[dpeck]

The same could be said for nearly every sales call that I’ve been on the receiving end of.

It doesn’t make it “right”, but (nearly?) everyone who is involved in these conversations on both the buyer and seller sides of it knows that at best it’s aspirational capabilities that are being pitched and purchased. Usually it’s pretty far from that.

[itronitron]

I was talking with a colleague once about this and they mentioned that as long as everyone being pitched was wearing a suit then they wouldn't worry about the wild claims the sales people made about our software. But if there was an engineer in the room they'd feel obligated to nudge everyone back to reality.

[shostack]

I'm a technical marketer who had owned a lot of the associated infra over my career. I've historically been a major target for sales people from companies in the space.

I've lost count of the times I've had sales people outright lie to me about how audience data or targeting signals work, particularly about the nuances of privacy aspects which I care a great deal about and have done a lot of work with.

These days if I'm serious about something I ensure there's a competent engineer (even a sales engineer) and product person on the call and largely ignore the sales person. I'm even really upfront about it by saying something like "I'm the decision maker, I have very specific technical and product questions and I want to avoid wasting time for either party by moving quickly or getting to a quick 'no', please confirm you can have XYZ people on our first call."

Usually it's been great that way. If they try to jerk me around with those people being unavailable at the last minute, I tell them I'm rescheduling until they can get their calendars in order.

This all comes with a responsibility though to make sure I'm not wasting their people's time. So I make sure I've done my homework and have likely sent an agenda/list of questions in advance to discuss. Depending on the relative sizes of my and their company, this can also be an express path to getting executive leadership who can cut through the noise of the process and get some good terms for me.

[cratermoon]

Three red lines

[moneywoes]

Sorry can you elaborate

[tomnipotent]

It's from the satirical video "The Expert" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg). It's up there with the "Microservices" Krazam video.

[gregw2]

Funny! Thanks

[everdrive]

I'd sort of split this up a bit. The engineers seem to know that the promises from sales are lie. The managers and executives sort of claim to know that salesmen exaggerate claims, but the reality of it never really seems to land. Time and time again I'm working for a company who has purchased a product which they're barely making use or, or are flat out using incorrectly because they were charmed by the promises from sales, but not so charmed as to actually staff the software properly to ensure it is well configured, and maintained correctly.

[gemanor]

IMO the main problem is the ecosystem around Salesforce. If you are the end user it is (not) ok to have latency lies, but you'll be the only one who feel it. If you aim to other developers build services on top of your product, your latency issues has exponential effect for them.

[MontgomeryPy]

Yes. So maybe this lawsuit could move the pendulum back from the truthiness state. I see a lot of 'so what' comments but maybe there's a better way.

[liquidpele]

It won’t move back. These issues exist for reasons, and avoiding lawsuits is already a consideration taken. At the end of the day, they embellish to an extreme because management in the customer companies are usually buying “we used X” prestige and there’s very little accountability in management for such mistakes.