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Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by moneywoes on Sunday March 19, 2023 @09:16AM (#35218627)
Besides opening your own company does a role exist where you can do both?
Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by Keegs on Sunday March 19, 2023 @09:38AM (#35218782)
There’s a role called sales engineer that typically exists in the sales organization but requires a technical background. From the perspective of engineering, your SEs are there to make sure sales doesn’t oversell or undersell. At my company your pay is commission-based but with a higher base than sales proper.
Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by ghaff on Sunday March 19, 2023 @11:10AM (#35219750)
Solution Architect is another common title. As someone else mentioned, Developer Relations is at least adjacent though that tends to be less salesy and, depending on the role/company, may be more focused on community aspects than building demos and the like. In any case, at software companies, there are definitely customer-facing roles that are more technical though they may not involve a lot of direct coding. For non-field roles, product management qualifies as well.
Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by samtho on Sunday March 19, 2023 @11:54AM (#35220224)
I would say an SA (Solution Architect) is very different from an SE (Sales Engineer) in one fundamental way: the SA is focused on delivering value post-contract and the SE is focused on making sure the org is able deliver the value promised by working with sales in the pre-contract phase. In some smaller companies or organization within a company, I can see these roles being performed by the same person but in general that distinction between pre and post sales has been my lived experience.
Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by ghaff on Sunday March 19, 2023 @12:19PM (#35220504)
Where I work, SAs are pretty much technical pre-sales. (There are also chief architects who are somewhat related.) If a customer needs ongoing post-contract support, they can buy a TAM (technical account manager). We don't have sales engineers.

(When I worked for a long-ago hardware company, system engineers (SEs) were pretty much the equivalent of SAs where I am currently.

Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by awesomegoat_com on Sunday March 19, 2023 @04:20PM (#35223138)
SA people that I have met so far (30+) can architect and more importantly talk about and market the solution. But the execution is often times lacking. And that is solely because the execution is less important. (If the contract is big enough SA can always lean on product engineers or hire contractors to execute).

Being the engineering contractor to SA organization is daunting to a programmer, but rather rewarding.

Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by whearyou on Wednesday March 22, 2023 @08:45AM (#35260173)
Agreed this was my experience with the SA role
Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by andric on Sunday March 19, 2023 @09:38AM (#35218781)
DevRel or Sales Engineering roles, maybe?
Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by newaccount2023 on Sunday March 19, 2023 @01:35PM (#35221464)
DevRel is a rest area for failed developers
Re:John Carmack: From a DM, just in case anyone else needs t... by GuB-42 on Sunday March 19, 2023 @01:08PM (#35221116)
In my company, all of our sales people have a technical background. They are not the best engineers in the company, but they could do the job if they had to. More importantly, when faced with technical people, they are not completely clueless.