John: Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com so I got this question about sales.
I like to talk about sales so this will be an interesting question.
Tyrone emailed me and he said, “Hi John, I actually posted this question on your YouTube
channel but I noticed that emailing you is the best way to elicit a reply.”
That’s probably true.
“I’m a recent computer science graduate and while looking for comp sci jobs I landed
a sales job.
My intention was only to do sales until I could get a comp sci job but unfortunately
I’m getting too comfortable here and the salary and benefits are great.
However, I still want to get a programming/software engineering job but I have 2 questions that
you maybe can give me advice on.
One, do you think it’s even worth it to try to get a comp sci job if I’m very comfortable
with the work environment and salary here at my sales job especially since I have never
been a professional software engineer and do not know how managers, supervisors or the
work environment is at programming jobs?
Is the programming job really all that or am I just romanticizing the profession a bit
too much?
Two, like a previously stated, I originally intended to do sales temporarily until I find
a comp sci job but unfortunately it’s been one year that I’ve been working in sales
and that’s one year out of the programming scene.
My only real engineering/programming experiences were during college before I graduated one
year ago.
What can I do to get back in the game and land a comp sci job if I’ve not had any
real engineering experience since then?
Should I work on individual projects or work on an app for my portfolio?
Also, should I list down my sales job on my resume when applying to comp science jobs?
Would that help or hurt my chances?
Love your videos and advice, Tyrone.”
Tyrone, this is a good question.
You’re in sales job now.
You’re asking me basically should you go and keep pursuing computer science, right?
You’re comfortable with your good salary.
This is something that I kind of feel like after being what I’ve been through and becoming
an entrepreneur that everyone should work in sales at some point.
You should get a sales job because sales is the most valuable skill that—aside from
self education, aside from teaching yourself.
The second most valuable skill I would say in life is sales, is learning to sell because
we all sell.
We’re all salesman.
A lot of us suck at it, a lot of us are sucky salesmen but every time that you meet someone
and you talk to them you’re selling yourself.
Every time that you go for a job interview you’re selling yourself.
Every time that you try to convince someone of your idea you’re selling that idea.
Sales is something that’s very natural.
A lot of people are intimidated, shy, afraid, don’t know how to bargain, all of these
things you learn from sales so this is great that you’re starting in sales.
I’ve actually got some kind of pointed advice for you.
This is what I would do if I were you.
Keep the sales job because this is valuable experience and you’re making good money,
it’s a good environment, you’re liking the environment.
There’s no reason to jump ship and go over to computer programming, but I understand
that you like computer programming.
There’s actually a place where this meets.
There’s a sales and marketing person who also understands computer programming and
that is called in today’s startup world a growth hacker.
You’re on the perfect path to become a really good growth hacker because you’re going
to learn the sales stuff, you’re going to learn the people skills and everything that’s
involved there and on the side you can start doing computer science.
What I would recommend that you do is that don’t quit the sales job, don’t go and
look for a computer science or programming job but start a side project where you’re
going to work on some programming thing and you’re going to learn programming more and
you’re going to build your own application or build something or even a startup from
that and you’re going to use your experience from sales as well as develop your skills
in software development.
What it’s going to do is it’s going to give you a lot of different options.
If you’re doing the side project and you actually learn to code and build something,
you could always go into software development if you want to then and work for someone else,
but more importantly, it’s going to give you a lot of entrepreneurial options because
a lot of people—there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that are sales people or marketing people,
they’re business people and they don’t have the ability to actually implement things.
They have to pay a programmer or find someone to do this.
They don’t have the technical background.
There’s a lot of startup founders that are very technical that don’t know anything
about sales and marketing and all of those critical things and you need both of those
components to be successful.
My business, Simple Programmer, is 50% technical and 50% sales and marketing.
Almost all entrepreneurs have this kind of ratio.
In fact, if anything, it’s more sales and marketing.
That becomes the more important thing for really getting traction.
I think you’re in a good spot where you’re at already.
I would probably just stick with the sales job, start a side project and start pursuing
programming on the side and maybe you’ll build a profitable business or something out
of that but you’ll be getting experience.
If you want to switch over at some point even just in the software development field, if
you have a background in sales and then you decide you want to switch and go full time
programming, you don’t want to do an entrepreneurial thing that’s fine, but when you go to an
interview, if you’ve got sales experience and you’re coming in and you’re interviewing
against these other programmers who are kind of socially awkward and don’t have that
sales experience, man, it’s going to be cake walk.
You’re just going to be in there selling yourself and getting jobs that other people
are going to be struggling for.
That’s my advice.
I think you’re in a good spot.
This is good.
A lot of people don’t realize the value of sales.
It’s good that you like it.
I think you’ll be very valuable.
I would check out, do a little research on growth hacker because that would be sort of—exactly
what I would describe you at this point and that’s a very popular job title right now
in the Silicon Valley area.
Startups are looking for growth hackers, people that understand sales and marketing and can
write code and build sort of software to help them to do that to grow their company to gain
traction.
Thanks for the question Tyrone and I'm glad that you’re liking the videos.
If you would like to see more of these videos, subscribe to the channel.
Take care.