Skip to content
HomeVideos
AllLongsCategoriesPlaylists
BooksBlogsPodcasts
HistoryListsWatch laterLiked videosFollowing

The videos, books, blogs and podcasts Hacker News keeps recommending, all in one place.

VideosBooksBlogsPodcastsAboutPrivacySettings

Data from Hacker News, HackerTube, HackerBooks, HackerBlogs and Open Library. Credits · Not affiliated with Y Combinator.

HomeVideosBooksBlogsPodcasts
Ctrl K

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

    c102030

    2 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2018–2026

    YouTube

    3:56 · 48K views · Jun 9, 2014

    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.

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

    Arts, Comedy, Music & FilmFilm & TV clipsHistory of computing
    1. 3:03
      Moneyball - Firing peopleThe BigTime Group1.2M views • 9 years ago
    2. 9:49
      Margin Call (2011) - Senior Partners Emergency Meeting [HD 1080p] (Re-Upload / Audio Fixed)Extractor17M views • 9 years ago
    3. 3:38
      Margin Call (5/9) Movie CLIP - A Bridge (2011) HDMovieclips1.9M views • 12 years ago
    4. 2:43
      Margin Call (3/9) Movie CLIP - The Music Stops (2011) HDMovieclips1.4M views • 12 years ago
    5. 7:23
      Alec Baldwin - Best performanceDavid Lukas4.6M views • 20 years ago
    6. 3:42
      Margin Call (9/9) Movie CLIP - It's Just Money (2011) HDMovieclips5.7M views • 12 years ago
    7. 19:43
      U.S. NAVY BASIC MECHANISMS OF FIRE CONTROL COMPUTERS MECHANICAL COMPUTER INSTRUCTIONAL FILM 27794PeriscopeFilm225K views • 8 years ago
    8. 8:34
      Eric Dale is fired – Margin Call (2011)Weyland2.5M views • 7 years ago
    9. 2:09
      Margin Call Best Quote by Will Emersonchrislaucn3.1M views • 14 years ago
    10. 4:31
      Agent Smith InterrogationBrian Rosnick3.2M views • 13 years ago
    11. 2:36
      Pirates of Silicon Valley "You don't get it Steve, that doesn't matter"Craig Bickerstaff225K views • 9 years ago
    12. 1:24:13
      Micro Men - 720p (2009)gimpymoo461K views • 13 years ago
    13. 4:16
      Scene from Moneyball - What is the problem?Adam Staab6.5M views • 12 years ago
    14. 0:05
      Danger, Will Robinson!Tom Crimmins1.2M views • 14 years ago
    15. 1:35
      The Wire Season 1 - McNuggetsWill Ambrosini236K views • 19 years ago
    16. 49:22
      James Burke Connections, Ep. 1 "The Trigger Effect"DRS_Education765K views • 7 years ago
    17. 2:24
      Fargo (1996) - TruCoat Scene (2/12) | MovieclipsMovieclips1.1M views • 11 years ago
    18. 1:34
      A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest MovieIBM28M views • 13 years ago
    19. 4:06
      That scene from War GamesGreg Granito2.3M views • 19 years ago
    20. 0:58
      The Graduate "One Word: Plastics"Lance Ehlers719K views • 18 years ago

    5 comments from Hacker News

    1. @danielvaughnFeb 2026· in “Halt and Catch Fire: TV's Best Drama You've Probably Never Heard Of (2021)”

      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 crazy idea, but if he hasn't convinced you, the viewer, then the entire illusion falls apart. So he really has to do in real life what he's pretending to do on screen. edit - a great example and one of my favorite scenes from the show: this video

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    2. @j1vmsOct 2018· in “IBM’s Old Playbook”

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

      RecommendsView on HN
    3. @danielvaughnNov 2023· in “When to Shut Up: A Visual Guide (With Included Algorithm)”

      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: this video

      RecommendsView on HN
    4. @jyunwaiJan 2024· in “Google lays off Bay Area workers, closes Mtn View child care center”

      The term did come back a bit in 2014 with the great television series "Halt and Catch Fire." The metonymy of "Big Blue" was regularly used in the series (especially in the pilot) to describe IBM as a huge entity that a forcefully-made new division of a smaller company was competing against, to develop a personal computer in the 1980s. This scene in the pilot about a salesman trying to convince another company's executives to choose his products over IBM's describes the feeling behind the term very well: this video

      CitesView on HN
    5. @udev4096Jul 2024· in “The New Internet”

      > You know what, nobody ever got fired for buying AWS. > That’s an IBM analogy. Wow, this dialogue comes in the first episode of halt and catch fire. I didn't know this was a real thing Here's the clip at 1.51 minutes, if anyone's interested: this video

      CitesView on HN