Knowing your limits is no casual thing.

Because they interpret, manipulate and are acclimated to numbers, many engineers fancy themselves superior to the rest. The “rest” are lumped into the catchall contemptuous categories of “salesmen” or worse, “accountants.” No room for improvisation; a certain analytical mindset likes it that way. Stay out of sales as a career option.

Pity those same engineers don’t look up more from their algorithms, develop a firm handshake, maintain eye contact, read the room, and discern clients’ actual intent. Supply doesn’t ensure demand; sometimes you must stir it up in English rather than second derivatives. A skill largely born, not bred. That’s also why there will always be a need for good sales folks; the best, most adventurous of whom are at ease technically, thus better equipped to know whereof they speak, and why, and make commitments on the spot, without appealing to the Mothership.

For context, consider this striking lesson from 2012.

Without prior warning, the summons came on a languid Friday morning. The kind going too well, where experience – maybe born of paranoia – says something is out there, waiting to happen. Those were the early days of casual Fridays, and that particular Friday we wore baseball jerseys at the office (It was Opening Day). The kind of Friday where you’re trying to wind down, but someone victimized by their own bad choices conspires to wind you up and trash your weekend.

“Mr. W would like to meet with you at our office at 11 a.m. We have an urgent requirement for flying probe testing we wish to discuss with you.”
It’s 10 a.m. They are five miles up the road. And a world away. No doubt not wearing baseball jerseys.

We go. Without hesitation. Never mind the jerseys. Ten years ago, we needed the business. You swallow your pride and make accommodations, hoping the gems outnumber the lemons.

Their VP of operations didn’t make accommodations. He was old school. Really old school. Cigarettes and coffee, and lots of both. He reeked of the former, and his twitchiness when we met belied veritable gallons of the latter. A face for radio. A bias for regimentation. Fifty going on 75. A metaphorical bugsplat, smashed head-on by the windshield of life. He was also a screamer, and not for our baseball team. Teamwork meant doing it his way, every day. The poster child for life as a conveyor belt of disappointments, and many low-bidder based decisions. A life of finding scapegoats. Yet he persisted in the same way, with the same business practices, because it was all he knew. Pity the cat on his front porch downrange from his foot after a bad workday. He had numerous bad workdays, and weeks, and years. I wonder to this day if he is still among the living.

Given this reputation, we knew we were in for theatrics when we met, one hour later, on that Opening Day Friday.

His conference room resembled more interrogation room than meeting place. A place to extract confessions rather than concessions. Blinky, dim, neglected fluorescent lighting. Partially broken stiff-backed plastic chairs scattered about the room. A chalkboard, not a white board, in front. A place of intentional neglect, and threats; forbidding in appearance. A theater for those to whom life is a hard slog, and for whom misery must be shared disproportionately with underlings. However one defines underlings. Did I say he was Old School?

He took it out on us, whatever “it” was.  A bitter guy. Like we were guilty of some unspoken original sin. Made us wait in the interrogation room for 30 minutes, while anticipation and tension ratcheted up. All eyes would focus on him when he entered the room. A common technique authoritarians use to emphasize who’s Boss.

He enters looking preoccupied, with not so much as a greeting or glint of recognition, and situates himself at the head of a long Putinesque conference table. We lock eyes. A nervous assistant shoves papers in front of him. He glances at them. Then he looks angry. We get down to business. You can feel the love.

“I understand from my assistant that your company performs flying probe programming and testing. We have a problem. Our own flying probe machine is down. It will remain down until a replacement part is installed. That part will take a month to arrive from Asia.”

He continues:

“We have another problem. Our regular flying probe programmer left last night on vacation. He will also be gone for a month. We have a backlog of test projects to get through, starting with the high-priority project we wish to discuss with you today. Beyond this immediate requirement, we will need ongoing flying probe support for the next 30 days, and possibly longer.”

I make a few mental calculations. It would be naïve to think he learned of his two problems the night before. Clearly, we weren’t his first option. Perhaps not his second or third either. So what brought him, and us, to this point? Perhaps a midnight epiphany? Perhaps his wife’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s nephew twice removed wasn’t available to moonlight for minimum wage and psychic income this time. Had all his other usual tricks deceived him? Was that why he was red-faced with anger, as if we were the cause? He’s not confessing his bad choices, and certainly not admitting weakness. He’s manipulating as he goes, playing defense with offense, barking demands, terrorizing his lieutenants (for obviously leading him to this unpleasant set of circumstances) for show. Like we should be taking notes and giving in. But giving in to what?

We soon learn. We become the agenda. So he uses the skills he knows and tries to grind us down, shifting blame for adverse consequences. That means ordering, not asking. It’s all he knows.

“Because of our own problems, we are late making a key shipment to a critical customer. You are going to help us make up some of that lost time and make that shipment by Monday.”

It is 11:50 a.m. on a Friday. He effectively just cancelled our weekend, without asking permission. With no purchase order. No data. No documentation. No board details. Nothing but demands. And possibly no notification to their customer about being late, leaving status requests unanswered in the hope they’ll just go away.  

A command like a regimental marching order snaps me out of my daydream.

“What is it you need in order to provide us with a quotation?”

We respond with the usual. ODB++ file. Gerber files. Schematic in searchable PDF. Bill of materials. The relevant fab and assembly drawings. Why doesn’t he already know this? He has his own machine.

“My assistant will email this information to you immediately after our meeting. When can we expect your quotation?”

This afternoon, including our best estimate of a delivery commitment.

“You don’t understand. We must have 50 tested boards completed and delivered to us by 8 a.m. Monday morning.”

On the contrary, we understand the difference between a request and a commitment. You have made a request. We have yet to see the details and are therefore reluctant to make a commitment.

What comes next is predictable. He pounds the table in front of him. I’m sure he reasons that if it works for underlings, it will work equally well for us.

“You will finish 50 boards by Monday at 8 a.m.”

We keep our cool. We ask if we return him a quote by 3 p.m. today, when will we receive a purchase order?

“If the price is right, you will have a purchase order by the end of the day. When can we have your delivery commitment?”

Tactical error by Mr. Intimidation. He revealed two chinks in his armor: He needs a good price – whatever that means – and he leaves open the possibility of negotiating the delivery. It was all for show.   

As if realizing his error, he reverts to form, and to his party line:

“We must have the project completed by Monday morning. Our customer expects this.”

We continue holding straight and level.

Assuming you give us the full set of data and documentation by 1 p.m., and boards by 5 p.m. today, you will have our delivery commitment by 3 p.m. today. If not, all bets are off, and you’ll most likely be looking at delivery from us by the middle to the end of next week.

This response makes him even angrier, as if he’s not used to responses other than “yes,” or “yes, sir.” He flushes through several shades of red, settling on magenta. But we don’t work for him, and he’s only talking to us because his four prior alternatives have failed, and we represent the fifth-best alternative, leaving him no choice, and apparently angrier at having no choice. Life’s hard sometimes. We want his business, but we won’t prostitute ourselves to get it. Life’s not that hard.

Except to him it is. He wants to make it harder and share the misery. He presses his waning advantage.

“Based on the description of the board we have provided you in this meeting, when do you think you can complete this project? It is vital that it be completed on Monday, no later.”

The word “vital” is almost bellowed. Like his bonus depended on high decibels.

Based on a minimal amount of information provided to us by you at this meeting, it is probable we can complete your project, with weekend work, by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. I don’t see that it is possible to finish by Monday.

More table pounding. The aides jump. What a joy it must be to work for this guy. Like working for a troll living under a bridge, experimenting with dynamite during commute hours. Always and everywhere on edge. Everyone needs a hobby.

“You must finish by 8 a.m. Monday. Anything later is unacceptable.”

Enough. He’s inserting capital letters into his speech. Time for both barrels.

What part of “we will not finish your job by 8 a.m. Monday” are you failing to understand?

When I say this, I’m three feet away from his face (it’s pre-Covid). I don’t embellish the words, but let them linger like needles, piercing his thoughts. He doesn’t flinch. But I don’t back down. In this situation, some would. I keep silent.

(This is the part in the movies where the dog barks, or the train whistle blows, or the saxophone plays, or the soundtrack from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly reverberates, heightening the mood).

We get the order. Guess we passed the screening test.

We delivered on Tuesday. We never learned if he was happy or not. He had already moved on to his next crisis. His company paid our bill.

Anybody can write code.  

Try selling under pressure some time. •

Robert Boguski is president of Datest Corp. (datest.com); rboguski@datest.com. His column runs bimonthly.

PCB West: The leading technical conference and exhibition for electronics engineers. Coming Oct. 4-7 to the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. pcbwest.com

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