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This has been a common practice in enterprise sales organizations for while.

- Hire new CRO or President of sales.

- He "builds out a team" generally consisting of people he's already worked with in the past.

- Sales org grows.

- CRO moves to next company. wash rinse repeat ad infinitum.

Why would this process breakdown given a team of proven, successful engineers who have shown to be capable of building/scaling a product in the past?

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Why not the same?

Cause sales ain't software.

Care to explain what the relevant differences are?

Between software engineers and salespeople? Really?

A better question would be "what do they have in common?"

Among other factors, salespeople have a large variable component to their compensation. They tend to be highly economic animals in a way that most engineers are not. Hence a former boss can easily convince them to join up by making a compelling argument about their prospective earnings.

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