R&D vs. Sales (and Steve)
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| hkwint Jul 31, 2010 8:57 PM EDT |
It's up to the Research and Development department to develop, hence the D in R&D.
It's the task of R&D to make sure the structural parts are sound, and materials with the right tensile strength are being used. It's up to the Sales department to convert souls, cultivate fanboys, make promises and care about the appearance of the parts. After that, R&D starts complaining because they can't deliver what Sales just promised. Sales starts complaining because they say R&D is too slow, and nothing comes out of it. R&D asks for more employers, but the Boss looks at the financial reports, and he can't find anything R&D department earned. They only cost money, actually. After all, it's the Sales department which brings in the cash. Sometimes, the people of Sales interfere with construction details. However, most of the times they're clueless, and propose structures and mechanisms which would never work, are impossible to manufacture or break within a year. Sometimes, the people of R&D interfere with marketing, they think Sales is doing a bad job at telling customers what great inventions R&D department did, and they feel the R&D department doesn't receive enough recognition for their work. After all, it's only the companies logo which ends up at the product, and not the name of the designer. Also, Sales listens to the customer. Actually, that's their most important job: Communicating with the customers. They're good at it, nice suits and such. Otherwise they wouldn't belong to the Sales department. They care about details. Their power is to make even a bad product look 'good enough to sell'. Members of the R&D department are paid, because of the existence of the Sales department. A corollary would be: A paid RD department cannot exist without a sales department. --- So, if you have an R&D department, but no marketing, chances are they will not make much money. Hence, developers won't get paid very much. However, if they receive 'credit' - even without marketing, all is OK. Debian has been in existence since 1993. Have Richard Stallman and Linus been complaining as they felt they were not credited? Not as far as I know. Probably because they felt credited, and Ian belonged to the same department as Richard and Linus. One hella happy R&D club. All is well, the R&D department is happy because credit is given where credit is due. They don't complain about the fact almost nobody wants to use their products, or even knows their products at all. After all, they made a nice product which made them proud, and they can point to in their resumes. Why would they care if people use or like it? Objectively, they haven't sold ****, but why would they care? The fact they did a terrible job - from a marketing point of view - doesn't make their product any uglier, after all, a picture doesn't become prettier if more people look at it. What happens in 2005, is, all of the suddenly somebody adds a Sales department to the happy RD department. Just because the Sales department thinks they made a good product and they can sell it to twenty times more users than the R&D department does on their own. What follows, is about the same which happens in any company with a Sales and R&D department: Lots of times, the departments forget they're working for the same company. --- Once, in a large company, a coder knocks at the door of Steve. "Those Sales fella", he says, "they haven't contributed j*ck of code to our product! They haven't been productive in any way." He goes on complaining: "They don't even put our names on the product, even while we did 90% of the work! They only take our work, and even act like they invented it! Could you please ask them to give our department of R&D rock-stars more credits, and can you ask them to contribute more code? Oh, and they're disconnected with the R&D department, they even don't know the names of our kids!" Steve and the coder both burst out laughing, eventually rolling over the floor. After they're back in their chairs, Steve gives the coder some coffee, writes the name of the coder on a badge and puts it on the nominee-board for Best Joke of the Month. "Well, that's the best joke I heard in a long time!" Steve shouts. Back at home, Steve starts thinking, about what Greg says: ""If you doubt, for a nanosecond, that Canonical is a marketing organization masquerading as an engineering organization, then you’re either an unapologetic Ubuntu fanboy or you’re not paying attention. " He picks his abacus and moves two red beads: One for the red Debian logo, and one for the Hat with the same color. He moves another bead, the pink one, for Canonical, and starts wondering while both are on the same thread? After all, two clearly different coloured beads shouldn't be on the same wire, they should be separated, right? He contemplates the meaning of Canonical. "Reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality". He takes a purple pill, and sees how the two red and the purple beads reduce to the simplest and most significant form possible, in fact, they're melting together. When sober again, he sees there is no abacus. "Phew", he sighs relieved - as he now knows his nightmare is over. |
| kenholmz Aug 02, 2010 10:50 PM EDT |
""Phew", he sighs relieved - as he now knows his nightmare is over." At least for now, I take it, or is it just beginning. Interesting read, sir. It reminds me of some subtle psychological horror tales I have read, and this is only the lead in with a little Kafka in the night. |
| gus3 Aug 02, 2010 11:04 PM EDT |
Or Harlan Ellison. |
| hkwint Aug 02, 2010 11:09 PM EDT |
First part is taken from my actual work experience with an R&D department. Sometimes you can't imagine two departments, two departments not cooperating very well and blaming each other seems quite normal. About the last paragraph: Thinking about it, from an 'users point of view', Ubuntu and Debian merging would actually be quite beneficial. If they could only cooperate more instead of pointing to each other, results might be great! Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. They're not going to do what's best for the customers and the company as a whole, which is quite sad actually. |
| TxtEdMacs Aug 03, 2010 8:22 AM EDT |
[some what serious] Han's tale is not universally applicable. I read once that HP's R&D complained about their sales group. What I remembered was if HP had invented Sushi, their sales would advertise it as "Seaweed on a [stale] Cracker". [/serious] |
| hkwint Aug 03, 2010 9:01 AM EDT |
Well, not every company is able to sell their products as 'magic, revolutionary and incredible' and get away with it, it seems! |
| kenholmz Aug 03, 2010 10:06 AM EDT |
Hans, my apologies, I was impressed by the last paragraph and was distracted from your main point. Gus3, Harlan Ellison definitely qualifies, even more than Kafka. I thought of Kafka because I associate him with tales that begin with waking up (although with no relief for the one waking). TxtEdMacs, I can only wonder how many projects folded, battles were lost, etc. because of internal conflicts. Which bring us back to do (re mi ...) |
| gus3 Aug 03, 2010 11:07 AM EDT |
Ken, I was thinking along the lines of, no matter how many times you think "it's over," or even "I finally fixed it," your only comfort is your ignorance of how wrong you are. |
| kenholmz Aug 03, 2010 3:41 PM EDT |
Gus, that reminds me of "Groundhog Day", only without the increasing awareness (and no knowing there is a reason to take comfort) |
| hkwint Aug 04, 2010 5:12 PM EDT |
Apologies are not needed, I'm glad somebody does read what I'm writing anyway! Actually, I never read anything from Kafka nor from Ellison, as most of my time I spent 'browsing' nowadays. OK, I did read a book today, but it was Carl Shapiro, quite the opposite of 'tales' I'd suggest. Melting beads is more someone would suspect happening in a book / article of Hunter S. Thompson I'd suggest, I enjoyed reading Fear & Loathing but then it disappeared from the net. And it's quite hard to read if English isn't your native language, but quite enjoyable though. |
| kenholmz Aug 04, 2010 5:54 PM EDT |
Hans, here is an easy sample of Kafka. Some in English, most in German with three in audio format. http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/k#a1735 And here is some H. P. Lovecraft. I sure hope these guys use Linux, wherever they are. |
| kenholmz Aug 04, 2010 9:24 PM EDT |
Oh, here is some H. P. Lovecraft:
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/index.html |
| gus3 Aug 04, 2010 9:58 PM EDT |
Yes, Project Gutenberg uses Apache 2 on Linux. |
| hkwint Aug 05, 2010 9:05 AM EDT |
So, I found myself listening to The Metamorphosis yesterday. Quite a sad story! I didn't think I understood its meaning, but seems I'm not the only one. |
| kenholmz Aug 05, 2010 11:11 AM EDT |
A sentence from wikipedia probably offers a summing up of Kafka's thoughts and stories. "The apparent hopelessness and absurdity that seem to permeate his works are considered emblematic of existentialism." The man was a prophet; just consider a small change in the sentence. "The apparent hopelessness and absurdity that seem to permeate his works are considered emblematic of chronic Windows usage." Whole books have been written attempting to analyze or explain Kafka. |
| jezuch Aug 05, 2010 5:36 PM EDT |
I'm trying to read "The Metamorphosis" too... in lojban. [url=http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=lo nu binxo]http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=lo nu binxo[/url] |
| hkwint Aug 05, 2010 7:51 PM EDT |
So now I know what happened after Windows turned into a huge bug, felt disgusted by itself, refused to work and let down my family... Just like in the story, the memory of Windows faded though. |
| kenholmz Aug 05, 2010 9:15 PM EDT |
jezuch, I'm envious, but as long as you are using FOSS to read it I'll be okay. Hans, thanks for the laugh. Now back to the serious stuff...I am going to look at the Braille plugin for Open Office. See you there. |
| gus3 Aug 05, 2010 9:42 PM EDT |
So you can read "The Metamorphosis" in Braille? Dang, that even beats tlhIngan Hol: "When Gregor Samsa was startled one morning from combative dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a giant tasty bloodworm." |
| kenholmz Aug 06, 2010 12:41 AM EDT |
Gus, I sadly admit I am essentially monolingual. However, I do work as the assistive technology person for one campus of a community college system (I could tell you I am the coordinator of the lab but that usually implies one has staff to coordinate). Text conversion to alternate formats is one aspect of the service. I am always on the lookout for tools and resources that may help me help my customers/students. I have made good use of the odt2daisy extension (if you are unfamiliar with DAISY books there is no shortage of easily found information, although http://www.daisy.org is a good start). |
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