Re: Please Help

La <lgoodwin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Surely all you multivalue guys stray from the norm and embrace
recruiters, such as myself, and this post will spur a flood of
qualified candidates for the pre-sales position I am working. My
client is looking for someone with 15+ years experience with
multivalue/multidimensional databases. Even if you are not this
person I would still love to talk to you about this technology as I am
new to this space and NEED ALL THE HELP I CAN GET! I know there must
be some experts out there that can help me better understand this
market and how you have weathered the storm to get where you are
today. Look forward to your responses- even if only to hassle me for
attempting to carve out a spot in your niche. Thanks!

Laura, I happen to know who your client is and your ad is in fact
quite descriptive of the skillset they require. Please forgive my
colleagues for their hard-knocks welcome, and choice of entertainment.

Your problem is the same problem that your client faces. Without
giving too much away, they're trying to sell software in a market with
insufficient insider background. So now they want to hire insiders
and they've asked you, without any more knowledge than they have, to
find people who are on the inside. I'm really surprised that they are
not only making this sort of error but that they don't recognize their
own problem and they're now repeating it. I would not have expected
them to be tripping so much at this level.

What disturbs me further is that it looks like someone took text from
a document that I provided them about my own offering and this now
appears to be their shopping list for someone else. Bad form guys.

Anyway, for our colleagues here, the position is indeed sales oriented
but with a focus on technical understanding of a number of products.
You need to understand MV, have a fair grasp of a few MV environments,
an understanding of non-MV technologies, and the ability to discuss
all of this with potential clients toward providing a diversity of
solutions. Now you see why they contacted Nebula R&D. :)

Laura, the thing our friends here don't understand is why a sales guy
would need so much tech experience, particularly with MV where we tend
to provide solid business solutions without a ton of "tech-speak".
One of the precepts or mantras of this market is that we don't sell
databases, we sell solutions. So when it comes to selling an MV
solution people are confused about why the sales guy would need to
know so much, as this indicates an incorrect approach to the sales
process - and that will earn you no small amount of grief if you don't
recognize it in your position as a placement specialist. But for this
position it _is_ critical that the candidate have a solid technical
background as it's a bit more technical than sales.

On a humorous note, you mentioned "MV Enterprise Software". I don't
think you meant "MV Enterprise" which is actually a brand name in this
market, but "Enterprise-Scale MV". This is a part of the learning
curve.

Here is my attempt to provide you with the insight you seek:

People who work with database management systems like Oracle or SQL
Server are generally considered DBA's. They spend a lot of time
learning how databases are supposed to work, how SQL works, the math
and theory associated with the relational model, etc. The multi-value
/ Pick database model is not relational and doesn't require the
developer to have a grasp of database theory. Most of the people who
use MV fell into it, they didn't go to school for it. People who
wrote business applications for MV did so because they didn't want to
buy software from someone else to run their business, and MV allows
non-technical people to write some really great software.
The bane of this is that MV people are generally not technical -
for years they didn't need to be in order to develop software and keep
companies running. So when the rest of the world starts looking for
mainstream solutions the Pick guys tend to discourage non-MV
extensions. You'll find people here deriding relational environments,
object oriented programming, and various patterns and methodologies
employed elsewhere.
This attitude has been detrimental to the market as a whole. When
Pick people resist change the people that want/need to move forward
start to see the products and people in this market as dinosaurs, and
they move forward without them. That makes the market smaller and
causes companies providing variants of the MV DBMS to do dumb things.
But despite the attitude of some/many, the MV products themselves
actually are quite capable of doing anything that any other products
can do. In my business I try to encourage MV guys to incorporate
newer technologies as part of their overall solutions so that they can
stay in business (or simply employed) as their clients continue to ask
them for buzzwords of the day. We _can_ provide these solutions but
some people are reluctant to do so because they don't want to feel
like they're losing control over their solutions. But they don't
realize that by accepting a little help they will continue to provide
their solutions over a much longer term.
Your client is looking for people who can convey this vision of
extended use of the MV model in conjunction with other technologies,
because they know as well as I do that in order to sell the MV model
they have to have speak the language that the rest of the world speaks
- and in order to sell what they have to MV people, they need to have
people who can speak one-on-one with MV people.

So bypassing all of the rhetoric of a conventional CV / résumé, your
call to the MV market is for people who do more than just Pick BASIC.
You need people who are familiar with Pick _and_ with other
technologies, enough to convey vision and in part to help guide or
implement solutions. You need people who are willing to do some
travelling to do presentations, talk to Pick and non-Pick people alike
to explain how these products work together, and people who have the
presence and mind-set to play a role in sales as well as being a
strong technical resource.


"To post, or not to post: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in
the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous lack of fortune
in the MV market, or to take arms against a sea of technical and
business troubles, and by opposing end them?..."

Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com

.

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