Technology

Good insights, and not just software developers, really. We don’t like ads, sensationalism, or anything reeking of bullshit

Its a big list of major assumptions by someone who never bothered to verify if they're even true. He's mad he had to work with a heavily marketed product that his boss liked, and wrote this about it. Check out this quote from the article;

And the really fun part is that “astroturfing” a thread about your product on Hacker News or Reddit is just about impossible. If you go to the places where developers hang out and try to promote your product, you will be shot down faster than Mark Zuckerberg at a privacy conference.

Dude. Reddit is practically more bot than person at this point, and its impossible to know by how much, because of how good they are at fooling everyone. https://www.clrn.org/how-much-of-reddit-is-bots/

As a System Admin, I totally feel this. I fucking hate vendors and their bullshit marketing. In generally during the times that I have to deal, I will usually hear them out. But if the rep is annoying I will start the Q&A with questions that are designed to destroy their presentations or expose how little they know about their products. Good sales reps know how to react but bad ones just dig it in deeper and it becomes a show.

Marketing absolutely works on Nerds, what a ridiculous statement. Just because certain types marketing will push us away doesn't mean all marketing is pointless. Be honest, let me know what your product does, give me a proper datasheet and a price, and I'll explore it. Try to shove some hyperbolic BS down by throat while hiding the things I actually care about and I'll never buy from your company.

I'll just add that a white paper with technical information about how the product works is actually valuable. A white paper that reads like an ad in the form of an infographic is a waste of time.

The way I've always looked at it, a good product/service can typically stand on it's reputation. If a company needs to spend millions on advertising to move their stuff, they're probably not all that good or are overpriced. Someone is paying for all that advertising and it always ends up being the consumer.

This headline could be amended to be more accurate as “experts in a given field not swayed by marketing that does not respect their expertise”. I’m sure there are bullshit claims on fertilizers that landscapers laugh at. I’m sure automotive engineers aren’t impressed by most features in a new car brochure. Trying to market a software solution to software engineers with bullshit claims it’s just a bad marketing strategy.

If you want to sell software with bullshit claims, market it to the executives!

At work sure, at home my ever growing pile of e-waste disagrees.

DUH

Which is why they hate us

Developers rarely control the tools budget; their managers do.

So this whole article is a moot point

Developers detest marketing. If you want to sell them a tool, make it easy for them to find the information they need and leave them alone to try out your tool.

So marketing does work, just not "traditional" or "mainstream" marketing. We've had shareware since the beginning times, which was the ultimate try before you buy. Now we have the subscription model (fbow).

Yeah I'd like to think I'm better than marketing, but really, it just takes the right marketing, and I'm putty in their hands.

Nobody is immune to all bias all of the time, you just have to know what the right bias is to push in your marketing. It's what makes advertising propaganda so insidious, it's like the flu everyone is susceptible.