The assumption that the salesperson did not have 'technical competence' because they didn't know some arcane bit about the system is wrong.

The actions of OP were a 'Red Flag' not a 'Recruiting Signal'.

I'll grant you that possibly there were zero consequences here, just a little extra sweat on the sales person's back, and OP or my interpretation have hyperboled the effects a little.

If you dump clueless suits with expensive gear and hackers in the same environment the outcome is somewhat predictable.

So either you accept the risks, staff your booths with competent people or you stay away from tradeshows. What point is there to have a salesperson there who does not understand what they are selling? At a minimum you'd have to study up on the device to be able to demonstrate its capabilities. If you can't do that then you have no place in that booth.

The fact that apparently even Bill Gates would mess with the systems at tradeshows (in much the same way, in fact) speaks volumes. This kind of behavior would have been very much expected in the tradeshow environment of the 80's.

In fact, if you went home afterwards and your gear still worked and wasn't stolen (either by the visitors or the nightwatch) that counted as a win.

"If you dump clueless suits with expensive gear and hackers in the same environment the outcome is somewhat predictable"

This is essentially bigotry, endemic among arrogant groups of people with limited social skills, narrow understanding (and therefore respect for) subjects beyond their purview, but who might have developed some strength of understanding in their niche.

"What point is there to have a salesperson there who does not understand what they are selling?"

It's ridiculous to assume that a salesperson might have to have the same level of knowledge that an Engineer may have, and betrays a total lack of understanding of how organizations work, levels of expertise required.

Imagine if Engineers were required to have the knowledge and skills to have to actually 'sell' the devices they make, after all, why shouldn't they be expected to know how to 'have a conversation' and 'collect money'? My god.

That's a pretty high horse you're on. Again, I've been in the salesperson's position, and it would have gotten no more than a laugh and a powercycle out of me, and probably a conversation with where he found out so much about a system that I was supposed to know like the back of my hand.

You don't demonstrate spectrum analyzers, especially programmable ones if you don't know how to use them in anger.

I went to a music fair a while ago (ok, a long while ago meanwhile) to watch some gear demonstrated, the people manning the booths were musicians, and they were competent. That's the sort of interaction you strive for when you pick the people to run a booth at a tradeshow.

Otherwise the answer to every question about the device is going to end up with 'I don't know'. And that's potentially a lost sale right there.

what says the sales person wasn't competenz? They are targeting EEs and are trying to show how to make productive use of the device when dealing with electronics. Sure, you can do more with the device and use it like a free programmable comouter, however that is not the purpose. The sales petson could have been strong in using it to analyse a broken curcuit.

Going deep on an aspect of the datasheet abd abusing it doesn't mean one understands a thing on the device (in its proper use)

Mostly the fact that they were panicking before they even tried the basics, such as a restart.

Any competent user of that particular spectrum analyzer would have tried that first.

If you (you login name here changed though) would have written that powercycle fixed it, comments would probably have been different. Narration gave the impression you bricked it for good/skillset of the salesperson.

I think you have your parties muddled up here.