[michaelt]

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.

[jacquesm]

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.

[relix]

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.

[jacquesm]

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.

[jollybean]

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'.

[relix]

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.

[jacquesm]

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.

[jollybean]

"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.

[johannes1234321]

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)

[andi999]

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.

[jacquesm]

I think you have your parties muddled up here.

[caeril]

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.

[relix]

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