News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by Hermitian909 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:12PM (#33012644)
For SAAS companies that do B2B it's important to remember two arms of the company:

1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough business to cover their own salaries

2. Customer Support -> Big enterprise contracts generally have support written into them. Thus, for every enterprise customer Docusign may need anywhere from 0.1 -> 3 (or more) FTEs. If you price this right it's always worth it to keep growing the org this way.

Docusign has a lot of opportunities to upsell customers on legal services they provide.

You should also consider the scaling cost of internal support. For every 10 FTEs, add a manager. Also add on HR, accounting, janitorial, etc. Easilly 20% of the company might be these sorts of internal support roles.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by greggsy on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:51PM (#33013095)
Don’t forget that signing is primarily a legal activity. Every jurisdiction handle it differently, and it’s important to be able to articulate what your product can and can’t do. This was particularly relevant during the dark days of COVID lockdowns and quarantined, where those laws and practices were tested to their limits. They likely outsource a lot of that regional work, and do so on an ad hoc basis, but they still need knowledgeable people to coordinate it.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by conductr on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:57PM (#33013794)
Isn't the user responsible for the "Docu" part and they only facilitate the "Sign" part?

Point being, it's up to the users to figure out if signatures on a digital platform will be legal or not in their jurisdiction. DocuSign probably has some fine print explicitly stating they're not responsible for improper use.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by giantg2 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @08:48PM (#33015058)
It's likely they still have to deal with law suits, at least until the judge rules on the fine print.

It wouldn't surprise me if they have legal/expert support for certain cases. The last thing you want is some dumb client losing a case that creates precedent which ruins your business model.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by Spooky23 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @11:07PM (#33015869)
They do more than sign, they manage the process and lifecycle of agreements.

You can buy a turnkey loan solution for example from them.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by conductr on Thursday September 29, 2022 @12:30AM (#33016356)
They help you manage the workflow of documents. As say a car dealership using docusign, you still provide the documents and actually have to use their tools to make the workflows unless you pay them to help. I don’t think they offer to actually write the contracts. You’d hire a local attorney or just digitize what you already have. That’s been my experience after a couple enterprise level deployments. I could be wrong and we just didn’t need it.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by thedougd on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:13PM (#33013341)
I bet there are teams for consulting, solutions, and services. "Need help digitally transforming your blah blah blah with Docusign?"
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by MattGaiser on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:14PM (#33013356)
Aren't sales people also heavily paid in commission? I.e. for a large part, you only pay if they bring in business?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by codegeek on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:38PM (#33013617)
For a lot of B2B SAAS which sells to enterprise, sales people can get decent salaries. An SDR (finds leads and books meetings) could get anywhere from 50-65k Base salary with commissions and Account Executives (AE, they do demos and close) could even get starting salaries of 100K plus. So yes, they get paid through commissions but at SAAS companies, they also get a decent base to start with. Ultimately though, the total comp. adds to the payroll and reduces profit regardless.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by tylergetsay on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @06:01PM (#33013831)
at any company the sales person will have a "base", but at none can they take it for very long. even in 100% commission roles if you make no sales you get what's called a draw check because it's illegal to pay less than minimum wage per hour worked
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by giantg2 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @08:46PM (#33015047)
Lawyers likely make a large part of the organization too. At least compared to other similar size companies.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by chrisseaton on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:37PM (#33012924)
Does anyone actually directly employ janitorial staff these days?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mcculley on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:44PM (#33013008)
I have been involved with companies with government security clearances and organizations simply worried about intellectual property theft. As a rule, the most serious of those organizations do not allow subcontractors free rein of the building, which janitors need.

(Edit: Yes, I am aware of some high profile failures.)

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by chrisseaton on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:50PM (#33013080)
I think you can get subcontractors that specifically provide cleared janitors. (The same way that for example the NSA famously uses cleared contractors for things like IT.)

But anyway, Docusign surely isn't an example of such a company or agency.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mcculley on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:04PM (#33013242)
Yes, NSA’s high profile failure with Booz Allen is a great example of why some things should not be outsourced.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by chrisseaton on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:29PM (#33013520)
But it’s the same clearance process and standard if you’re outsourced or not - they don’t do anything extra if you’re inside a service.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mcculley on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:38PM (#33013608)
This has not been my experience. I was FSO for my organization. I was responsible for periodic training and internal audits. I have no way to know how well any other FSO or any other organization ran their periodic training and internal audits.

Yes, the check by the government is the same.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by ceejayoz on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:07PM (#33013276)
Is it? It's not like the various intelligence agencies haven't had their share of on-the-payroll moles.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mcculley on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:14PM (#33013359)
In my own experience with such organizations, we were less worried about moles than by inconsistencies in vetting, training, and process.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mcculley on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:06PM (#33013262)
Docusign is certainly managing many proprietary documents.

I agree that it is likely that they outsource like other organizations. I still don’t think it is a good idea.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by bluedino on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:40PM (#33013631)
I've worked in aerospace and chemical companies where there's all kinds of data restrictions etc and both contract the janitorial staff
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mcculley on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:43PM (#33013664)
As have I. The most serious are not outsourcing.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by MichaelZuo on Thursday September 29, 2022 @10:14AM (#33020898)
Aren't there companies specializing in providing top secret cleared service staff, such as janitors?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by awild on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:00PM (#33013199)
I found out yesterday that our facility management is employed with us. But we also handle seriously sensitive data.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by babyshake on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:21PM (#33012758)
> 1. Sales -> You can hire a lot of sales people if they're generating enough business to cover their own salaries

It won't be long before GPT-3 or its successors will be putting many people out of a sales or support job.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by DwnVoteHoneyPot on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:40PM (#33012961)
Funny to see how little value devs and engineers put on sales people. Enterprise software success depends highly on sales people. Startup success depends highly on marketing. At previous company, SAP flew the CEO and a few others to Monaco for the F1 race. Interesting to see we had SAP and PeopleSoft implemented at the company.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by jdmdmdmdmd on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:11PM (#33013325)
Yup. Devs like to think that sales people don't contribute real value and are basically just marketing, and that's true to a degree, but it's also true that sometimes the entire product doesn't contribute real value either. A senior dev building Uber/delivery clone #1745 run by VC funny money is "contributing" the same as a sales person, no matter how many frameworks and algorithms he uses. (Unless, of course, that algorithm is itself contributing to some efficiency in the deliveries.)
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by floor2 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:23PM (#33013465)
So the value the sales people provided was successfully bribing the executives.

You're not exactly wrong here, but many that's a kinda hilarious example. AI doesn't yet know how to operate in the grey area of not-quite-illegal bribery.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by lupire on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:54PM (#33013130)
Why can't a computer program automatically buy tickets for F1 and send them to prospects?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by function_seven on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:58PM (#33013175)
How will it determine who gets the tickets? And which event is the most appropriate one for a given prospect? How will it know that the prospect is interested in the first place? Or available? Or worth wooing in this manner?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mattacular on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:03PM (#33013225)
It could do that part. Making the decision about what to buy, how much of it, and for whom etc would be the types of non-trivial decisions you need your sales AI to make better than a person
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by Spooky23 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @11:11PM (#33015888)
The F1 tickets are about access. Your pal the sales dude buys you scotch and yaks about SAP.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by TillE on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:34PM (#33012905)
You're not gonna replace people who make phone calls all day without something more or less indistinguishable from strong AI. Nobody wants robo-calls.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mrb on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:47PM (#33013039)
You don't need chatbot tech to be indistinguishable from strong AI, just indistinguishable from an average salesperson. Like babyshake, I firmly believe that this will happen one day. 10 years? 50 years?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by woooooo on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:58PM (#33013171)
FYI for you and other readers, sales is actually hard. Low barrier to entry followed by brutal survival of the fittest. Don't meet your quota? Fuck you, you're fired.

People who survive for decades of that aren't trivially replaced.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by ghaff on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:06PM (#33013257)
Or as was put to me once, sales managers have no problem firing people. And that includes people who just had the bad luck to have their supporter at some company leave and be replaced by someone who favors a competitor. Or a project just gets put on hold because of budgets. I suspect many developers wouldn't appreciate being evaluated every quarter in no small part on factors that they have at best limited influence over.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by mrb on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:30PM (#33013541)
You underestimate future AI tech (from 10-50 years from today) even more than you think I underestimate sales skills. The tech will completely blow your mind away, and you don't even see it coming ;)
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by adamckay on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:44PM (#33013669)
At that point why would you even have AI sales?

If this tech is going to be so amazing, it'll be better served by being a procurement/buyer system.

"Hey AI, what CRM system should I use [based on all the knowledge you have of my business already]?"

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by Spooky23 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @11:13PM (#33015903)
Azure chatbot: Dynamics E7
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by startupsales on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @06:22PM (#33014004)
correct, no need for salespeople
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by manigandham on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:04PM (#33013235)
I suggest you actually try and sell a product once before making this kind of prediction.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by lupire on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:53PM (#33013122)
OK, sure, but handwaving enough, that's true for almost every job that exists today.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by HeyLaughingBoy on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:53PM (#33013119)
You seriously think a salesperson can be replaced by a chatbot?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by subsubzero on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:18PM (#33013408)
I feel like both sides think this,

Engineer - Our company is so good word of mouth should be enough to bring in sales, if we need any more lets look to AI for a solution.

Sales - We bring in the money, all engineers do is cost the company money, we could probably run the app/develop the product on a skeleton crew, can't wait for AI to make those jobs obsolete!

Truth - Both engineers and sales are hugely successful to any companies strategy and AI isn't taking anyone's(engineer or sales) jobs not for a long time :)

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by 23B1 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:57PM (#33013789)
As a sales guy, I can assure you we value the development of good product over all else. It makes our jobs a hundred times easier.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by lazyasciiart on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @07:26PM (#33014496)
Yea, but at most companies that doesn’t mean valuing all the devs ;)
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by calvinmorrison on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @06:17PM (#33013970)
Some boring business book:

Successful businesses must have 3 Successful divisions: good product, good sales and good finance/admin.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by groby_b on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:26PM (#33012821)
Willing to make a bet on that?

GPT-3 is great at sounding coherent, but much worse at actually reliably solving problems. I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person.

There's also a large component of enterprise sales having a "trust" component where you know your counterparts. You're not spending approval-worthy amounts of money after only having talked to a chat bot.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by athenot on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:33PM (#33012890)
> GPT-3 is great at sounding coherent, but much worse at actually reliably solving problems. I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person.

Also, if your competitors are using GPT-3 to solve customer problems, having an actual, intelligent human can be a formidable differentiator in terms of customer experience.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by InitialLastName on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:49PM (#33013070)
> I absolutely see GPT-3 like things aiding with sales decks, but... it won't replace the sales person.

If there's a sales person whose job is to tailor sales decks to use cases, you might replace them.

If a big sale takes a team of people to execute, maybe AI cuts a few of them off. Maybe the client is still talking to a real sales person when they need to, but that sales person is able to multiplex to more clients because the time they need to put into each is reduced.

I think people often miss this aspect of "X technology will make this job obsolete"; it isn't "that occupation no longer exists" as much as "far fewer of that occupation are now necessary to do the work", and that change can have meaningful economic impacts. Farriers, blacksmiths and calligraphers still exist, but their work is no longer core to the function of anyone's economy.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by zachthewf on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:38PM (#33012940)
Correct. The last professions in the world to be automated will be salesperson, politician, and plumber.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by startupsales on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @06:17PM (#33013964)
as a salesperson, I can confidently say that the change will be on the buyer side that eliminates the need for most salespeople. salespeople are already getting less and less time with prospects. Studies show salespeople only influence about 5% of the buying process. What comes next is automating recommendations for software products based on specific needs, buying criteria, etc.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by pessimizer on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:49PM (#33013074)
Politicians have been automated through a combination of polling data and lobbyist checks since B. Clinton.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by lupire on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:01PM (#33013211)
Are you saying B Clinton is not a human?
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by diffxx on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:38PM (#33013613)
Define human.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by lazyasciiart on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @07:27PM (#33014503)
It depends what the meaning of the word “is” is.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by sofixa on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:40PM (#33013629)
I think sex workers are up there too. Similarly to a good salesperson, the skill and human touch will probably always be a differentiator compared to a machine/AI, leaving at least a niche market for humans.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by lupire on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:00PM (#33013198)
Customer support is largely useless today and can be replaced by machine. It only exists because average (dumb) people tolerate a human customer service rep saying "I'm sorry but you're screwed" better than a web page saying it.

Salespeople says BS to sign you up, only vaguely coherent, backed by some basic database facts about the product/price, so GPT can handle that. Think about Donald Trump: Huge fan base of paying customers, barely distinguishable from a chatbot.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by YakBizzarro on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:13PM (#33013340)
Clearly you have never done or received customer support in a b2b environment. It can be as valuable or even more than the product itself.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by nradov on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:27PM (#33012824)
Doubt it. Companies have been using chatbots with NLP for years. This only occasionally works to refer customers with technical support questions to relevant knowledge base articles. Mostly they're just a waste of time. Enterprise customers tend to have more complex support issues.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by Spooky23 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @11:15PM (#33015916)
Chatbots exist to waste time to divert calls. There’s a high probability you’ll give up and not bother calling.

Only a moron would put them in front of a sale.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by codegeek on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:41PM (#33013640)
It will happen the day humans stop having emotions. So, never. Humans buy with emotions whether we like it or not. Emotions require another human to talk to. You cannot "Product Led or AI led" your way out of complex purchases.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by KoftaBob on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:45PM (#33013024)
Think about how complex it is to develop AI that can understand and participate in a human conversation at only a basic level.

Now increase that complexity by orders of magnitude, since we're talking about the conversational skillset that a successful salesperson would have.

Everything is possible over a long enough timeline, but when AI is advanced enough to function as a successful salesperson, there will be a large number of other jobs that AI will also be "replacing".

In other words, the timeline for what you're predicting is much longer than you think it is.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by bbarnett on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:00PM (#33013194)
In other words, the timeline for what you're predicting is much longer than you think it is

Indeed. So many people I knew, thought full self driving, any weather, any road, fully AI, would be here by 2015. Then 20.

I doubt we will have it before 2050.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by startupsales on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @06:18PM (#33013977)
you're assuming sales conversations will be necessary in the future. I do not think that will be true for most purchases. It is much easier to match buyers with the right product based on their buying criteria. This is what buyers want anyway.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by lupire on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:56PM (#33013159)
Well, Facebook is pretty good at automated advertising.

Those YouTube ads featuring pitchmen/people could be replaced by perpsnalizedt deepfake for race/gender/style that fits the target.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by bbarnett on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:02PM (#33013219)
I think you are confusing a call centre employee, who blind calls via auto dialing, and reads a script, with a sales person selling a COTS, and doing inside sales.

There is zero comparison to this and a facebook ad, or targeted marketing.

Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by greggsy on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @04:52PM (#33013111)
GPT-3 ain’t buying me a coffee. They’re not inviting me to their Christmas party either.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by quickthrowman on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @05:36PM (#33013590)
B2B sales are generally relationship based, even inside sales. I don’t see a chatbot developing a relationship with a human customer.
Re:Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees ... by jjslocum3 on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @06:06PM (#33013878)
This engineer thinks good engineers are much more fungible than good salespeople. The engineer's output is worthless unless someone else can be convinced to pay for it. It will be more difficult to automate the sales function than the engineering function.