One of my first jobs out of college was software sales. Really opened my eyes to the absurdity of that industry.
Very wolf of wallstreeet-esque. The tech was mostly repackaged opensource software with a nicer UI and the senior sales guys were doing copious drugs and bringing down like six figure commissions on multi-million dollar contracts. They hired an army of associates to generate leads and then swooped in to grab the commission. The play was to cold call the shit of company, weasel you way into a decision maker's schedule, and basically roll the dice they might buy your software because they needed to check a box - it barely mattered what the thing actually did and beyond a well rehearsed script no one understood even the basics of the technology/problem space. It was also very feast or famine - a few made absurd cash but most lived on a precarious edge where they felt they might be fired at any moment.
Understanding this is how the world actually works was a valuable education. I do feel with the rise of 'big tech' things have improved a bit and there is a renewed interest in approaching business problems with data and something that approximates a pseudo objective science-like process. But barely.
Very wolf of wallstreeet-esque. The tech was mostly repackaged opensource software with a nicer UI and the senior sales guys were doing copious drugs and bringing down like six figure commissions on multi-million dollar contracts. They hired an army of associates to generate leads and then swooped in to grab the commission. The play was to cold call the shit of company, weasel you way into a decision maker's schedule, and basically roll the dice they might buy your software because they needed to check a box - it barely mattered what the thing actually did and beyond a well rehearsed script no one understood even the basics of the technology/problem space. It was also very feast or famine - a few made absurd cash but most lived on a precarious edge where they felt they might be fired at any moment.
Understanding this is how the world actually works was a valuable education. I do feel with the rise of 'big tech' things have improved a bit and there is a renewed interest in approaching business problems with data and something that approximates a pseudo objective science-like process. But barely.