I was having lunch with a couple coworkers recently when the topic of our newest G-series firewalls was brought up. Of course, as engineers, our favorite topic is performance. I asked if anyone had gotten their hands on one to test for themselves yet. I expected everyone to say no; they weren't even on the official price list yet. One of our group piped up and said he'd had one for three days and had already 'broken' it four times. There was a huge smile on his face as he detailed the various tests he'd run on it, how it fared, and what he like and didn't like about the newest hardware. The excitement that was in his voice, in his gestures, and in his expressions was like the proverbial kid in a candy store. I don't think you could have given him a better toy to play with. I fully expected that when he got home, after driving several hours, he was going right back into his lab to spend more time putting it through its paces well into the night.
There is a certain something that drives sales engineers, regardless of industry. Its almost like every new product, every new release, every new revision, is a new toy to be played with an explored. Even when we don't get actual hands-on time, we still tend to pour over the details in the datasheets and imagine how they could be used. It is the creative side of our profession. I don't think a lot of people consider engineers, especially SEs, as being 'creative types' but we very much are. Being innately curious is inexorably tied to being very good designers and architects; creators.
In the movie
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, the protagonist who becomes famous in England in the late 1800s for his anthropomorphic paintings of house cats is quoted as saying,
"When it comes to drawing, there's only one rule you ever need to teach. It's to look". Engineers, for the most part, are very good at looking: seeing the details in things. It goes beyond innate curiosity, its almost an obsession. Interestingly, and completely coincidentally, cats also are well known for being particularly curious, just ask
youtube. Anyway...
Can you be a great SE without innate product curiosity? In my opinion, no. You may have everything else, all the soft skills and all the technical capacity, but without this special kind of obsessive curiosity you lack that certain excitement that customers resonate with. There is a joy in life, a joie de vivre, that innately curious engineers carry into meetings and on calls. Its almost like they're bursting to tell someone about some new feature, integration, or performance benchmark. And often its not because they're trying to get the customer to buy it (though that would be nice), but simply because its 'cool'. That personal excitement gets customers excited. Without ever expressing it directly, customers sense that something special is happening and they want to be a part of it.
Identifying this soft skill in prospective SEs is surprisingly simple. Ask them a question about some recent project they worked on, then, watch their eyes. Do they light up with excitement? Can you almost see them reliving, right in front of you, the conversations, the designs, and how the parts and pieces came together? Are they excited about what they worked on? Or are they going through the motions? Does it seem like old hat? Are you waiting for them to yawn? Are you suppressing a yawn? People, as a general rule like to talk about themselves. Good SEs, as a general rule, like to talk about their projects. Great SEs will make you want to talk about their projects just by spending time around them. The energy and excitement is infectious. If the SEs you're interviewing don't make you more excited, it's time to get the recruiter to find a fresh batch of candidates.
