[BlueTie]

As someone who works in tech sales - the real bullshit here is that this is some right-out-of-college 22 y/o entry level sales person (SDR) who was likely told to to take this list and message everyone on linkedin 1x1.

The negative impact of this goes on his shoulders where the positive responses from this get passed off to someone else who is outside the blast radius.

Stuff like this is the norm when sales is viewed as an extension of marketing ("we need more leads") and not as a function that helps companies coordinate the evaluation and purchase of software ("we need to find out if this is the right fit for them") and the ones who pay the highest price are at the lowest levels when it's executives who are giving the orders.

[fireball_blaze]

> The negative impact of this goes on his shoulders

Well, in this case, people are mad at Azure/MS and Canonical for betraying developer trust, not the individual salesperson. He's just a pawn in the game. It's not like this guy went rogue; this is his job.

The system is setup in a creepy way to enable this type of upselling, which makes people uncomfortable. Whether or not Azure or Canonical change policies, we shall see.

[BlueTie]

> Well, in this case, people are mad at Azure/MS and Canonical for betraying developer trust, not the individual salesperson. He's just a pawn in the game. It's not like this guy went rogue; this is his job.

It's still his linkedin profile plastered all over twitter right now though more than Azure's EULA/T&C's.

[fireball_blaze]

But no one is calling this guy a villain. For example, his name is not mentioned once in all these HN comments. It's not his fault.

And indeed the Azure T&C's are definitely referenced a in the Twitter discussion with the OP. Such as:

https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168

[whimsicalism]

"On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies.""

My reading of this statement is that they are scapegoating the guy.

[johnsoft]

They are trying to scapegoat the guy. Thankfully, people are not falling for it.

[srndsnd]

I pulled up his LinkedIn. He started at Canoncial three weeks ago, fresh out of undergrad.

I really hope he comes out of this unscathed.

[cptskippy]

This. Typical Marketing and Sales tactics involve using the lowest level employee both because they're naive and because they have nothing to lose because they're already lowest on the pecking order.

[daveFNbuck]

I think an attempt to scapegoat would look more like "in violation of our established policies and rigorous training, a Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn."

The actual quote acknowledges that the company's training and policies are at fault. I'd also expect a scapegoat to be publicly fired or disciplined, did they say that elsewhere?

[jacurtis]

> "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies."

This was their official statement regarding this matter. They provided this to The Register to defend their actions when this story got written up: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubunt...

Edit: Yes so just to be clear, according to their official statement they are scapegoating the salesman. They call him a "new Canonical Sales Rep" to imply he isn't experienced and made a mistake. The only responsibility that Canonical took is that they will "review its sales training".

[young_unixer]

Poor guy must be having a hard time.

[Topgamer7]

It really depends on company culture. But there's probably a good chance this affects him at the company internally.

[fireball_blaze]

Perhaps. At the very least, it's gotta be uncomfortable for him.

[j3th9n]

No one is calling this guy the villain, but he is pictured as the villain.

[kodah]

> It's still his linkedin profile plastered all over twitter right now though more than Azure's EULA/T&C's.

This is pretty disgusting that someone didn't think to cover his name or image while complaining about what is essentially privacy and having a central beef with two companies. That said, while it's disgusting to me, it can easily be shrugged off as "thoughtless" by others because privacy is not a mainstream concept.

[aasasd]

Frankly, using a personal profile for work activity in this vein is just not a good idea. Regardless of whether Linkedin ‘forbids’ creating secondary accounts.

[aeturnum]

This reminds of of a 2019 paper on "moral crumple zones"[1] which talks about how the human component of automated systems are increasingly there to act as the focus for moral failures. Did your giant automated system do something bad? Blame the one human who was assigned to somehow stop that from happening, no matter how impossible that might be.

[1] https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

[aftbit]

Also see Normal Accidents[1] which discusses "human error" as a PR cover for systems that are simply too complicated for unaided humans to monitor and understand.

1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192408.Normal_Accidents

[aeturnum]

Normal Accidents is a real classic of the genre of disaster studies and points out some very useful realities for tightly coupled systems. Engineers building highly complex systems would do well to read the book and take its lessons to heart.

[tt433]

The film "Brazil" was mentioned on another comment on another story a few days ago that touched on this theme, very good movie.

[SilasX]

Interesting, that’s a great concept. But I’m not sure of the applicability to this case. I’d expect most people to feel icky contacting a lead on this basis, and so that feels like it’s well within the kind of thing a low level employee should throw a red flag at.

[aeturnum]

The aspect that reminded me of the paper (and the concept) was how the low level employee can really only screw up. If they do well, then it's a credit to their boss, but if they do something wrong it's on them and they'll be fired.

[eznzt]

I think it really is a disgrace that his photo and name are out there linked to this. It's most likely not his fault.

[scoutt]

It could be also that the sales person did this on his own initiative for a couple of extra points. It might not be standard practice, but we'll never know.

[hobofan]

If a random sales person can easily go ahead and access PII on their own initiative, that's 1000x worse.

[that_guy_iain]

Your PII will be in their CRM and they will have access to their CRM. Literally all they need to do this is your name and linkedin. If you think sales people won't have access to names of potential leads then I am not sure what you think sales people do on outbound sales.

[hobofan]

Even in an CRM there should be checks on who can access what PII and when. There is a difference between "you are assigned 100 leads for the duration of lead qualification" and "you can yourself pick out leads (and can get access to their PII) out of any of the thousands of possible leads".

[that_guy_iain]

I think your expectations of how a company handles Leads are unrealistic. A company just needs to keep your data safe. A sales person having access to Leads makes complete sense. A sales person being able to see if a lead has been chased makes sense. A sales person being able to find Leads to chase that they are best qualified to chase makes sense.

[SilasX]

Yes, and MS claimed that their agreement with Canonical required them not to share that info with sales.

[that_guy_iain]

No it said not use that for marketing. And they didn't, the sales person said he would be the point of contact. They didn't market or try to sell him something in his message. He just send a request to be his contact.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

$10 says there's an Excel sheet that's passed around with all of your info in it.

[hobofan]

Of course there is, but there shouldn't be. _Especially_ in a bigger company like Canonical.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yeah, they should definitely be using Libre office ;)

[duxup]

I think LinkedIn is kinda ... tainted so mass spam is just considered par for the course on there, sadly. Nobody thinks twice about spamming on there.

I log on there and it's all spam-ish content. And really all I want to know is what people I worked with are doing now / how they're doing....

[_abox]

Yeah spam, people kowtowing to their company's PR gospel, and the usual "inspirational" messages from sponsors.

It's a sickening mess of PR giddiness but unfortunately it's needed to get a job nowadays.

I hate it so much though, never post anything and I only accept people I actually know.

[raverbashing]

> is that this is some right-out-of-college 22 y/o entry level sales person (SDR) who was likely told to to take this list and message everyone on linkedin 1x1.

We don't know that

It could also have been that this person, just in the company and wanting to make a sale has used leads he wasn't supposed to act on.

I can definitely see an inexperienced person doing that kind of mistake. Not blaming the guy, he was just trying to do his job and meet his targets.

But I've seen a lot of "stupid" things done by new people at a company with various degrees of "making the customer or other departments annoyed" (in sales and in technical positions)

[ycombinete]

I like this distinction that you’ve made between marketing and sales. As a technically minded person in a business development roll, I’d like to know more about it. Do you have any resources that you can suggest?

[michaelcampbell]

This feels like some modern day "Glengarry Glen Ross" type stuff.

[rchaud]

Modern day? The pressure of sales jobs never went away. Ask your local bank teller. Their jobs exist in this day and age, not to help Grampy who prefers interacting one-on-one, but to sell her credit cards, expensive chequing accounts and loans she doesn't need.