We could have been twins, when I was in graduate school :)
At times I had (still have?) a cynical look at scientific publishing, that it was a symptom of a larger problem: the Peter Principle writ large. Professors and researchers are selected for one thing (their scientific ability), but their major job duties are for something else (here, writing; but also teaching and leadership). Select for one trait, but the job description is for another, and the output is dismal.
To further extend my cynicism: why would a PI follow Cormac McCarthy's advice? Do we have evidence that better-written papers are more "successful," with more citations and shares? My argument (based only on my experiences) is for the opposite: the language is secondary. "Skip to the figures," as I have heard.
As usual, I came here to look for recommendations :)
I have been enjoying Mailspring[0], an OSS fork of Nylas Mail (RIP). I came across it while looking for the closest thing to Google Inbox (RIP also). Mailspring is cross-platform.
Yes -- good on them changing, and bravo to them for calling it out and saying why. In my opinion they put a lot of effort into making this post, and it shows.
From a business side of things, the advantage of Salesforce is that it can very easily be managed by non-devs. It has straightforward sales functions baked in: reporting, forecasting contact management.
For sure, Airtable can be used as a lightweight CRM. Depending on your business, it might be all you need -- it might even be preferred if you're bootstrapping and constantly iterating early on! But Airtable falls down when your sales/marketing needs grow -- those hires probably won't have the patience to develop tools that tie into Airtable.
To reference the old Jim Barksdale line, Salesforce is the "bundle" option, and Airtable is the "unbundle" one.
+1 to developers on HN: if your dream is to have a company with a sales team, it's great practice to get to know CRM softwares early and in-depth. Every seasoned salesperson will need a functioning CRM to do good work...and the best salespeople will get held back by a malfunctioning/nonexistent CRM.
As mentioned there are dozens, and Wikipedia will show you[0]. Since CRMs can be bolted onto just about every business, use cases vary extremely. If I'm being honest, every sales manager starts with an internet search to find the latest rundown [1].
My recommendation is to set aside time to play with a lightweight (pipedrive) + heavyweight (Salesforce) options to see how you might use them one day. I would treat CRMs like a regular piece of software. Many offer totally free trials for 1-3 users. So I would bet they agree with this approach :)
There are zillions of all sorts of vendors, however it will most likely boil down into these: Oracle,Salesforce,Adobe,Microsoft,Zoho,Hubspot,etc. Some interesting resource on CRM in general:
https://beagleresearch.com
As for specific products,I'm mainly familiar with Salesforce,so:
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/home
This is nearly a universal law in the sales world: products/services pitched to salespeople always 1) are expensive and 2) come with their own sales team who are slick and/or aggressive.
I've seen it from sales training, to software and everything in-between.
TBF sales tools probably come under the most scrutiny at just about every company for price/value. Companies that sell tools to sales can get high margins but can't price themselves above their value.
What a weird sentence to write but at least in my experience with IT/engineering so much stuff ends up being bought that, although it's is usually nice, would never stand up to scrutiny if we had to justify business value.
