>The great businesses and fortunes of the last 200 years of industry did not come from engineering or technical expertise, but rather from those few, adept individuals who were able to navigate the mysterious world of relationships.

I am not sure how you can say that, considering the dramatic technical advances over the same period. I mean, there is no way to experimentally show what is cause and what is effect, but to me, the idea that we had this incredible technical progress because a few guys figured out how to better socialize, rather than the other way around (what social and organizational progress we had was enabled and really, made almost inevitable by the incredible technology we developed.) We all have opinions, I guess. I disagree with yours.

>If you do not make a dozen friends in every crowded room and instinctively form lucrative relationships on a daily basis, then knowing someone who does is the most valuable asset to your professional goals.

Social skills are extremely context-dependent. The same attributes and actions that mean you are well liked at the sales meeting will get you the cold shoulder at a sufficiently technical conference.

I mean, I'm not saying a 'human interactions' specialist isn't useful... I'm just saying, it's not as generalizable as you think.

Really, a 'business guy' isn't necessarily a social specialist, either. I mean, a lot of what makes a professional a professional is the ability to grab as much of the surplus value in a deal as possible. Being a nice person with a sense of fairness can hold you back at that, sometimes.

A 'business guy' could also specialize in finding inefficiencies in the market.

It's interesting; I primarily sell virtual servers to people that are smarter than I am, people that generally identify as nerds. I seem to be okay at this. But, I go and try to sell bandwidth to co-lo customers? even at dramatically below market prices, I find I am not so good. See, in that case, you are usually selling to some middle manager. different people;

The really interesting thing isn't so much that I am bad at it; it's easy enough to hire a sales guy on commission, and like I said, my bandwidth prices are way below market, so there is plenty of room for commission. The really interesting thing is that even when I do that, and the sales guy closes the deal and I get the customer? they aren't happy with me.

I mean, your nerds? they like transparency. They like to see how the sausage is made; I mean, yeah, I have some serious problems; Nerds want to hear about those, and if the answer to "why are you doing it that way?" is "because I made a bad decision 2 years ago and the contract isn't up" or "because I haven't fixed it yet, I'm sorry. This thing, that thing and the other thing are ahead in the priority queue." - that's usually okay.

Your business people? they want the godaddy response. As little information as possible. short and to the point. They don't want to hear there is a bug in your router software. They don't want you to say "I might be wrong" when you give them something.

It's weird... almost all of my 'organic' customers seem to be pretty happy with me. (Not all of them. I do have problems, I do screw things up, and, well, some people just have high expectations. But the vast majority seem to be pretty happy.) But the customers I've gotten through sales people, through professionals? It's like they are expecting a very different personality on the other side of the phone line. The social skills that serve me well with the first group actively hurt me with the second.