One thing has always puzzled me about the technology industry.
It is not the obsession with new frameworks. It is not the endless debate about programming languages. It is the quiet hierarchy that many of us create between technical work and sales.
Spend enough time around engineers and you will eventually hear some version of it. Sales people “just talk.” Engineers “build real things.” Intelligence is measured by how difficult the code is, not by how difficult the conversation is.
I work in data science. By every conventional definition inside technology, my role sits on the more technical side of the spectrum. That is probably why this pattern became visible. The closer you stand to something, the easier it is to mistake it for reality.
The assumption is simple. Technical work demands mathematics, algorithms, systems thinking, and years of study. Sales, on the other hand, is reduced to communication, confidence, and persuasion. One is seen as intellectual work. The other is often treated as personality.
But software companies keep telling a different story.
A product that nobody buys is not a successful product.
A brilliant model that nobody trusts is not a successful model.
A platform that solves the wrong customer’s problem is not a successful platform.
Somewhere between writing the code and changing someone’s workflow, another kind of expertise takes over.
It is easy to underestimate that expertise because most of us cannot see it.
Engineers admire code because code is visible to engineers. We can read it, critique it, optimize it, and compare it. Sales conversations disappear the moment they end. The objections that were handled, the trust that was built, the timing of a question, the decision to remain silent instead of speaking—none of these leave a Git commit behind.
Perhaps that is why they are often mistaken for something easy.
There is another reason, I think.
People naturally assign more value to the skills they spent years acquiring.
A machine learning engineer sees mathematical intuition.
A distributed systems engineer sees architectural thinking.
A designer sees visual judgment.
A salesperson sees human behavior.
Each profession develops an ability that becomes almost invisible to itself. Once a skill becomes natural, it is tempting to believe that other skills must be easier.
They rarely are.
The irony is that technology rewards collaboration more than superiority.
The engineer who understands customers writes better software.
The salesperson who understands technology builds more credibility.
The product manager who understands both often becomes the bridge between them.
Every role borrows from another.
The best engineers I have met were curious about people.
The best sales professionals I have met were curious about systems.
Neither curiosity belonged exclusively to one profession.
Perhaps the hierarchy exists because technical ability is easier to measure. We can count latency, benchmark models, compare algorithms, and review code. Human judgment is harder to place inside a dashboard. Yet businesses have always depended on both. One creates value. The other helps that value reach someone who needs it.
Maybe intelligence is not a single ladder with engineering at the top and sales somewhere below.
Maybe it is a landscape.
Some people become remarkably good at understanding machines.
Some become remarkably good at understanding people.
Modern companies fail when they ignore either.