Name: Everyone is Leaving Tech Sales. Here's Why I'm Not.
Uploaded: 2026-03-03T08:34:53.000Z
Duration: 7 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Past simple

Seven former coworkers of mine in the past 12 months have quit tech sales burnout, laid off, just overall done with it.

But I'm still here and I'm not going anywhere.

Before I share and talk through why I'm still bullish on this industry as a whole.

We need to get real about what's going on right now.

Tech sales in 2025, guys, absolutely sucks.

Back in 2018-2022, that was the golden era of tech sales.

VCs were throwing money at every tool imaginable.

OTEs were fat, inbound leads were flowing.

It was one of those times where you didn't have to be good.

You just had to be a warm body in a seat with an account executive title.

And you were probably making a lot of money.

Microsoft just laid off 9,000 people, 9,000 people the week of 4th of July.

A lot of those people were salespeople, the very people who got them to their profitability and revenue number.

Otes back in 2018-2022 stood for on target earnings.

That's the number you would make if you were at your quota.

And most people, people back in 2018-2022 were seeing at least their OTE on their W2.

That is not the case for 60 to 70% of reps selling in tech sales.

Most are not seeing their ote on their W2.

I was just in the job market, guys, for a new role because my role moved to Austin, Texas.

And when I was out looking for a new role, the numbers that I was seeing from a salary and OTE perspective were much less.

So those big fat comp plans that we were seeing back in 2018-2022 are no longer the case.

And all of this is causing instability right now in tech sales.

The average tenure of a rep is 14 to 18 months, which is just not.

It's not sustainable being that it takes 14 to 18 months in some of these roles to ramp up and start seeing success.

And all of this is a perfect formula or a perfect storm for people to leave the industry as a whole and go do anything else, go sell something else that is not tech.

And listen, there's some really good people that I know that just got unlucky and got put into rough situations, bad situations, impossible situations.

Where they were not going to be successful.

They were sold a dream time and time again that had no basis in reality.

Therefore, they think textiles as a whole sucks.

The majority of the people leaving and complaining about this, they were tech sales tourists, I like to call them.

They were here for a short time or a good time, not a long time.

They thought they could join the industry, put very little effort in, sit on a beach like this, work, you know, 20 to 40 hours a week remote, not put any effort in, and

And that's a big reason as to why I'm still bullish on this industry.

Because the fluff and the fat gets cut year after year after year.

The harder it gets, the better it's going to get for people like you and me who could gut it out.

But the number one reason why I'm still bullish on this industry and I'm not leaving anytime soon.

I'm probably not going to leave until I retire, hopefully within the next 10 to 15 years if I do this right, which is a little ambitious.

But the number one reason as to why I'm staying is because the bullshit we put up with in tech sales, I'm pretty sure is the same bullshit I would put up with, you would put up with in any other sales job.

OTs that suck, unrealistic expectations, awful sales managers, sometimes bad products.

Those same issues persist elsewhere, not just in tech sales.

And I'm seeing it all the time on LinkedIn, on Reddit, I'm hearing from people, yeah, I'm leaving tech sales, I'm going to sell H Vac, where I'm leaving tech sales, I'm going to sell real estate or industrial equipment, which is great if that's what you want to do.

But for me, when you look at the numbers, the OTEs, the salaries, the earning capacity, the earning potential is much higher tech sales than any other industry.

So if I'm going to put up with the bullshit regardless of what I sell, why not put up with the bullshit when I have the chance to make more money?

Now, in order to do that, you need to make sure you're putting yourself in the right position, positions where you could actually win.

Vetting companies, understanding what a good opportunity looks like, asking the right questions.

So for me, like the companies that I'm gonna work at the rest of my career.

What I do care is I'm selling the top product in its product category, one of the top products in its product category.

A must have product, not a nice to have product with lots of inbound leads, inbound business.

So I'm not just generating my own pipeline.

Outbound is really, really difficult where at least 40% of the account executives at the company have been in seat at least two years and 40% of the account executives who left the company to go sell elsewhere were there at least two years.

That's what I constitute as a good opportunity in tech sales.

Now those companies are few and far between.

There's not a lot of companies who meet all of that criteria.

But if you get at least a couple of those boxes checked off and if you could just gut it out for three years plus in a roll and build up a territory, you're bound to get lucky.

You're gonna get good at the job and you're probably gonna make a lot of money, a lot more money in this industry again than any other industry, just because the earning capacity here is much higher than other industries.

But yes, a lot of people are leaving tech sales.

The climate that we're in right now sucks.

And I feel the pain of these people leaving.

But I'm deciding to gut it out and not go anywhere because I know the exists elsewhere as well.

And I'll make more money selling this stuff than anything else.

And if that's not why you're in sales, I think you have a problem.

But the reason I'm in this is to make money and retire early so I can chill on a beach like this.

Let me know what you think in the comment section below.