fuck sales people
newsfeed pls.
fuck both sales and marketing.
I worked at O'Neill Sportswear in the late '80s and early '90s, the company which makes most of its money from wetsuits. There were three rounds of layoffs, gutting 75% of the headcount, and they were a major employer in Santa Cruz, which had a precarious economy during the economic downturn of that time. Oddly, $50 ($90+ adjusted) walking shorts were not really a hot item.
Eventually, marketing and sales were both shown up by our art director, who had taken up diving. It's largely a wealthy person's hobby, unaffected by the downturn; on his own dime, he went to a diving trade show, and all the diving suits looked lame, and the booth work at the shows was minimal compared to what O'Neill had been creating for surf/snowboard/skate shows. They spent the next few years eating the diving companies' lunch.
If Marketing and Sales hadn't been asleep at the wheel, the layoffs wouldn't have needed to happen. So many people could have stayed employed. And, let's face it, it's not hard to draw up a list of sports which use wetsuits. This should have been a no-brainer.
When I first got into the game industry, my first job was at a start-up. We were a cheap business to keep running; the S&M chumps only had to move 30,000 units for us to keep our doors open. We had write-ups in Entertainment Weekly and WIRED, but the Sales guys somehow managed to fumble having our product on shelves when the reviews ran, and didn't think to put any kind of sticker or notice about the positive word on the boxes once they were going out. Losers. Incompetents.
Yet, when the layoffs came, the boss laid off the development staff which had shipped three products on time for him, and kept the sales staff who had to-date not managed to earn their income or perform up to their own promises.
On top of this, S&M employees have consistently driven the best cars in the parking lots of every place I've worked, and have received the "110% Award" from management from the week stayed as late as 9PM to make their deadlines, while crews I've been with have worked until 2, 3, 4, and 5AM for months to make deadlines based on shifting goalposts marketing pukes have decided were critical for presentations at E3, etc.
I fucking loathe both departments.
