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THE VIDEO SHELF · tech industry drama

Halt and Catch Fire - Sales Call [ "A16" Scene ]

A scene from the TV drama Halt and Catch Fire in which Gordon Clark meets Joe MacMillan, who is posing as an IBM salesman, on a sales call. It includes the dialogue about IBM being the safe choice and a marketing guru telling an engineer when to stop talking.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN commenters post it as a favorite scene about IBM's reputation and sales psychology.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
c102030
Topic
tech industry drama
Format
other
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
2
HN mentions in dataset
5
Recommendation years in dataset
2018–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Lee Pace's performance in that show is one of my all time favorites. It's incredibly hard to play a charismatic marketing guru because in some sense, you're not acting. In a given scene, the character might be trying to convince people around him of some …

    danielvaughn on Hacker News · 2026-02
    In Halt and Catch Fire: TV's Best Drama You've Probably Never Heard Of (2021)

  • Think you'll get a kick out of this scene from Halt and Catch Fire: [VIDEO] [0] [0] Sales call scene with Joe and Gordon in Halt and Catch Fire: Season 1 Episode 1 [1] [LINK]

    j1vms on Hacker News · 2018-10
    In IBM’s Old Playbook

  • This reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Halt and Catch Fire, when the marketing guru tells the sales engineer (in no uncertain terms) when to shut up: [VIDEO]

    danielvaughn on Hacker News · 2023-11
    In When to Shut Up: A Visual Guide (With Included Algorithm)

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.