What You Do Is Who You Are: An expert guide to building your company’s culture

by Ben Horowitz

When you ask an engineer a question, her instinct is to answer it with great precision. When you ask a salesperson a question, she’ll try to figure out the question behind the question. If a customer asks, “Do you have feature X?” a good engineer will answer yes or no. A good salesperson will almost never answer that way. She will ask herself, “Why are they asking about that feature? Which competitor has that feature? Hmm, then they must be in the account trying to take my deal. I need more information.” So she’ll reply with something like, “Why do you think feature X is important?” Having their questions answered with questions drives engineers insane. They want answers fast, so they can get back to work. But if they hope to see their product succeed—if they want great salespeople to go sell it, so they can keep working for a company that’s still in business—they need to be able to tolerate that cultural difference.