I want to strangle someone...
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Yeah, Im lax on Messenger and Email too - but for official writing on things like documentation, CV's & articles I personally prefer not to see things like can't..... aside form the fact that we english speakers can never quite agree on our apostrophe useage :D
J4amieC wrote: aside form the fact that we english speakers can never quite agree on our apostrophe useage I didn't know there were any arguments on apostrophe usage. The apostrophe is in place of missing letters.
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For the last few months, I'm working both as a development director and as a sales director. It's the first time in ~15 years working that I do something that's not programming or programming related, and it's being generally fun, although not half as fun as programming. But I digress. Yesterday, I went to this bank to sell our product. I'm used to IT people get scared of our product (I'm selling a credit assessment software to a bank that only does credit, people get concerned about their jobs), but this guy made me want to strangle him during the presentation. I started showing our software in a meeting with 10 people from various departments, for over an hour. Everyone loving the software, and how it would help them. Then, a guy from the software development department enters the meeting (just one hour late for the meeting), and become clearly upset. Every single feature I demonstrate needs to pass through this 10 minute ritual: - "This doesn't work" - "Yes, it works, I can show you." (I click here and there and demonstrate it working). "See? It's working!" - "No, it doesn't" - "Sorry, I don't understand. Are you calling me a liar? You're seeing this working right now!" - "Yes, but working is one thing. Stability is another one". - "We have this running in a lot of huge companies for over 5 years now. None of them with stability problems. I can get you in touch with them, if you don't believe me." - "Yes, but none as big as ours" - "No, you're wrong: some are 20 times bigger than yours" - "Yes, but those are not banks" (as if this meant something) - "No, you're wrong: we have banks using our software that are 4 times bigger than yours" - "HA! Weren't they 20 times bigger than our bank?" - "I meant the other companies" - "I don't care the other companies. Neither the banks. We have tried this here and I know that this doesn't work. Your software will stop working at least 5 times a day" - "You can run our software for 15 days as a demo. If it fails only once, you can forget about us and I pay you a beer" (trying to be a nice guy) - "I don't need to test it to know it doesn't work." - "Ok, so I think we should finish our presentation here" - "Oh, no, please, continue, I'm just pointing that this specific feature doesn't work" Then, this ritual repeated for every single feature (including the beer part) I demonstrated over 2 hours. After the meeting ended, and this guy went away, a girl (the user) came to us and said: "Your software is great! It will be very helpful here, as we have been asking
Daniel Turini wrote: After the meeting ended, and this guy went away, a girl (the user) came to us and said: "Your software is great! It will be very helpful here, as we have been asking this for 2 years for our IT department and they kept saying 'it can't be done'. Now we saw it working" Instead of strangling the guy, hug (and kiss if permitted) the girl. :-D[
My articles and software tools
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For a sales man, not killing himself due to unknown company politics, is a challenge. My first place of employment after college had one guy who just did not get it right. One day after a meeting I and a fiend (also a new hire) were venting on how stupid his directions were. After a few minutes our secretary politely (and very quietly) said, ok you two, every one knows you are right, but remember he is my cousin. We shut up not to offend her. Later one of the leads stopped by and said, You probably should be aware that K's maiden name is xxxx (oh! daughter to our VP!) need I explain the relationship to the idiot? I do not mind getting old. It beats all the other options that I can think of.
:confused: I think I'm the idiot, I haven't understood it. :~ Can you spell it out for me? Cheers, Vikram.
http://www.geocities.com/vpunathambekar "It's like hitting water with your fist. There's all sorts of motion and noise at impact, and no impression left whatsoever shortly thereafter." — gantww.
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Wow, what restraint you have. I would have walked out telling everyone that their IT team was screwing them through incompetence. Regardz Colin J Davies The most LinkedIn CPian (that I know of anyhow) :-)
I think the best thing is to get the sale and let the users find out how bad their IT department is. Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
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:confused: I think I'm the idiot, I haven't understood it. :~ Can you spell it out for me? Cheers, Vikram.
http://www.geocities.com/vpunathambekar "It's like hitting water with your fist. There's all sorts of motion and noise at impact, and no impression left whatsoever shortly thereafter." — gantww.
Vikram A Punathambekar wrote: Can you spell it out for me? :sigh: You expect me to spell correctly? She was the VP's daughter, so her cousin was the VP's nephew. His sisters child. All in the family and no wrong shall be seen. I do not mind getting old. It beats all the other options that I can think of.
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Vikram A Punathambekar wrote: Can you spell it out for me? :sigh: You expect me to spell correctly? She was the VP's daughter, so her cousin was the VP's nephew. His sisters child. All in the family and no wrong shall be seen. I do not mind getting old. It beats all the other options that I can think of.
Ok, now I understand. The 'K' part threw me off the track. :-O Cheers, Vikram.
http://www.geocities.com/vpunathambekar "It's like hitting water with your fist. There's all sorts of motion and noise at impact, and no impression left whatsoever shortly thereafter." — gantww.
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If thats in english remember to use "can not" instead of "can't" (or the typo caunt - prey you dont double-typo that word) One thing I hat to see on CV's is abbreviations, and concatenations.... the latter are for oral english not written.
J4amieC wrote: If thats in english remember to use "can not" instead of "can't" What do you have against contractions?
"Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown
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For the last few months, I'm working both as a development director and as a sales director. It's the first time in ~15 years working that I do something that's not programming or programming related, and it's being generally fun, although not half as fun as programming. But I digress. Yesterday, I went to this bank to sell our product. I'm used to IT people get scared of our product (I'm selling a credit assessment software to a bank that only does credit, people get concerned about their jobs), but this guy made me want to strangle him during the presentation. I started showing our software in a meeting with 10 people from various departments, for over an hour. Everyone loving the software, and how it would help them. Then, a guy from the software development department enters the meeting (just one hour late for the meeting), and become clearly upset. Every single feature I demonstrate needs to pass through this 10 minute ritual: - "This doesn't work" - "Yes, it works, I can show you." (I click here and there and demonstrate it working). "See? It's working!" - "No, it doesn't" - "Sorry, I don't understand. Are you calling me a liar? You're seeing this working right now!" - "Yes, but working is one thing. Stability is another one". - "We have this running in a lot of huge companies for over 5 years now. None of them with stability problems. I can get you in touch with them, if you don't believe me." - "Yes, but none as big as ours" - "No, you're wrong: some are 20 times bigger than yours" - "Yes, but those are not banks" (as if this meant something) - "No, you're wrong: we have banks using our software that are 4 times bigger than yours" - "HA! Weren't they 20 times bigger than our bank?" - "I meant the other companies" - "I don't care the other companies. Neither the banks. We have tried this here and I know that this doesn't work. Your software will stop working at least 5 times a day" - "You can run our software for 15 days as a demo. If it fails only once, you can forget about us and I pay you a beer" (trying to be a nice guy) - "I don't need to test it to know it doesn't work." - "Ok, so I think we should finish our presentation here" - "Oh, no, please, continue, I'm just pointing that this specific feature doesn't work" Then, this ritual repeated for every single feature (including the beer part) I demonstrated over 2 hours. After the meeting ended, and this guy went away, a girl (the user) came to us and said: "Your software is great! It will be very helpful here, as we have been asking
Yep. Extremely standard situation. I always cringe when showing software to the dev head because in all probability it's something they either wanted to do or were supposed to have done. Therefore, they tend to be very antagonisitc and adversarial. You just need to go in knowing that there will always be at least one person in a meeting of that type with such an agenda and be prepared for it.
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J4amieC wrote: If thats in english remember to use "can not" instead of "can't" What do you have against contractions?
"Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown
OK, I'll dare you to ask a new mother that ;P Rhys A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation... Vampireware /n/, a project, capable of sucking the lifeblood out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it, which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless refuses to die.
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OK, I'll dare you to ask a new mother that ;P Rhys A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation... Vampireware /n/, a project, capable of sucking the lifeblood out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it, which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless refuses to die.
Gotta love homonyms.
"Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown
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Vikram A Punathambekar wrote: Can you spell it out for me? :sigh: You expect me to spell correctly? She was the VP's daughter, so her cousin was the VP's nephew. His sisters child. All in the family and no wrong shall be seen. I do not mind getting old. It beats all the other options that I can think of.
Michael A. Barnhart wrote: She was the VP's daughter, so her cousin was the VP's nephew. His sisters child. All in the family and no wrong shall be seen. Wow! Nepotism at its finest.
"Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown
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For the last few months, I'm working both as a development director and as a sales director. It's the first time in ~15 years working that I do something that's not programming or programming related, and it's being generally fun, although not half as fun as programming. But I digress. Yesterday, I went to this bank to sell our product. I'm used to IT people get scared of our product (I'm selling a credit assessment software to a bank that only does credit, people get concerned about their jobs), but this guy made me want to strangle him during the presentation. I started showing our software in a meeting with 10 people from various departments, for over an hour. Everyone loving the software, and how it would help them. Then, a guy from the software development department enters the meeting (just one hour late for the meeting), and become clearly upset. Every single feature I demonstrate needs to pass through this 10 minute ritual: - "This doesn't work" - "Yes, it works, I can show you." (I click here and there and demonstrate it working). "See? It's working!" - "No, it doesn't" - "Sorry, I don't understand. Are you calling me a liar? You're seeing this working right now!" - "Yes, but working is one thing. Stability is another one". - "We have this running in a lot of huge companies for over 5 years now. None of them with stability problems. I can get you in touch with them, if you don't believe me." - "Yes, but none as big as ours" - "No, you're wrong: some are 20 times bigger than yours" - "Yes, but those are not banks" (as if this meant something) - "No, you're wrong: we have banks using our software that are 4 times bigger than yours" - "HA! Weren't they 20 times bigger than our bank?" - "I meant the other companies" - "I don't care the other companies. Neither the banks. We have tried this here and I know that this doesn't work. Your software will stop working at least 5 times a day" - "You can run our software for 15 days as a demo. If it fails only once, you can forget about us and I pay you a beer" (trying to be a nice guy) - "I don't need to test it to know it doesn't work." - "Ok, so I think we should finish our presentation here" - "Oh, no, please, continue, I'm just pointing that this specific feature doesn't work" Then, this ritual repeated for every single feature (including the beer part) I demonstrated over 2 hours. After the meeting ended, and this guy went away, a girl (the user) came to us and said: "Your software is great! It will be very helpful here, as we have been asking
You did well and showed excellent restraint. If you worked with government this would be an everyday activity, you get used to it after a while. Change is always resisted. There is a wonderful report by some group, I will have to find the paper again, about six PhD level writers with a 20 page proof why you cannot calculate earth coordinates the way I do (too slow, too accurate) and you have to estimate instead. I don't have a degree, so I guess since no one told me it can't be done, I was free to to do it. They still visit once a quarter to ask more questions to try to find out why my software even works. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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For the last few months, I'm working both as a development director and as a sales director. It's the first time in ~15 years working that I do something that's not programming or programming related, and it's being generally fun, although not half as fun as programming. But I digress. Yesterday, I went to this bank to sell our product. I'm used to IT people get scared of our product (I'm selling a credit assessment software to a bank that only does credit, people get concerned about their jobs), but this guy made me want to strangle him during the presentation. I started showing our software in a meeting with 10 people from various departments, for over an hour. Everyone loving the software, and how it would help them. Then, a guy from the software development department enters the meeting (just one hour late for the meeting), and become clearly upset. Every single feature I demonstrate needs to pass through this 10 minute ritual: - "This doesn't work" - "Yes, it works, I can show you." (I click here and there and demonstrate it working). "See? It's working!" - "No, it doesn't" - "Sorry, I don't understand. Are you calling me a liar? You're seeing this working right now!" - "Yes, but working is one thing. Stability is another one". - "We have this running in a lot of huge companies for over 5 years now. None of them with stability problems. I can get you in touch with them, if you don't believe me." - "Yes, but none as big as ours" - "No, you're wrong: some are 20 times bigger than yours" - "Yes, but those are not banks" (as if this meant something) - "No, you're wrong: we have banks using our software that are 4 times bigger than yours" - "HA! Weren't they 20 times bigger than our bank?" - "I meant the other companies" - "I don't care the other companies. Neither the banks. We have tried this here and I know that this doesn't work. Your software will stop working at least 5 times a day" - "You can run our software for 15 days as a demo. If it fails only once, you can forget about us and I pay you a beer" (trying to be a nice guy) - "I don't need to test it to know it doesn't work." - "Ok, so I think we should finish our presentation here" - "Oh, no, please, continue, I'm just pointing that this specific feature doesn't work" Then, this ritual repeated for every single feature (including the beer part) I demonstrated over 2 hours. After the meeting ended, and this guy went away, a girl (the user) came to us and said: "Your software is great! It will be very helpful here, as we have been asking
Actually, you're doing something more brutal than strangling. You made him look stupid and technically incompetent. That's really mean. :) Congratulations! Rui A. Rebelo Caminante no hay camino. El camino se hace nel caminar. Frederico Garcia-Lorca
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I hope one day to have your level of restraint. I would have lasted the first time, but the second time he tried it on then I would have blown it: "Well in just the five minutes you been here you seem to know the capabilities of our software more than I do in the five years I've been working with it, so perhaps you would be so kind as to come up here and give the demonstration for me? I'd be really interested to know what my own software can and cannot do." That's why I'm not a salesman...
Ðavid Wulff Audioscrobbler :: flickr Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (QT)
David Wulff wrote: I hope one day to have your level of restraint. Know the feeling. Thats why I don't do sales or support. Low threshold of restraint. I'm gonna kill someone :) Richard In a world of pollution, profanity, adolescence, zits, broccoli, racism, ozone depletion, sexism, stupid guys, and PMS, why the hell do people still tell me to have a nice day? --Unknown
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Ok, now I understand. The 'K' part threw me off the track. :-O Cheers, Vikram.
http://www.geocities.com/vpunathambekar "It's like hitting water with your fist. There's all sorts of motion and noise at impact, and no impression left whatsoever shortly thereafter." — gantww.
Sorry, Her name, did not want to be to explict. :) I do not mind getting old. It beats all the other options that I can think of.
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Ask them if they're hiring.
Ðavid Wulff Audioscrobbler :: flickr Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (QT)
I like the way you think! :) Rob Manderson I'm working on a version for Visual Lisp++ My blog http://blogs.wdevs.com/ultramaroon/[^]
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I hope one day to have your level of restraint. I would have lasted the first time, but the second time he tried it on then I would have blown it: "Well in just the five minutes you been here you seem to know the capabilities of our software more than I do in the five years I've been working with it, so perhaps you would be so kind as to come up here and give the demonstration for me? I'd be really interested to know what my own software can and cannot do." That's why I'm not a salesman...
Ðavid Wulff Audioscrobbler :: flickr Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (QT)
I STILL like the way you think :-D Rob Manderson I'm working on a version for Visual Lisp++ My blog http://blogs.wdevs.com/ultramaroon/[^]
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I STILL like the way you think :-D Rob Manderson I'm working on a version for Visual Lisp++ My blog http://blogs.wdevs.com/ultramaroon/[^]
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For the last few months, I'm working both as a development director and as a sales director. It's the first time in ~15 years working that I do something that's not programming or programming related, and it's being generally fun, although not half as fun as programming. But I digress. Yesterday, I went to this bank to sell our product. I'm used to IT people get scared of our product (I'm selling a credit assessment software to a bank that only does credit, people get concerned about their jobs), but this guy made me want to strangle him during the presentation. I started showing our software in a meeting with 10 people from various departments, for over an hour. Everyone loving the software, and how it would help them. Then, a guy from the software development department enters the meeting (just one hour late for the meeting), and become clearly upset. Every single feature I demonstrate needs to pass through this 10 minute ritual: - "This doesn't work" - "Yes, it works, I can show you." (I click here and there and demonstrate it working). "See? It's working!" - "No, it doesn't" - "Sorry, I don't understand. Are you calling me a liar? You're seeing this working right now!" - "Yes, but working is one thing. Stability is another one". - "We have this running in a lot of huge companies for over 5 years now. None of them with stability problems. I can get you in touch with them, if you don't believe me." - "Yes, but none as big as ours" - "No, you're wrong: some are 20 times bigger than yours" - "Yes, but those are not banks" (as if this meant something) - "No, you're wrong: we have banks using our software that are 4 times bigger than yours" - "HA! Weren't they 20 times bigger than our bank?" - "I meant the other companies" - "I don't care the other companies. Neither the banks. We have tried this here and I know that this doesn't work. Your software will stop working at least 5 times a day" - "You can run our software for 15 days as a demo. If it fails only once, you can forget about us and I pay you a beer" (trying to be a nice guy) - "I don't need to test it to know it doesn't work." - "Ok, so I think we should finish our presentation here" - "Oh, no, please, continue, I'm just pointing that this specific feature doesn't work" Then, this ritual repeated for every single feature (including the beer part) I demonstrated over 2 hours. After the meeting ended, and this guy went away, a girl (the user) came to us and said: "Your software is great! It will be very helpful here, as we have been asking
I cannot understand your issue here 1. guys like him create the market for you. it looks like someone more competent would have provided a solution for them (either inhouse or from another party) long ago. 2. he gave you a real hand with the presentation. now everybody else there KNOWS that you really provide all the features you were talking about. 3. he gave you a chance to show your personal qualities. it's not part of the product, but at a presentation customers will associate the merchandise with the presenter. do you have any doubts that all his colleagues know him for the pain in the lower back he is? you shouldn't. just make sure you keep your cool, stay friendly and polite at all times and you'll be the flavor of the month. DO NOT put him down! he might be the village idiot, but it's their village and the others will not like him being kicked around. 4. unrelated to your sale, the more idiots you are surrounded by, the more inteligent you look. OGR