Good insights, and not just software developers, really. We don’t like ads, sensationalism, or anything reeking of bullshit. If we have to talk to someone to find out the price, the product may as well not exist.
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Developers don’t like the tool that’s being lied about in order for like 100 rich maniacs with precarious tech stock portfolios to have an excuse to attack our profession, our wages, our stability. Just so they can retain the rate of profit that they experienced under covid 19 restrictions, because of us.
That’s because we aren’t idiots. We made them rich and theyre like “y’all could use a quality of life reduction.” Of course we don’t like it, it has little to do with marketing.
If we have to talk to someone to find out the price, the product may as well not exist.
I have never felt so seen!
yes it does
puhlezze, now if you excuse me I have to attend to the funko landfill.
Some development teams have their tools chosen for them from on high.
Oh, I feel that in my bones. Executives who think the vendors that butter them up know better than the employees what the employees want.
Commercial sales seem to be 95% about people who don’t really know their product selling to executives that don’t know their actual needs but want to feel important by making the calls anyway. One of the rare businesses that try to be concrete and appeal to the actual users? Sorry, you went over the heads of the executives and they are not interested.
The pattern seems to be:
- Sales people get the client leadership to shell out cash for a selection of stuff they think sounds really good for business stuff, all the buzzwords
- The staff builds a ‘shadow IT’ out of actually useful crap, hopefully at least sticking to properly open source stuff that won’t land the business in legal troubles, but very risky the employees get suckered by ‘non-commercial’ usage license and screw over the company in the process.
I wouldn’t say immune, I just have a low tolerance for unfounded claims, and little interest in most of the impulse purchase junk that most ads are trying to sell.
Give me an ad for good tech at good prices (and actually list the fkin price), and I’m interested.
Like OP said, if there’s no price, just a “call to get a quote” or some other similar nonsense in place of a price, then I’m either not buying that product, or I’m buying it somewhere else that they list the damn cost.
“Call to inquire” can be adequately translated to: we want to sell this shit to your entire company, call us so we can convince you to do just that" meanwhile you want to buy one so you can check it out to see if it’s even useful because marketing claims are almost always bullshit.
I agree on this for products however with services (such as the ones I provide) I can’t really give you a price upfront except for stuff I’ve highly standardized, because I have no idea until we work out the project on how much labour/costs it’s gonna have.
I don’t think it’s a normal expectation for services with variable labor and materials to have a flat price associated. Certainly not for businesses buying said services. But there isn’t a single “charge per seat” software company that has a valid excuse for obfuscating pricing. Every software company I’ve worked with (and I’ve worked with hundreds over my career buying software for corps) has a “list price” for their product even if they hide it.
Marketing 100% works on anyone. If you dont think it does its because the marketing has done such a good job on you you don’t even know it.
Not me. I’m pretty immune to ads.
Especially from McDonalds - now with their $5 Sausage McMuffin with Egg meal that comes with hash browns and a small coffee.
Ba ba ba ba baaaa… I’m loving it.
You sold me!
And here I was hoping this was some psychological study and not a dude ranting for paragraphs how he’s the most specialest one.
Yeah, a study with actual data would beat an opinion piece for sure.
At this point I’d take an opinion piece over whatever this is.
I think many does. Specially with tech stuff when it’s not really an advantaged. Like take 6 inch screen phone. Some companies put a 4K display, but the distance we normally use phones at this density it does not have real benefit. While the more pixels on screen will use much more processing power and battery, the trade off does not worth. But “nerds” will see big 4K and think it’s better
Or like a phone with 200MP camera, if the system does do a good job balancing and processing all this pixels you get much much more noise, the noise reduction can create washed photos with huge file sizes, again the trade off is not that much.
And I think engineers in this companies knows that, but marketing pushes for “big numbers” for “nerds”
Why do people keep using the word marketing to just mean ads and promotion? Marketing is more than just that, even a software developer is engaging in marketing when they for example beta test their software on their target audience.
Yeah, I think the more accurate title would be “mass marketing” or something. There are certainly marketing campaigns that work, but they are more catered to the audience.
Valve markets to nerds all the time, but they have enough good will with their target audience so it’s more assumed to be “good faith” marketing, like they don’t misrepresent what they are trying to sell.
Look at the Steam Deck. They made announcements and over then worked with creators in the PC gaming space to do interviews and reviews and it felt much more organic. Rather than reading some dry ad or annoying banners and interruptions. It was a marketing campaign of sorts that engaged with the audience and made them want to seek it out.
Where I don’t know many people who are receptive to buzzword salads that are mass blasted over everything and just interrupt everything.
The Steam Deck is a perfect example of why the title of this post is nonsense. Ha, I added this post early in the morning yesterday and have been facepalming over the dumb title I wrote ever since.
Marketing isn’t for nerds. It’s for the MBA types that make the purchasing decisions and then force the nerds to implement it. They love marketing.
we are not immune, we are just able to install a fuckin adblocker. noone is immune to propaganda.
Yeah, I think that line is getting used as a thought terminating cliche. While the statement is certainly true, not being immune is completely ignoring the idea that people can vary in how susceptible they are.
Yeah, I’ve caught myself almost falling for marketing BS a few times, before I dug a little deeper to find the actual information I need. I try to make informed decisions, and when companies present ads as information, it can be easy to be misled.
And every public service app and webshop should have a “developer” section where you can report bugs. I’ll do it even for free you fucking morons!
Exactly! I want the product to be better for me, so please let me express what isn’t working and what will keep me using your service.
That’s why just about every technology forum ends up being a consumer board.
