It depends very much from company to country and so forth, but I've worked in the U.S. for over a decade now across both massive and tiny companies and the best way I can put it is that if your engineering team can fairly neatly fit into the different engineer stereotypes that are in the show Silicon Valley or the IT Crowd at least 80% of the time, you probably have selected for a rather narrow spectrum of people.
There are a great deal of very intelligent people that cross so many different ranges across humanity and IT / software seems to select for just a small slice of the possibilities and the richness that exists. Even among companies you are biased for certain personality traits (big companies tend to attract those that are less risk averse or with children due to the 9-to-5 culture as stereotype and vice versa with smaller companies).
The European immigrants I worked with certainly had a different sense of all sorts of things as well as the Middle Eastern and African immigrants. But gosh do they all share some strange similarities despite all these differences.
Things do get rather boring potentially outside the usual nerd crowds. For example, I really don't care about following competitive sports - this is a huge, huge social handicap in the U.S. even among women in many regions. This becomes even more pervasive among sales folks for sure - I think most sales folks that are pretty good performers are actually pretty darn.... moderate if we tried to "average" personalities. It's clear among managers that engineers tend to be a rather specific group of people that doesn't necessarily need to be accounted for among other types of organizations.
Another recent convert from Dev to Sale Engineer here...
The thing about bonding over sports is one of the first major differences outside the tech social circle.
I would agree on the statement that it is an advantage to be following sports. But a recent trend in companies is a more diverse hiring pool because decision makers are become more diverse as well.
I also think the end goal of bonding over sports is being relatable and likable. If you have other traits that compensate for lack of sports knowledge, you can still be successful.
> Things do get rather boring potentially outside the usual nerd crowds
Yeah that seems to be the case - or at least the challenges are on a different level.
The thing about competitive sports: I've found a good way to handle it is to be very firm and confident about not being interested in it at all, thankyouverymuch. Just brush it off in a non-awkward, humorous way.
Here's the thing, you might be able to side-step the issue, but when your competition's sales guys chat about the NCAA finals hopefuls, team composition, coach histories, and certain rivalries and you can only comment a little bit at the dinner after your demos, the customer will remember more levity and just plain fun about the other guy than you when it comes to the emotional side of "which company has reps I will have more rapport with?" Think of it similar to dating and trying to impress a few girls - without a sense of humor you are at an immediate disadvantage. This is what most engineers outside sales would think of that golf course meeting or something, but it's all about establishing something more than just a one-time transaction relationship - it's going to continue, so it's not far off from the dynamics of dating aside sexual part. But consider for a moment that everyone is on even footing in a dating pool - the one that is most memorable and associated with good feelings where you let yourself be vulnerable will win.
Enterprise sales is complex but still fundamentally rather emotional among the decision-makers. The kinds of companies that buy $10MM of software in a year from one vendor are only so many, so there tends to be reputations that follow people, and many sales persons simply follow along a few friends that are executives at organizations across their careers and sell whatever software they're peddling every time they switch companies.
Yes that is of course very true. Sports is a helpful topic (just like the weather), but there are so many other things to talk about, and ways to be a memorable and entertaining business partner.
My experience is that sales people are not actually liked all that much, as their efforts to socialize sometimes seem forced and creepy. You can turn that into your advantage.
I simply am genuine in that I do like to talk about all sorts of things by nature - sports included, but because I'm not the most versed in sports history and just don't follow (I care about baseball and basketball about as much as I do Star Wars and Star Trek, so I have to pick carefully). However, I've managed to learn while giving a bit of an ego boost to people I meet just asking for their opinions on stuff (I do care, I'm just looking for data constantly, especially ones combed through by SMEs of any sort). Ask some sports nut to explain a few simple things and they'll react a bit like someone that humbly asks a developer "So I don't know much but could you explain REST to me?" Nothing wrong with enjoying some company that might be a lead, it usually doesn't hurt, so why not have a good time and possibly lead to a ton of money?
There are a great deal of very intelligent people that cross so many different ranges across humanity and IT / software seems to select for just a small slice of the possibilities and the richness that exists. Even among companies you are biased for certain personality traits (big companies tend to attract those that are less risk averse or with children due to the 9-to-5 culture as stereotype and vice versa with smaller companies).
The European immigrants I worked with certainly had a different sense of all sorts of things as well as the Middle Eastern and African immigrants. But gosh do they all share some strange similarities despite all these differences.
Things do get rather boring potentially outside the usual nerd crowds. For example, I really don't care about following competitive sports - this is a huge, huge social handicap in the U.S. even among women in many regions. This becomes even more pervasive among sales folks for sure - I think most sales folks that are pretty good performers are actually pretty darn.... moderate if we tried to "average" personalities. It's clear among managers that engineers tend to be a rather specific group of people that doesn't necessarily need to be accounted for among other types of organizations.