Developer CEO vs Sales Guy CEO
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I am, for all intents and purposes, Developer Guy. I'm analytical. I write code. I solve problems, often with math. I've been "this way" my whole life. I've also been in many tens of thousands of conversations, with all kinds of people. Yet, despite having been in many conversations about everything and nothing at all, I've never been tempted to question my conversational partner's ability to reason analytically based on their decision to ask non-technical questions:
- If we talk about the weather, I assume we're making small talk.
- If we talk about family and friends, I assume that they want to talk about something with greater personal meaning.
- If we talk about their vintage peruvian bottle cap collection, I assume that they really like peruvian bottle caps.
Likewise, when someone comes up to me and asks me some very intense technical question, I don't assume that they aren't also evaluating my tone, posture, volume, poise, choice of words, etc. We're all human. It's all part of the game.
Sales Guy seems puzzled that Developer Guy isn't spending time on non-technical issues. But how does he know that? Is he assuming that Developer Guy doesn't care? Developer guy might just be intensely interested in sales guy's specific knowledge. It happens.
What strikes me about this writing is not that Developer Guy and Sales Guy are different, but that Sales Guy is reconciling a stereotype of Developer Guy with his actual experience. And that's bothersome.
Because it makes the Sales CEO (whatever the fuck that means) sound like a Douche CEO. If he can stereotype people from a conversation, I can surely stereotype him from a blog post. Though that also makes me a Douche CEO...
In all seriousness, stop labeling people. Treat them as human beings. See the person behind the title. Most of the time, you will find someone who is geniunely smart, but absolutely has no fucking idea about what he/she is doing (like the rest of the world). Be it a sales person, a developer, a mechanic, nurse, lawyer, or a janitor. Human beings.
Perhaps you're taking the line "he based the value of the meeting on the quality of the data" to mean that Developer CEO was evaluating Sales Guy CEO as a person based on the quality of his responses and that it's a social faux pas to do so. As I understand that line, he meant that the Developer CEO's objective was to get value out of the conversation by getting high quality data. FWIW, I'm Developer CEO and I do the exact same thing.
Sales CEO thinking = "How do I get his money?"
For many tech people, the product is the goal - getting some techie thing going. The other things (like: funding, getting some type of customer) are just tasks that have to be done but they don't really know or care about. Between them, the tech people are quite open (as the tech culture is based on Internet and open source) so any kind of question is fine - and when they find somebody that knows how to do the "other tasks" they try to get into details, as they don't have them.
For many sales people, the customer is the goal - attracting the customer to get his money. The other things (like: product/tech) are just tasks that have to be done but are done by someone else. Usually sales people are not talking shop (customers) between them, even if they work at the same company, so every time you ask them something they immediately wonder why did you ask that question, what is your hidden purpose and how they can benefit from it.
I agree with the first part("the product is the goal") but your second part("getting some techie thing going") sounds like one of the biggest myths. May be it was true at one point but building a great product no longer is seen as a tech-only undertaking. It requires talking to customers, identifying needs, understanding the quantitative value of what you are building in addition to the technical stuff.
The Sales CEO tries to figure out what problems people have, and convince them that his company/product can solve those problems.
The Product CEO takes the hundreds of problems that exist in the market and come up with a product that solves a decent subset of those problems.
The Developer CEO figures out how to actually build such a product. They're responsible for solving hard technical problems and pushing the limits of what's possible.
(There is also a lot of overlap-a good CEO is usually an extreme generalist)
Its sad that our education systems still are compartimentized by areas.. with some avant-garde leading from some institutions of course being the exception..
we need broad and sistemic abrangence of knowledge, information and perspective.. the world is much more complicated these days.. it cant stand the expert alienation neurosis anymore.. or we all gonna fail to excel and live in the human kind golden future we all spect
That said, at large companies the dynamic is different. I know of one excellent CEO at a 5000 person company who spent almost no time on product, market, or operations. Instead, he spent all his time on the human element. Making sure that there were strong training programs, making sure that it was easy to transfer from one department to another (and instituting policies that managers had to transfer star employees every two years or less), cutting through a lot of bureaucracy to make sure that star players could get promoted commensurate to their talents, etc. The company's performance and stock price skyrocketed during his tenure, and he was considered one of the best CEOs the company ever had.
Yes, they are.
Dear, "Sales Guy CEO": if you again find yourself in the situation where you're in a conversation with a deeply analytical person, it's probably in your best interest not to assume that your conversation partner is socially clueless just because she is asking good, specific, actionable questions. If they're smart enough to ask good questions, it probably means they're smart enough to read your reactions and personality, as well. You don't corner the market on that particular skill.
Honestly...this is why "sales guys" get a reputation for arrogance amongst nerds. People who grew up as social outcasts are often keenly aware of the social dynamics of the world around them.
Your comment "you don't corner the market in this particular skill" is the most interesting part, it sounds like you are irritated that the assumption that technical and analytical people are somehow less sensitive but then your comment exhibits exactly the lack of understanding and immediate condescension which earns this perception. I doubt you intended it, but it's something to think about.
Well, that's a fine ad hominem, but it doesn't address what I wrote. I'm clearly irritated by the post; that's not a mystery. But to argue that I'm being patronizing, you have to ignore what I'm actually saying: we all have innate social skills, and that the author starts from the opposite premise. He's trying to figure out why this "developer CEO" is so different, when the difference appears to be trivial (one person is asking analytical questions).
The original post was clearly phrased in an adversarial manner:
"Sales Guy" vs "Developer Guy"
"I, on the other hand..."
"Whereas he based the value of the meeting..."
"Where he took my generalized questions and drove them to specific topics - that was the interesting part. That let me know what’s on his mind."
Plus, there was the hint of a "gotcha" tone:
"That will give me the context for assessing future activities by his company."
Basically, he's starting from the premise that this other person is somehow not making these social judgments; that they're not building a mental model of how their conversational partner operates. That's wrong, and it's (IMO) arrogant: his thinking rests upon the implicit assumption of The Other as a stranger. Not everyone makes this assumption -- many (if not most) people will start from an assumption of similarity on matters of human nature.
This is clearly a compare and contrast piece. He is contrasting what he took from the meeting with what the Developer CEO took from the meeting, with a heavy implication that those benefits were exclusive to each other. He says it more or less explicitly:
"I suspect in his mind the benefit of meeting was directly related to his perception of the quality of data in my answers."
Also look at the language construct used:
"Whereas he based the value of the meeting on the quality of the data I focus on how much I think I got an accurate snapshot of how the person thinks and operates."
The google definition of 'whereas' is "In contrast or comparison with the fact that.".
To possibly overthink social cues, I think that timr wrote a true but slightly condescending response to a slightly condescending article. Since engineers commonly are condescending to sales people, and since HN is filled with contrarians, someone felt obligated to stick up for the sales guy.
Is natural that the old school yuppie feel threatened by this new specie of ceo.. this new species are the one who will replace them in a near future..
Of course the tech ceo will need to suck the knowledge from the generation that were in the battle front.. thats his nature.. he is a hacker, he learn fast, he thinks fast..
this is not just about different points of view.. this is a generational clash.. two different generations meeting each other while they are all in the game..
this is the dawn of the salesman, and the rise of the geeks of course they are all afraid, they should be :)
For the record, great salespeople are very often also "deeply analytical." In fact, having hired & managed lot's of salespeople, I'd suggest listening, observation & analytical skills are the differentiating factor between the good and the great.
PS - the unfair judgements regarding arrogance is a two-way street.
He came off as curious about how developers think and operate and very open-minded about learning from it.
Unlike your comment here.
My experience with developer-type leaders and sales-type leaders really breaks down to this: the developer builds a solid foundation and finds the product-market fit for it, the sales-oriented person projects the future they want others to believe in. One is slightly more logic-based, the other emotional. Some people can do both. That's rare.
(To borrow terminology from "Thinking, Fast and Slow"):
In my experience, more socially-inclined people are able to rely easily on System 1 -- whereas the more awkward ("engineer" types) attempt to engage System 2 continually, and thus the experience of talking with them often feels effortful and lacking in "flow."
EDIT: A quick primer, from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sys...)
"In the book's first section, Kahneman describes the two different ways the brain forms thoughts:
System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, subconscious
System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious"
In the book's first section, Kahneman describes the two different ways the brain forms thoughts:
System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, subconscious
System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sys...
"Turning off your brain" sounds like a good summary of that. I don't think one need a particular "skill" to act stereotypically, subconsciously, emotionaly, automatically, at least... If one is inhibited and thinking too much, just give it some wine.
Follow your mundane questions with a form of "do you like it?". It will usually break the conversation right out of 20-questions mode.
Example:
A: What is your major?
B: English
A: Do you like it?
B: Well, yes, but what most people don't understand about English majors is...
A: What is your major?
B: English
A: Oh, cool, I took an English course in college. Probably nowhere near as detailed
as your studies, but I enjoyed it.
B: Oh? Which course?
A: Science fiction.
B: Never took that one. Which books did you read?
A: A bunch of Heinlein, some Ursula LeGuin.
B: I never liked Heinlein - thought he was a sexist pig. I love LeGuin though.
Notice that conversations between close friends rarely have questions - they consist of people taking turns volunteering new information, often rather animatedly if they have good rapport with each other. Also look at Hacker News comment threads: people rarely ask direct questions, they just contribute additional information along the same lines as the original comment.
And I presume there are other such people in the industry.
On the other hand, I ask the most questions when I am genuinely curious about something in which case I am inclined to talk out of natural curiosity than social necessity.
This is the same thing you do when you jump into a large code-base.
He's resisting the temptation to use sales skill on himself. Being able to create a reality distortion field is a useful skill for a CEO, but this skill shouldn't be trained on yourself.
When someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to (about your market, etc.), take note! Don't be that guy who just says: "Stupid investor. He doesn't get it." and ignores the question. Give the smartest reply you have, but let your lack of knowledge become a weakly held hypothesis. Then, attempt to validate or controvert this hypothesis.
In short, as a CEO, don't sell yourself too much. It blindsides you against what you should be learning.
Whereas the Sale Guy CEO is trying to allow a model to form in his head.
I think you will learn more using the second method. But for a programmer to accept the second view is very hard. It requires us to shut the eff up.
I didn't get that impression - I got the impression that both CEOs are trying to form a model in their heads. But the developer CEO is building his from the bottom up - he seeks information on the details, and then will let general principles coalesce out of that data. The sales CEO is building his from the top down - he wants to understand the gestalt of the conversation first, and then he'll fill in the details later.
Computers teach us to pay attention to the details first, because they're very unforgiving if we get them wrong, while people will often fill them in for us if we provide a compelling-enough top-level vision. I find I thought much like the sales CEO up through college, while I'm much more inclined now to trust my intuition to produce a top-level picture once I've assembled a bunch of disparate facts.
There's no way to learn more than that because you've already fixed the foundation. This is a good strategy when you've already been working on something for a while and you have made some firm bets or if you've done this thing before to some relative success.
The sales guys is usually going to be better if you really want to understand a new customer from ground up.
Ie direction matters.
I think the difference is in your end goal. From the article, it seems that the sales CEO is more interested in the person, hence questions about the flow of conversation while the developer CEO seems interested in the product and domains that have a structure associated with them.
As the CEO there are just so many other things you have to take of, especially in small businesses. I have done it and always felt its stealing my time from coding and getting work done.
Steve Jobs was the best salesman ever... but he was clearly of the analytical mindset, and not a developer CEO. Steve Jobs knew how to ask all the right questions.
I mean, yes, I know its unfair to compare people to Steve Jobs, but what am I missing?
I'd say, since it was so popular and well done, there's room on HN for it but I'm curious to hear what others think.
Edit: clickable link for those interested http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com
Thanks for wasting my time.
Sales Engineers range from almost "a developer who also talks to customers to get requirements and feedback" to "a submarine salesperson" (i.e. the Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer). If you want to learn sales, obviously pick one where you're in contact with existing salespeople and ideally where you get paid a % of sales on top of salary.
Having a strong technical background does help in selling some b2b products, especially developer products. (or really, "having strong domain knowledge does help in selling a domain-specific b2b product", i.e. being an MD selling medical IT)
I'm stumbling into picking up b2b skills myself. That said, I'm lucky that I have a super technical biz where I'd only allow core engineers to be running the b2b sales convo with customers.
Having customers you're excited to help succeed can not be underestimated as a valuable motivator. Most businesses aren't interesting to me, so I'm incredibly lucky that I'm in a space with really cool businesses. :-)
If you do this try and ensure that your boss or at least whomever runs sales overall does have a strong selling background. Like any discipline you'll want a great mentor - especially at your first gig. The recommendation to start as an SE is also a great idea.