It's a job that solves a lot of the problems people complain about in programming, like spending all day staring at the screen or not interacting with people or doing things that might be pointless.
The downside of course is that you eat what you kill.
I'm interested in sales, particularly enterprise software sales. As a software engineer, I find it alluring: generally a higher income potential than programming combined with the social aspect.
Like the the other commenter, I'd be interested in hearing from those who work in sales.
As I understand it -- and I could be way off here -- the path from Software Engineer to Sales in the corporate world goes through Sales Engineering.
So if you really want to get into that, I would recommend finding some sales engineers in your company or another friendly company and ask them for advice.
Another closely related thing AFAIK is "Solution Architect" jobs -- in abundance at places like IBM and SAP. There you'd normally be in contact with the folks in Sales as they would want to make sure you're doing the required nerdy stuff to keep the customer happy and open-checkbooked.
I have a software development background and am very interested in software sales, but it's been surprisingly hard to make the transition. I can't make it past a resume screen at most places. And coming from a development background, not a lot of my connections are in sales. I reached out to the ones that are and they said they'd keep me in mind.
A recruiter friend reached out and I'm considering working sales for his staffing agency.
I'd love to hear from people that made the dev -> sales switch!
It's a job that solves a lot of the problems people complain about in programming, like spending all day staring at the screen or not interacting with people or doing things that might be pointless.
The downside of course is that you eat what you kill.