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Comment by anonymousiam | Hacker News Reader

I was in my 20's and still had a juvenile/hacker streak. No harm was done.

Back at that time, I had dreams of actually owning a 8566, but at the time they cost $60k and it seemed impossible.

I picked one up about five years ago for $2k. It STILL has the best performing AFE of anything ever made. All the modern equipment uses signal processing, but that's cheating.

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> I was in my 20's and still had a juvenile/hacker streak. No harm was done.

Lots of us did dumb/jerk things when we were younger; that makes it understandable, not okay. And would the salesperson with the now (for all practical purposes) broken demo unit agree that there was no harm?

Sounds like a power cycle would fix it, so not so bad. Mild annoyance :)

Ah yeah, that would make a difference; my reading was that it would stay that way until someone hit the magic key sequence. If the salesperson could fix it inside 5 minutes I agree (effectively) no harm.

I was at a boat show once and there was a salesman selling fountain pens that would not leak. At my all-boys school we had to write everything with fountain pens and boys being boys we would regularly spray each other with ink using a very hard flick of the pen. Standing in front of the salesman's table I picked up a demo pen to see, and gave it my hardest flick. Ink sprayed out all over the table, and all down the front of the man's white shirt.

I ran.

Opportunity missed. Deadpan: "Sir, this one does leak, do you have a better one?"

I'm not sure whether I would consider spraying the same thing as leaking. (Yes, I went to an all boys high school, and yes I'm familiar with the trick.)

I hope that in the salesman's place I'd have had the calm to say, "What that really necessary?" and let it go at that. On the one hand, the splatter pattern does not suggest a leak, and he could explain what happened and get points for being cool about it. On the other hand, if there is one high school boy (by calendar or by mental age) who doesn't know the trick, then somebody else could get splattered.

It is a sales persons' duty to know more about the device they are trying to sell than random passers by. If using the front part of a console you really could brick the device in a couple of seconds using nothing but allowed operations that would qualify as a defect.

As far as I'm concerned this was (1) a harmless prank and (2) a significant impulse to the sales person to up their knowledge of the device.

I have to disagree. Society works in layers and mutual trust, and its not the sales person job to know the ins and outs of the device. Their job is to communicate what the machine does and how to do it.

Also, you could brick the device in a couple seconds with a hammer too. Should the sales guy have take down training too?

If thats an unrealistic argument, you failed to realize you were the only one in the room who couldnt see the hammer in your hands.

> its not the sales person job to know the ins and outs of the device

We have a different idea of what sales people should be able to do.

> Their job is to communicate what the machine does and how to do it.

How is this possible without knowing the ins and outs of a device?

> Also, you could brick the device in a couple seconds with a hammer too.

You could, but that's not what this discussion is about so I have no idea why you would bring it up. The device wasn't bricked.

> Should the sales guy have take down training too?

That's a straman of your own making, I will leave the demolition to you.

> If thats an unrealistic argument, you fail to realize youre the only one in the room who couldnt see the hammer in your hands.

You've lost me.

Jacques there's always been the stiff never-have-fun type floating around. They used to tell me I had to wear a suit and tie to be taken seriously in the nineties. I just roll my eyes and don't worry about it.

Funny, they used to tell me the same. Anecdote: one boss gave me some money so I could go out and 'buy some proper clothes'. I spent one part of it on a piece of software that I was saving up for, the rest on a white rental tuxedo. I wore the tux to work the next day and did absolutely nothing all day long (just like most of the rest of that particular IT department). At the end of the day I asked my boss if he wanted me to wear a suit again the next day. He was fine with jeans and t-shirts from then on. (I was with distance the most productive team member.) I have never worn a suit on any other occasion in my life and I still don't understand why people wear something that is extremely uncomfortable and takes way too long to put on (or take off) as well as specialized cleaning services.

A decent suit is supposed to be comfortable, for me more than jeans (if it's not too hot) and if you are tall and fit you look great in them.

LOL! That's awesome!

BTW, you are pouring out level-headed good sense all over this sub-thread and I'm loving it. Thank you. How are you so patient? :)

It's an old trick. I first write the comment I would like to write. Then I delete that, and write another comment.

I used to do that with emails to vendors or the occasional end-user. Also learned a key tip that you either remove the "to" line or write those emails in a text editor first. They you can't accidentally send the nasty first email!

It is not just that the OP did a cool trick, that is not what people find objectionable. You seem to be missing the part where the OP already knew the sales guy was not able to undo their change, that the change would prevent the demoing of the device, but still just re-enabled it and walked away laughing. That is fucking sociopathic behavior, not a cool hack.

A powercycle fixed it. Really, the degree of judgment in this thread is ridiculous. "Sociopathic behavior" -> seriously, we're now into assessing their mental health on account of this?

It is really crazy times, sometimes even on HN.

Imagine you were selling chef's knives.

Obviously, your salespeople should be good at handling your knives.

But a knife salesman will never be as good as a chef, because chefs have hours a day, every day working with the tools of their trade.

And if you're at a trade show selling chef's knives, and there are no chefs in attendance, you're probably at the wrong trade show.

I would say it's entirely normal for a certain fraction of trade show attendees to know the products on display better than the salespeople demonstrating them.

Then you capitalize on that.

I've worked booths. If something like this would happen to me I would definitely want to know more about that person, if only because he might be a potential recruit or a representative of an existing customer.

The fact that your personal experience, confidence or skill would mean _you_ wouldn't have had any problems in a similar situation is irrelevant in judging the situation as it didn't happen to you.

There was a point in time where tradeshows moved from having technically competent people in the booths to having pretty girls (with zero tech chops) and suits. This is roughly where the OPs story falls in time, and I wonder if that has something to do with it.

Personally, as long as a powercycle took care of the issue I really don't see the problem, if you do then that's fine by me. Breaking things is bad, afaics nothing got broken here.

I'll grant you that possibly there were zero consequences here, just a little extra sweat on the sales person's back, and OP or my interpretation have hyperboled the effects a little.

If you dump clueless suits with expensive gear and hackers in the same environment the outcome is somewhat predictable.

So either you accept the risks, staff your booths with competent people or you stay away from tradeshows. What point is there to have a salesperson there who does not understand what they are selling? At a minimum you'd have to study up on the device to be able to demonstrate its capabilities. If you can't do that then you have no place in that booth.

The fact that apparently even Bill Gates would mess with the systems at tradeshows (in much the same way, in fact) speaks volumes. This kind of behavior would have been very much expected in the tradeshow environment of the 80's.

In fact, if you went home afterwards and your gear still worked and wasn't stolen (either by the visitors or the nightwatch) that counted as a win.

what says the sales person wasn't competenz? They are targeting EEs and are trying to show how to make productive use of the device when dealing with electronics. Sure, you can do more with the device and use it like a free programmable comouter, however that is not the purpose. The sales petson could have been strong in using it to analyse a broken curcuit.

Going deep on an aspect of the datasheet abd abusing it doesn't mean one understands a thing on the device (in its proper use)

Mostly the fact that they were panicking before they even tried the basics, such as a restart.

Any competent user of that particular spectrum analyzer would have tried that first.

"If you dump clueless suits with expensive gear and hackers in the same environment the outcome is somewhat predictable"

This is essentially bigotry, endemic among arrogant groups of people with limited social skills, narrow understanding (and therefore respect for) subjects beyond their purview, but who might have developed some strength of understanding in their niche.

"What point is there to have a salesperson there who does not understand what they are selling?"

It's ridiculous to assume that a salesperson might have to have the same level of knowledge that an Engineer may have, and betrays a total lack of understanding of how organizations work, levels of expertise required.

Imagine if Engineers were required to have the knowledge and skills to have to actually 'sell' the devices they make, after all, why shouldn't they be expected to know how to 'have a conversation' and 'collect money'? My god.

That's a pretty high horse you're on. Again, I've been in the salesperson's position, and it would have gotten no more than a laugh and a powercycle out of me, and probably a conversation with where he found out so much about a system that I was supposed to know like the back of my hand.

You don't demonstrate spectrum analyzers, especially programmable ones if you don't know how to use them in anger.

I went to a music fair a while ago (ok, a long while ago meanwhile) to watch some gear demonstrated, the people manning the booths were musicians, and they were competent. That's the sort of interaction you strive for when you pick the people to run a booth at a tradeshow.

Otherwise the answer to every question about the device is going to end up with 'I don't know'. And that's potentially a lost sale right there.

The assumption that the salesperson did not have 'technical competence' because they didn't know some arcane bit about the system is wrong.

The actions of OP were a 'Red Flag' not a 'Recruiting Signal'.

If you (you login name here changed though) would have written that powercycle fixed it, comments would probably have been different. Narration gave the impression you bricked it for good/skillset of the salesperson.

I think you have your parties muddled up here.

Ok, let's say hypothetically it's not the salesperson's job to know everything about the device they're selling. I disagree, but let's assume this, anyway.

Why did the company not send an actual engineer to the trade show as well? I've done plenty of trade shows as a customer and there's almost always an engineer on-hand to assist with more technical questions and issues with the demo device.

Even assuming the prior claim, the company still screwed up not buying another plane ticket for an engineer.

Does the fact that the company screwed up make the sales person feel better in that moment?

I agree with (1), but not (2). How many sales types are going to learn to operate a debugger?

Also, there's random passers by as in "one table over at Starbucks" and random passers by as in "took the trouble to come to a tech conference". It is true that the latter are more likely to take these things lightly.

That's why you have at least one techie in your booth crew. Which has been my role on more than one occasion.

FWIW I worked the booth on a CAD/CAM show in Utrecht one memorable week in the 80's and the number of master mechanics that tried to get the toolbit to run into the chuck was rather larger than expected. Good that I took care of that in the software. But this mentality, of putting stuff through its paces and to show off what you can do with it is exactly why you have trade shows in the first place, to interact with people and to let people interact with your gear to see what they are up to and to strike up conversations. Not all of these pay off.

But sometimes the kid in the greasy jeans and the t-shirt is the guy that will land you the big contract, as opposed to the guy in the suit who passes by your booth just for the swag.

I'd like to point out that just because it is expected that folks are going to try to come and try out a product (and potentially damage it) does not justify it.

OP entering a funky command is not unexpected. But then purposely antagonizing the sales rep was a d*ck move in my book. If OP had just shown the guy "Hey here's what I did and what it does" that would be perfectly fine (important distinction, OP knew more than the sales guy compared to your case). But if the sales person was legitimately panicking that's not very polite, to put it mildly.

How is it a harmless prank if at the end the ‘prankster’ walks away smugly and the salesperson is left with a broken demo?

It’s only harmless if the prankster turns around and fixes the demo.

I remember some years ago there were people going around trade shows with universal remote controls turning off the screens. As far as I remember most posters thought that wasn’t a very nice thing to do. And that really is almost completely harmless.

Because nothing got broken.

Turning off screens with universal remote controls... hm... imagine what you could do with one of those 3 Watt IR guns they use in laser arenas and a highrise building. During the worldcup soccer... Never mind.

Definitely not.

Sales people don't have a requirement to know systems to that depth.

The initial interaction was 'harmless fun' but re-instituting it and walking away was materially bad.

Man, the people in this thread have some tree-sized sticks in places where the sun don't shine.

Also seems like many of these people haven't been to an engineering conference with demo gear out. And seem to be overlooking that this was 30-40 years ago, talking about equipment that'd cost $150k in today's money. That was an engineer or two worth of annual salary for the time period.

I'd damn well expect a sales person selling me a piece of gear like that at a field-specific conference to know how to use it and be able to reset the thing to factory spec in a pinch. Which seems to be exactly what the sales person ended up doing.

Embedded dev pitching in with: AFE = analog front end, the part of a mixed-signal circuit that deals with analog signals (filtering, amplifying, etc).

Which, for that era were works of art.

A lot of the things hackers did in the 70s and 80s are now recognized as very oof, as they say, today. As to whether "no harm was done", you disrupted a salesperson's pitch and caused him to think the device was broken. You introduced delays and tarnished the reputation of the product in front of customers, potentially resulting in lost sales and hence, lost revenue.

> No harm was done.

ever considered the stress you induced in the sales guy?

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