"Every time a marketer is forced to wait for a developer to launch a campaign, a kitten dies"
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Ever been told to "get out of the way" by your marketing dept? Thought you all might get a good chuckle from this... Power To The Marketer[^] :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Too bad it's not "every time a kitten is forced to wait for a developer to feed it, a marketer dies."
Software Zen:
delete this; -
The kitten thing might be hyperbole, but I've got to agree with everything else in that article. Plus, who wants to be the guy stuck with maintaining some lame thrown together in house CMS system.
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
I would agree as well. However, it's not that way working in smaller companies. What tends to happen is they read about something that sounds great, then you have to show them how to use it. When they can't figure something out, you have to learn that feature. Then, when something either is missing or happens to not "work correctly" you are expected to "patch" the third party program they've adopted. Also, I find it difficult to get management to buy tools. Especially if they believe it's cheaper just to "write something real quick" instead of pay the fees for third party stuff. Overall though, I agree with what the guy is saying. I think if people spent more time using things that are already available it would be good for everyone. Not only would we not have to write stuff that already exists, but I think users would become more accustom to software as a whole... which would help us/me in the long run.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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Ever been told to "get out of the way" by your marketing dept? Thought you all might get a good chuckle from this... Power To The Marketer[^] :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
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I would agree as well. However, it's not that way working in smaller companies. What tends to happen is they read about something that sounds great, then you have to show them how to use it. When they can't figure something out, you have to learn that feature. Then, when something either is missing or happens to not "work correctly" you are expected to "patch" the third party program they've adopted. Also, I find it difficult to get management to buy tools. Especially if they believe it's cheaper just to "write something real quick" instead of pay the fees for third party stuff. Overall though, I agree with what the guy is saying. I think if people spent more time using things that are already available it would be good for everyone. Not only would we not have to write stuff that already exists, but I think users would become more accustom to software as a whole... which would help us/me in the long run.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
I work in a medium size foundation, there are about 80 people spread around the globe and I've worked in a startup of about 25 people, and haven't had that problem, but both places focused on hiring smart technical people across the board. For my current job, we have a really solid breakdown of things that are unique to the mission of the foundation, things that directly support the mission, and everything else. We build custom software for the unique things, and then buy software for the others, which is working out well.
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
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As one client told me, "it's only rules. All you have to do is change the rules." Oops! There goes another kitty.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
If they bought some off the shelf system have them deal with customer support. :doh:
**_Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
I would agree with you but then we both would be wrong._**
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
Ever been told to "get out of the way" by your marketing dept? Thought you all might get a good chuckle from this... Power To The Marketer[^] :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Wow, I was hoping this kind of stuff was stopping, not getting worse. While some of the points are not so far out there, the level of insanity is quite high. It reminded me of an interview for a lead developer position. The company was behind schedule, it was all the developers fault, of course. They were hiring me to get them over the hump and lead things better after that. But get this. They bought a Major Ad spot in 3 magazines, that were going to start the next month. They were clearly 90 days behind being able to do this. Lets just say... I didn't take the job. I ran from that interview. And the funny part, is that on another team, I had a marketing guy pull me and and write on MY Whiteboard: Product - Sales = Shht! (without the typo) So I wrote up there: Sales - Product = Fraud! After a short while of talking it out, we got each other, and it all went quite well after that. He agreed to not market what we don't have, and I agreed to push for ONE "MARKETING" feature per quarter to make it in the software.
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[Marketers] must run experiments, tag, and track new events all the time. They can’t afford to wait for a developer to tweak a graph in the dashboard. [Marketers] need data, and they need it now.
so...yeah. That's killer logic right there. "We need data! Data! Data! Data! And we don't have time to wait for anyone to make it available for us!!!" In general, marketers need to get over themselves that they may be the ones that determine the criteria for information (in the hierarchy of signals: noise->data->information->knowledge->wisdom) but "give me all the things and give them to me now" is not a reasonable request from marketing. I can dump a log and I can spool every message that has passed through the queue pretty easily and you can spend 3 months looking for a needle in a haystack that will mean nothing to you by the time you find it. OR, you can know your place, leave the data analysis and software development to professionals, provide me requirements, and then I will deliver your information to you. It's kind of cliché, but you don't see business passengers interfering with aerospace engineers trying to modify their designs of an airplane "I need to get to my destination faster and I need the plane built quicker. Chop chop chop!" The paradox of our profession is that we're supposed to make it look easy for someone like a marketer to procure the things they need to perform in their role. There is no physical product being delivered; no planes to fall from the sky, no buildings to topple over, "just" software. So its importance and complexity gets trivialized by neophytes that think they know better. Bad Marketer. Bad.
"I need build Skynet. Plz send code"
On the other hand, if these guys are saying that a quick and dirty hack today beats a carefully thought out plan too far in the future to matter... A medium complicated spreadsheet that the marketer can use, is 'better' than a simple database, if clicking on the 'sum' button is the upper limit of computer skills. It's an old story - this is how VisiCalc sort of won out over mainframes - impatience is sometimes a force for progress.
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Ever been told to "get out of the way" by your marketing dept? Thought you all might get a good chuckle from this... Power To The Marketer[^] :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Wow. There seem to be some legit frustrations in what the author is saying, but he is clueless when it comes to blaming the developers, it sounds like a collection of management/process issues. What really struck me is when he says that: "All landing pages have a lot in common: they include compelling sales copy supported by a nice image or video, and they invite the visitor to press a big, shiny button or to fill out a lead generation form. Nothing crazy here — no animation, no bells or whistles. So why the heck would you need a coder to do this for you?" So, in other words, if he can't see a bunch of fancy animations on the page then it must not take any coding at all. Nevermind that the fancy visual stuff is the designer's territory and not much of a coding thing. Nevermind what happens when that button is clicked. He is clearly absolutely clueless about back-end processing, which shows that he has absolutely no idea about what the developers are actually doing. Which makes his rant about developers asinine.
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Too bad it's not "every time a kitten is forced to wait for a developer to feed it, a marketer dies."
Software Zen:
delete this;That's horrible, think of the kittens!
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Exactly. Or the off-the-shelf product won't integrate with the new application. "Sure, we can install that CMS, but it'll be empty unless you tell us how to feed data into it." It's likely that marketers and salesmen only listen to other marketers and salesmen -- who all say that their product can do everything "right out of the box".