release to tighten that up, we were in a ru-.........."
Client-"Thanks for coming, guys! You need your parking validated?"