Reply to post: Re: a necessary evil?

Re: a necessary evil?

@AC

"If they all stopped, the products you help create would not get sold and you'd be out of a job. I'd laugh at that one."

The person you're responding to does have a point, albeit somewhat over simplified. In a world without salespeople, products would still be sold. People still need things and if there's nobody pushing them at you, you'd simply have to go looking for them. However, it wouldn't necessarily be your products they'd buy, but might be competitors. Depends on who they find first. Also, differences between products might not be understood, as it would be up to the buyer to determine and value them, rather than a salesperson tell them. Of course, this is an area where salespeople are often accused of overpromising etc. and getting a bad reputation. The reality is that unless you made it illegal to have salespeople, they would automatically spring up again, as companies naturally compete. Of course, in some economic systems, you only produce one type of each product and everybody buys that one. In that case, you don't need salespeople.

In any eventuality, whether it's salespeople or anybody else, the same principle applies to all jobs. They've signed a contract saying they'll get x for doing y. They do y and are then told they can't have x. Even worse, they may be fired if they don't agree to this. Whether it's salespeople or programmers or project managers or whoever, a company should be made to comply with their contract to them and pay what's due. Retrospective changes to contracts should in general be banned. It's too open to abuse, especially when the relationship is very lopsided, as in this case.

This always used to be the case with legislation, but over the last decade or so, governments have got very bad at introducing legislation that has a retrospective aspect. Take UK tax legislation as an example, where people are being pursued now for things that weren't illegal when they were done. It's all a very slippery slope with governments and corporations the only winners, as they have all the power.