The Business Guy vs. the Programmer | Hacker News Reader

The Business Guy vs. the Programmer

irrlicht3d.org

100 pointsirrlichthn74 comments

I think you're describing a sales guy versus a programmer. In my experience, "businesses guys" are actually professional bullshit detectors. It's one of the reasons you want them in on the actual contract negotiations. A skilled business guy has an amazing way of boiling things down, spotting inconsistencies, and seeing where relationships are likely to fall apart.

Sales guys on the other hand are professional bullshit machines. They heavily rely on being able to read your tone and state of mind so that they can tailor the message to whatever they think will resound with you the most. And that's way easier to do on the phone.

Sales people love the phone as they have a competitive advantage over customers here - remember most sales people have been selected for their ability to bullshit via talking. It actually does make me wonder if you can hire sales people that have their edge via email conversation.

The most important thing in any type of sales is building some sort of rapport or connection with the customer/prospect/potential client, and it's way easier to do that on the phone.

Its considered rude to hang up. You have to give some reason then they can refute it.

"I'm sorry, I don't want to talk to you anymore" click...

While I upvoted the comment - I know it is easier to write "I don't want to talk to you" than say it (even if it is on phone. In-person is even more difficult)

This is my own biased impression, but with rare exceptions, almost every article I've read in mainstream business publications (like Harvard Business Review, etc) has had a ratio of content to bullshit that was astonishing.

Articles about 'enterprise communication' or 'bold leadership' or 'delighting customers' might have a simple message that takes about up about a paragraph and are then dressed up in a huge amount of un-necessary business speak or 'folksy' stories that illustrate the concept.

I'm sure this is just observer bias, but from someone in a technical field, it's astonishing how shallow the concepts are.

The concepts are shallow primarily because business nous is often a raw sort of intelligence, where you're responding in real time to an exact specific situation rather than planning and developing a concept which will cover all your needs in advance.

That's my take on it, at any rate. I've never got much from mainstream business publications either (although, hang on a moment, Hacker News is at least a very popular business curation...)

HBR is notoriously full of bullshit (just like many guys from Harvard). The thing to understand about business schools is that they're still academia: most of the professors have no clue how the world really works outside a university. About the only ones with real-world experience are the finance professors, and big banking is its own special world. It's fine though, because their job is to teach.

At the end of the day though, business schools teach you all sorts of things you'll never use again: they tend to be heavy on statistics and calculus. The key is that you don't necessarily have to know how to do them yourself, just that there is a good methodology for solving these problems and what skills to look for in people you hire to actually do the grunt work for you. I don't remember how to do a linear regression myself, but I know how to read the output of one and the right questions to ask to make sure I understand exactly what it's telling me.

Again, my impression is that the main 'value added' that things like a business school gives you is the credentials and the network of alumni.

In terms of tangible things that you learn, if you want to study calculus and statistics, you can pick those up from 1st year classes at any decent technical university.

I'd also argue against your example of 'professors outside of the real world'. At any top tier University, professors will be world experts on their particular area of expertise, and will be able to apply it to real world problems, and I'd be happy to provide as many examples as you'd like in technical fields that I'm familiar with.

I totally agree; most of what you get out of a top business school is the fact that it's a feeder program into high-paying jobs in corporate America. Your classmates will also have these jobs, so you become a group of rich, powerful people who all know each other. You do learn some content that is useful (i.e. you may learn statistics in community college but not necessarily how to apply it to a manufacturing operation) but yeah, the network is the biggest benefit. It's why I don't feel that an MBA is worth your time unless you go to a top 10 school -- you can get the education anywhere, it's about the people.

Professors can and do apply their research to real world problems, but their "solutions" are often idealized and make a lot of assumptions that don't always pan out. They're not dumb by any means, but coming up with a solution and implementing a solution are two very different things.

I second this sentiment. In part because a good business person should be someone who listens and synthesizes multiple views prior to speaking about something. You'd be amazed at how much 'business savvy' is just listening and keeping one's mouth shut.

I'm a programmer, and I also own WonderProxy (https://wonderproxy.com/) and Yes.

I had someone from a rather large company email me, all super interested, get them started on a trial then they'll pay like tomorrow. They just need to get started ASAP!!!!!!ones!!!! That turned into needing to talk to some business guy, who absolutely needed to talk to me on the phone, so he could ask me for our address and a phone number, which I emailed to him.

I deal with this sort of thing probably once a month. The larger and older a company it is, the more likely I'm going to need to jump through some hoops, rather than have them use our nicely automated purchase process. Filling our vendor forms, agreeing to their anti-bribery policy, giving them a "direct" email rather than support@, agreeing to net-60 rather than net-30 or pre-payment of service.

Is it awesome, no. But I do it. Joel Spolsky's customer service tip #6 (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html) comes in handy. Pretend you've got a puppet, and you just need to make the puppet say something that will make the customer happy. It's not you, it's the puppet.

Because I've managed enough of these situations, we've built up a sufficient pool of customers that we have enough money to hire (part-time) someone more comfortable dealing with these tricky customers. Now I deal with them less, and more of them sign up. It's a fantastic circle really :).

To continue.

I think part of the issue has to do with the importance of the people involved. Chances are someone decided to use our product at a company, and managed to convince a rather important person (RIP) that it was a good idea. But the person who wants to use our product isn't the person we hear from, nor is it the rather important person. It's someone who Reports To The RIP (RTTRIP). RIP didn't spend a lot of time explaining to RTTRIP why they needed us, what we do, or anything, it was probably a brief voicemail or email "go buy some WonderProxy for the programmers, they need it ASAP".

So there's RTTRIP, a little bit of information about what their company needs, not a lot of power, and a slew of restrictions on how to make corporate purchases. What's the easiest next step? Give us a call! It's fast, they can explain to the RIP "I called them twice yesterday" if there's any flak for it not being done already, and heck, maybe those folks at WonderProxy can help them figure out what they're supposed to be buying anyways. RTTRIP doesn't expect to be speaking to a RIP at WonderProxy, they expect to be speaking to either a sales person who would love to set up sales calls, conference calls, heck, maybe even send over a brochure and some new pens! or possibly someone else who reports to a rather important person.

Instead, over here at WonderProxy _we're the ones_ who screwed everything up. Rather than have a sales person answer the phone, or even someone who reports to someone important... We've got the fraking co-founder answering the phone.

RIP and RTT? Why am I not surprised that you developed a product called WonderProxy? :-)

I have a hard time not thinking Routing Information Protocol, and Round Trip Time when I see those TLAs (Three Letter Acronym).

> I don't know if I maybe lost a few nice business opportunities because of my attitude regarding this, but maybe at least I had more time programming new features for my customers that way.

This is an awful attitude to have.

Firstly, business is the art of reaching mutually beneficial agreements with people. Part of what makes a good business person a good business person is an ability to navigate the potentially frustrating waters of professional communication. Consider the exchange the author laid out. He repeats the same thing over and over again (give me details please), assuming the other person will pick up on the passive aggressive repetition and begin to do things on his terms. Instead of accommodating this person's communication style, he blows them off. Notice this: he blows off the opportunity not on its substance, but on his impression of its messenger. If the guy wants a phone call, roll your eyes privately, give him a phone call, and blow him off ten minutes in if the opportunity doesn't seem worthwhile.

Secondly, there's this idea that time spent programming is the most productive, and anything that subtracts from your precious programming time is a waste of time. This is a tricky point, and I'm going to head off all the impassioned comments stating that programming actually is sacred by saying: sometimes the biggest gains can be made through design and development, but sometimes not. Witness all imperfect products that represent successful businesses because their leadership knew when to devote attention to development and when to pull off and devote attention to business.

If he were a programmer being paid for his programming time, it would be absolutely the case that any time spent not programming was a waste. However, the post clearly states that he's in charge of the product, and yet he seems to have budgeted little time and apparently no attention to furthering the product. If doing product work is such a waste of his time, it would be in his best interest to bring on someone who will do that full time for him, allowing him to focus on programming full time.

I'm pretty sure it's meant hyperbolic. But we've all had this , it doesn't end with a phone call either.

If somebody who wants something from you can't summarize in a few written sentences what they want from you, it's exceedingly likely no amount of writing or talking is gonna remedy that. If you engage clients like that, you'll end up being very, very sorry.

I agree with you when it comes to clients. Clients want to hire you to do a specific piece of work, and in that case vague, open-ended agreements are indeed poison. When it comes to partnerships, however, the mutually beneficial agreement might not be immediately obvious. It's entirely possible that a "get to know you" sort of conversation will be necessary, will turn out to be very fruitful, and would be impossible to have over email. Also keep in mind, they're vetting you as much as you're vetting them. They want to get a feel for you as a potential partner, and if you behave like the author from the get-go, it's likely not in their best interests to not work with you.

To my second point, if you say you're in charge of product development, it's your job to dive into these sorts of conversations on the off chance they might develop into meaningful partnerships. I can be annoying and frustrating, and it certainly can seem wasteful to someone with an engineer's mindset, but that's why it's a job and not a hobby. Expecting people to come to you with perfectly-fitting opportunities gift wrapped in exactly the communication style you use will keep you from ever achieving anything.

So the most grownup thing to do would be to just agree to meet the guy, yes? I can agree with that. But why not answer a few questions like, are you prospecting for people to hire? Are you looking for a partnership? What kind of partnership? What software are you interested in? I have tons, see. No, nothing, you can give me nothing? Alright, bye.

I haven't seen anyone mention this, but the guy doing the email is almost certainly paid (or at least seen as successful) when he organises a face-to-face meeting. There's a fundamental imbalance of incentives here: the Sales Guy wants to get paid for taking time to sit down and negotiate, and the Programmer wants to get paid for running his business.

I think the major inefficiency is here: "My time is very limited, maybe you could first tell me roughly what this would be about?"

I would personally ask if they're most interested in features/option/pricepoint A,B or C. If it's not clear on the context I would ask a direct question for the three topics he would like to talk about.

Anything that steers the conversation towards what you want: whether this partnership is something you're interested in. At least this ways there's actually some motivation for him to actually tell you what's in it for your business.

[edit] the end was cut off for some reason

There's a good insight here that bears repeating:

Sales guy is paid to talk on the phone.

Programmer is paid to program.

So you can treat talking on the phone as a reward/incentive for good behaviour by sales guy. "I'll be happy to talk with you on the phone if you can first summarise your proposal".

In bad sales orgs, the sales people may also be held to a contact quota that does not take into account their close ratio. He may be just trying to pad his contact numbers.

...or shotgunning, and trying a lot of weak leads at once.

The thing is, in this particular case the programmer appears to be the sole proprietor of the company. The "programmer" doesn't get paid to program. The sole proprietor gets paid when he makes sales.

I don't think it has much to do with business guy (or salesman or marketeer) vs. programmer. I notice a lot of people are afraid of phone calls and try to avoid them as much as possible. Handling phone calls in a professional way is a skill you should learn, it's really a competitive advantage. Don't let your insecurity to answer the phone and talk to someone ruin a potential deal.

Schedule time for phone calls, just like you schedule mails, so you don't get interrupted all the time and have some time to prepare for it.

I upvoted this as I think it's one of the best comments on this subject. Technologists are phone averse because at their core they are socially uncomfortable. To categorize someone who uses a phone as a "sales buy" or "business guy" is simply a convenient excuse. Plenty of people, even programmers are productive AND use the telephone. Not everyone who wants to talk with you is some sort of unproductive salesman.

Email is not a perfect communication tool. I deal with clients and all too often receive or send an email that is misconstrued or taken completely the wrong way. Get on the phone and within minutes of speaking he issue is usually either completely debunked, or worked out.

I too avoid the phone, but find when I do pick it up and talk with my clients, or leads or other business people that it's incredibly productive and useful. It's also an advantage as many people will type one thing, but be unable to say that same thing when speaking on the telephone or meeting in person. I've have clients who were unhappy and started down the road of aggressive emails, who after a quick chat on the telephone completely backed down.

The telephone is also a great place to say things that you simply don't want on a written record. It's one thing to tell someone in person what you actually think of X, Y or Z, it's a completely other thing to write it an email where the person reading can't see your face/posture or hear the tone of your voice.

> Technologists are phone averse because at their core they are socially uncomfortable.

This might be true for some of us, but I doubt it's true for the majority, or that it is the root of the problem.

I like phone calls. They are a quick way to do run some back&forths, to reach an understanding very fast. But most of the times, phone calls are waste of time. I can handle 6 IM conversations and dozen of mail threads at the same time, without the loss of attention to any particular one. But a single phone call blocks me completely. It takes 100% of my focus, even though most of the times the conversation doesn't require more than 10%. It literally makes me stressed, my hands shaking from impatience. That, and all the usual context-switch-related arguments.

> Not everyone who wants to talk with you is some sort of unproductive salesman.

Not at all; phone calls are very productive for them. If your product has a real value, then you should be able to explain it in an e-mail, and I will be able to evaluate the proposal. But if someone really needs to talk with me on the phone, it's an indication that he/she can't or doesn't want to engage in an honest exchange of value, but want to trick me, manipulate me, lie to me to get me into buying something.

In other words, if they don't want to talk with me through my channel of choice, I tend to assume they're cheats and their product is worthless.

> Technologists are phone averse because at their core they are socially uncomfortable.

I'd imagine that's true in some cases, but it's not valid to assume that all technologists dislike the phone because they're socially uncomfortable.

I dislike the phone in most cases because of scheduling issues. With a written communication, I can read and respond when I have a moment free. With the phone, either people call you out of the blue and interrupt you, or you have to schedule a mutually agreeable time. When that time rolls around, you have to drop what you're doing, get out of the flow, and take the call. Inevitably, the phone call eats up a ton of time--far more, in my experience, than a written conversation would.

I've run into this before and basically what it comes down to is that these are people coming in with a sales mindset and don't understand (or choose not to understand) that time = money for some people and they're not going to spend their time listening to someone's pitch unless they have some indicator it's not a waste of their time. They seem to think, "If I can only get him on the phone..." but totally fail to communicate why someone should get on the phone with them. Recruiters do this a lot too. "Let's talk about this opportunity I have with a client." Not when I don't know who you are, who the client is, and whether the job has any of the attributes I'm looking for.

You may have indeed missed out on some business opportunities but maybe those weren't the ones you wanted anyway. If someone can't articulate why you should be interested in a simple email, a lot of the time it means they don't have much of value to offer you.

Agreed. The OP's point seems to be that he's asking for a high-level overview of what Phone Call Guy wants to talk about, but Phone Call Guy is pushing for a phone call. There's at best a mutual disrespect, and at worst Phone Call guy is being solely disrespectful since OP said (multiple times) that he wanted to get an idea of things before the phone call.

My local programmer community is infested with these guys.

My co-worker and I held a programming meetup in our office, some programmers came, but also we had the luck of drawing the attention of a few of these guys. Within the same 120 second span he both asked me to: 1. Quit the company and come work for him. 2. Hire him at our own company. 3. Told me that I would pay him $120k+ to come up with business ideas.

But I don't think this trait is unique to business guys. I've had a programmer send me an email inviting himself over to my home. I declined the gracious offer.

I don't go out to programmer meetups any more, and I avoid making contact at conferences.

I consider myself both a business guy and a programmer. But I'm probably different from most of the people here on HN in that I see myself as a business guy first and a programmer second. My day job is very business-focused (albeit with a technology bent to it) and I hack as a hobby; I've never been a professional developer. I do find that rolling up my sleeves and taking on a small part of a project is a good way to get the guys who work for me to see me as more than a PHB barking orders.

I don't feel the skill sets are mutually exclusive: these days, a good business person should have a deep understanding of the technology. A lot of the approach you take to problems is the same as well: when doing a financial analysis of a company, I often treat the company like a complex system. Business units are modules, projects are data objects and budgets are your resource constraints. Enterprise architecture (i.e. how a business is structured) is the same skill set as technical architecture, only you understand a bit more about motivating people.

Honestly, finding both in one person is rare though. Too many business people go the PHB route and intentionally are ignorant about the details so they can be "big picture guys". Too many programmers just tunnel-vision on technical problems without understanding or caring why things like metrics and reporting are important. Business guys are terrified of being too specialized and technical guys don't want to be "that guy" who doesn't understand anything. It's a hard niche to put yourself in though.

The reason people push for phone calls is because the other person is more likely to say yes on the phone. The only goal of the initial email is to give the other person not enough information to say no, so that they have to take the phone call.

Upvote because of the part about email. Email forces the communicator to focus their damn thoughts and not spew on for hours. It's courteous and time saving if done right.

One thing not to overlook - is the very real possibility that they cannot put anything in writing until something has been discussed verbally.

It may sound strange, but it is possible they cannot tell you what they want in a cold email - because the lawyers said they couldn't.

Cap the initial conversation at 15 minutes. If they cannot explain it to you in that amount of time, then walk. Worst case is you've lost 15 minutes. Best case is you've got another customer.

That's a pretty good point actually. It goes both ways, too; both parties can build up an email conversation of agreements made ('you said in mail #2 dated x you'd like a 30-day trial', kinda deal).

From the seller, this is a good thing as it's sort of proof of things (although not as solid as signed documents). From the buyer though, often bigger parties with lawyers, they might, as the parent suggested, be reluctant to use certain phrases in emails to avoid being tied to a contract.

With that in mind, it's probably best to record phone conversations. Verbal agreements are also legally binding, at least where I come from.

this isn't practical. 15 minutes for one call isn't much, but this is the kind of thing that might become a regular occurrence.

running a software driven business does in fact require business staff handling sales and customer service. an engineer shouldn't be handling that by him/herself.

That sounds ridiculous. There has to be something they can tell you, at some level of abstraction that goes beyond the level of "we should talk" that was conveyed in the example, at least if your business plan is remotely coherent.

These sort of conversations only happen when the "business" person is looking to sell you something not buy. After many years I have learnt to ignore them.

Or they are terrified of having anything in writing.

Perhaps they're planning to dump some employees and replace them with you, or dump their current provider IF you work out at the meeting. That's the absolute best case.

Worst case is you can expect loads of BS about the undocumented verbal meeting "well, at the (carefully undocumented) meeting you agreed verbally to 25% off regular price and (insert list of features) all available within 72 hours, so ..."

carefully undocumented?

I always use my iPad for just such situations........ I've learnt over the years that while others may want meetings undocumented its best to ensure you have comprehensive notes.

Man, I have those in my own company. The sales guy that walks up to your desk and starts chatting about 20 minutes about a potential future customer.

Then a few days goes by and the customer buys our product and it very clearly states in the contract that 15 things will be done by yesterday even though it will take a good 100 hours to fix and the customer doesn't have to pay a dime, because it's "evolving the product".

Or they're looking to partner and introduce you to some great opportunities. Or they're shutting down their division and introduce you to all their customers. Or they're desperate for your solution, but they're more comfortable on the phone.

I've had all of these circumstances in the last 1 year.

By ignoring requests to talk because your world view consists of a negative outcome from almost any kind of unsolicited contact, you're cutting yourself off from a lot of opportunities.

I don't ignore requests to talk - just the request to talk when I have no idea what the talk will be about. I have only reached this point because every one of these phone conversations has been a sales pitch of something totally unsuitable for my needs.

This. A thousand times this. Dealing with the sales and marketing people in my own company is the same way. Sales Guy sends me an email. Two minutes later, he walks over to ask me if I got that thing he sent me, ala Peter Potamus.

Sadly, this isn't just sales people. In a former job, I had a manager who was also an active developer do this. I've never found myself quite so infuriated with another person at work as I was with him.

Something not brought up thus far in the comments is the asynchronous nature of email. That's why it's often a vastly superior communications medium to phone conversations or talking face-to-face. I can respond to an email when it's most convenient for me, and I have some time to carefully plan out what I want to say. Not so for phone conversations.

Throughout my career, I've been dragged into literally hundreds of meetings over issues that could have been sorted out with email chains with far less time and effort.

This doesn't look very much like communication with a "business guy" to me. Successful "business guys" tend to waste little time and get straight to the point, just like (good, non-autistic) programmers. Perhaps he was thinking of marketing/sales people, who tend to believe that they can somehow cheat or force their way into a better position to sell something by withholding information or by being obnoxious and insisting. They are often not very good "business people" ...

It comes down to trust.

They don't know your product and they don't know you. Maybe if they meet you or engage with you on the phone they'll get to know you and gain some trust in you and therefore your product.

It sucks to have to do that. Especially if the meeting boils down to showing them some example websites they could have found on your portfolio page, rather than taking four hours out of your day to visit them at their office. But it's the trust thing that gets you the job.

Business is a skill you can learn. It's not something you have to suck at just because you're also good at talking to computers. Remember humans are like very inefficient computers that you need to learn to communicate with to get anything done.

Maybe it's just that I am a programmer too but in this situation the one that need to learn communication to me seems the business side. If someone told you how they want to communicate with you after YOU requested to communicate, you should comply. There is no requirement for the programmer here to waste his times in endless meeting that result in nothing. Sales people might have time for that and that's because it's what they do. Programmers have other stuff to do.

The standard for communication for new business relationships is ideally face to face, and if that's not possible, then a phone call.

Good sales people also do not waste their time in endless meetings that result in nothing.

You need to hire someone like Tom Smykowski, from 'Office Space':

"I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV7u1VBhWCE

Isn't that what managers are supposed to be doing? But instead someone told them that they are bosses, not the servants...

Golden quote:

"It's like these people don't understand that email is also a form of communication. You can communicate everything via email, no need to do some phone conversations or even real world meetings. In my opinion, phone calls are for details. They cost a lot of time, and should be reserved for talking about details."

For me it's not only about business, it's about life in general. If it's not urgent ("my train leaves in 20 minutes, I need X") or important (something bad happened, etc.), I'd really much prefer to talk about it over e-mail or IM. I can handle 6 simultanous IM conversations while also reading some stuff, without significant loss of attention per conversation. But I get bored out of my mind when talking over the phone or VOIP about trivialities. The conversation eats, like, 10% of my cognitive resources, and the other 90% would like to not feel they're being wasted.

The problem with most sales people is that their salary is based on (often) pretty useless metrics such as the number of people they reached out to, the number of calls they made, the number of meetings they had, etc. So it's not really surprising that they start optimizing for these things by writing pointless e-mails and having nonsense meetings without thinking too much about the potential business value.

That said, I've had the luck to work with some really brilliant technical sales people in the past, and if they know what they're doing they can be a huge boon to your company.

It sounds to me like the "programmer" failed to pay attention to "the business guy." The programmer says "maybe you could first tell me roughly what this would be about" yet the business guy already said "we want to do a partnership with your company because of your nice product Z" The programmer said "phone calls are for details" while the business guy said "When do you have time for a meeting, so I can talk to you in detail"

So what exactly is the problem? This guy wants to set up a meeting to discuss the details of a business partnership. And the programmer blew him off because... because he wants to build his company?

While I agree that face-face meetings and phone calls are expensive time wise, I would argue that the initial meeting of a partnership or potential big client is probably more important. Sure you may want to try to screen out bad meetings from good meetings, but you don't do that with a "what do you want to talk about?" Maybe something more along the lines of "I'm sorry but I'm extremely busy right now trying to get the next release out. Perhaps if you could tell me some more highlights on the potential partnership I can see about possibly squeezing a meeting in there." You don't really want to be rude to potential partners and clients, well not if you want to build your business

Yes, you are a terrible business guy. You're letting your mindset (business guys = BS) and personal preferences (anti-phone) cloud your judgement. I'm a developer foremost but I've overcome my fear of the phone and understand that success requires meeting people around you halfway, on your terms.

Nothing in this exchange was BS. All they were trying to do was get you on the phone, and then you immediately jumped to aggression ("You already told me that."). Perhaps that's not your preferred medium, but it is theirs. And, for the record, there might be very legitimate reasons for them wanting to keep this initial conversation on the phone (ex. they're thinking of ditching a contract).

Of course, it's generally a bad idea to take a meeting without any agenda at all. But it's important to emphasize your cooperativeness something like this: "If you can send me a brief outline of the agenda, I'd be happy to take your call." It lets you get a better sense of what's going on without pushing them away.

Also, by irrationally acting out ("No, you didn't even fucking tell me what you want to talk about.") you're likely losing significant opportunities. If someone wanted to, say, acquire your company the first step would be a phone call exactly like this one to make sure you're not insane.

I don't see how that's any defense of the salesperson:

>All they were trying to do was get you on the phone, and then you immediately jumped to aggression ("You already told me that.").

They refused to answer a question or even acknowledge they were doing so. How is that not itself hostile, or at least disrespectful?

>And, for the record, there might be very legitimate reasons for them wanting to keep this initial conversation on the phone (ex. they're thinking of ditching a contract).

That doesn't mean you can convey nothing about what the conversation would be about; there has to be some level of abstraction at which you can talk.

>Of course, it's generally a bad idea to take a meeting without any agenda at all. But it's important to emphasize your cooperativeness something like this: "If you can send me a brief outline of the agenda, I'd be happy to take your call." It lets you get a better sense of what's going on without pushing them away.

But he did that! He just didn't use some of the particular terms you used. If someone isn't going to answer "what is this about", why are they going to be any more forthcoming with a request for an outline of the agenda? They'll just reply, "oh, the agenda is to talk about an opportunity for your product...".

>If someone wanted to, say, acquire your company the first step would be a phone call exactly like this one to make sure you're not insane.

They want to buy a venture in which the leader drops everything to take any random call from someone with no idea of the purpose? Sure, it works to rule out potential acquisitions...

(Semi) 'Business' person here, mainly working on things that interact with both technology and physical production.

On making contact, usually via email (with exception of self face-to-face introductions) I'd suggest a telephone call or face-to-face meet in an environment the other person is comfortable with (which may involve a drive or flight at my expense). Let them make the call.

The key is that I'm usually interested in something the other party does, rather than a specific product, and that breeds long term understanding and agreement, rather than developing a silo over either product or person. This seems aligned to the motivation of a lot of seed and VC funding.

I hugely encourage all on HN to listen / read about DiSC which I've found hugely useful interacting with different types of people. Two resources: Wikipedia - Background [1] Manager Tools - Explanatory Podcasts [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment [2] http://www.manager-tools.com/disc-model-summary

Frustrating article to read. Take the freaking call already. The act of taking a call does not commit you to anything, and gives you options on all the potential opportunities they want to discuss.

If they're contacting you, the onus is on them to explain what they want, and you simply have to listen. If at any point you think "Holy crap - this contract could quadruple my sales", that's an option on a great opportunity, and all you had to do was sit there and listen.

Alternatively, if you decide "This seems like a waste of time" either in the first, second or any number of calls in, you can politely excuse yourself from the conversation.

The attitude of "I'm a programmer who cannot process bullshit sales talk such as phone calls" is also destructive to all of the potential relationships you could have formed throughout the life of your business.

If you're allergic to any kind of phone call, you're going to lose a huge amount of sales and opportunities. That's how people communicate in business contexts - especially people who don't know each other.

Everyone is busy. It might take one hour and 1,000 words to compose an email that will accurately cover the proposal and obvious concerns and objections. This could be handled a lot faster (for both parties) on a phone call, because conversations can branch rapidly.

So if someone is talking about a mutually beneficial relationship (partnership or customer), it's not really fair to expect them to draft a giant customized pitch email. And let's be honest, does anyone really want to read a giant pitch email??

Well why not just send a short email? Because many good ideas sound bad at first mention--or at least, have obvious potential objections. Paul Graham has written about this extensively. A conversation is the fastest and most effective way to explore an idea quickly to see if it has merit.

If you're a programmer, it's not worth it. But if you're a programmer running a business, it might be. If nothing else it may be a data point to help evaluate product to market fit.

I would have previously sided with the programmer as yes, email is more efficient and you can explain things in detail, but since starting a job where I'm involved in product demos for sales people, I am getting an understanding of the importance of phone calls and face to face.

It is much easier for them to develop a rapport with you if they can talk about the weekend or to joke in a way that they might not be able to put into writing. It is also much easier to ask "dumb" questions on the phone to clear up misunderstandings than to put potentially embarrassing questions in email.

They are not just buying your product, they are making a decision inside their organisation which could come back to bite them, so they want to have a chat and get to know you to make sure that they are going to be ok. They are the ones taking the responsibility for your product in their organisation so damn straight you talk to them and get to know them.

Also, if you're somebody like me, who has poor auditory memory but fantastic visual memory, a phone call is very ineffective. In one ear, out the other.

I've also worked with a programmer who was completely deaf; obviously he preferred to use IM or email over phones...

Talking to someone on the phone is needed.

If you're uncomfortable talk through skype/use a headset. Holding the thing to your ear is really around 50% of the pain of talking on the phone.

And remember, it's your time to make your demands as well. And if the customer has X requests, and needs A, B, C, this is part of the cost they're paying as well.

"Yes, the price listed on the website is X per month, but since you need this it's going to be Y". Believe me, unless Y >> X they'll not even think about accepting your new price (although they might haggle a bit).

The most important part about building a product is actually selling it, not building features that you are unsure people are using. Just because you aren't comfortable talking on the phone and believe your time is more valuable then someone who is actually willing to pay you money for your project shows how you're headed in the wrong direction. You need to refocus your mindset away from business people vs. programmers, and more towards how if you want to be successful selling a product then you need to listen to your customers.

Why face to face?

1. So they can read your reaction while they are talking and see if anything they said resonates, needs explanation, or requires adjustment. The result would be an agreement from you. It works well for negotiations, design discussions and sales.

2. Because the information may be privileged and/or sensitive and/or offensive if put in written form.

3. Because a management book tells them to get "face time"

4. Because email is just slow / not checked often.

5. Because they need a timely answer or have to juggle between multiple people.

You forgot:

6. Because this doesn't leave the interlocutor time (as in hours, days) to ponder and reflect carefully.

Email is my favorite way of communicating because it's how I can think carefully.

I like the independence achieved here, down to not having to deal with people with conflicting communication styles.

Scrolling through HN has made me think about this often myself. Very nice article.

Calling a meeting without a previously published agenda is a power play. If there's a position of power, it's a microaggression, because no-agenda meetings often involve very bad news. If there's no position of power, it's an assertion of status (I'm so important that you'll take time out of your day "just to chat".) And the OP has the power, in this case, so he's pushing back against the bullshit and refusing the no-agenda meeting.

I'm going to be the ambassador for the programmer tribe here.

We don't hate "business guys" and we don't "just want to code, not wanting to be part of the business". Those stereotypes are untrue.

We don't want to be part of the business as a subordinate. If you mentor us in the bigger picture, most of us like that. If we're protege to the CEO, damn right we're going to do a good job. If you treat us as fire-and-forget adjunct capacity, we get grumpy and do a shitty job. There are a few programmers who really want to be in the ivory tower (maybe 5%) but most would be happy to work for the business, as an equal/protege, and built out another useful skill set.

Second, we don't actually hate all business guys. Their roles are really important. (Well, some of them.) We hate the attitude and the undeserved higher status they seem to get.

For example, shitty programmers get fired (without severance) while shitty business guys get to keep $250k+ salaries; if they fail, they get to move around 2 or 3 times and, if they don't work out anywhere, they still get 3-6 months of severance. Second, if you compare pay to intellectual firepower, programmers are underpaid relative to business people by about a factor of 3. (Someone who has the firepower to make $150k as a software engineer is smarter than most non-technical VPs, who make $500k including stock options.)

Our issue is with the inequity and the attitude. Good business people are awesome. They're just (sadly) rare and hard to find. Part of that is "our" fault as engineers; we're not great judges of character.

One day business guys will be a dying breed and companies will be run by programmers only. And after that... singularity.

There is nothing worse than being in a relationship where you do all the work, give it to someone else, and they reap all the rewards. This happens, time and again - not just in our industry, but in the broader world at large as well. In some cases it called "abuse", in other cases its "just normal business behaviour".

But I've started to notice more and more that there are big divides between "good developers" and "business people" and that these big divides are, fundamentally, prejudiced. "He is a tech guy, he doesn't 'do' business", or "that person is a business 'type', they don't 'do' tech" = prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry, plain and simple. It works both ways - "we tech people" do it, and "so do they".

Its got to stop. In fact the only time something positive ever gets done in society is when this prejudice is actively thwarted from taking over the social conditions in which one is working.

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