I work with People Who Ask Why and People Who Ask How Much

I am a student interested in researching computer science, its intersection with mathematics, and possibly something completely different in the future. I am the son of an amazing mother who is also an entrepreneur, teacher, mentor and infinitely more. I am the brother of two businessmen who know how to deal with people, earn a lot of money, and think like the kind of entrepreneurs and CEOs you read about.

I work with Professors at IISc, colleagues interested in research and development, from pure mathematics to applying current technology for advanced public use case too. I work with my family to help them up-tech their business in their website and some great ideas of using AI for their company.

I see both their worlds. From people who care about why 1+1=2, to people who care about how 1+1=2 can change their productivity. For someone outside theory, the depth of the science might not be visible, and that's okay. For a scientist, how you would sell that as a product might not be visible, and that's okay too.

I've sat in both rooms. And I've realized the difference between these people isn't what they do. It's what they're optimizing for. I would like to talk out how both sides of what I have seen think.

How a Researcher Thinks

Based on my little experience working with Professors, I have seen them work in a way that truly cares about what is being made and the why behind every single decision. They are curious. They are scientists. For any feature of a system designed, present or being developed, they care about why it is that way, whether there are better ways to optimize for speed, for energy, for correctness. They are not satisfied with "it works." They want to know why it works, and whether it could work better.

A researcher is a person who has an idea to experiment on, so that they can solve a problem.

This means they will work on that idea, trying to prove it correct or wrong. They hypothesize, test, fix from observations, and redo. Every design choice has to have a reason. Every assumption has to be checked. There is no skipping steps, because skipping a step means standing on ground you haven't verified yet. (By the way, the problem could just be satisfying curiosity).

How a Businessman Thinks

Explaining a businessman is honestly one of the hardest tasks for me, because there are so many different kinds. From tech CEOs to Vada Pao sellers. Everyone thinks and operates differently. Some care deeply about what goes into the Vada Pao, some care about selling it for ₹20 before the competitor across the street does, and some don't care about the Vada Pao at all, just the margin. That last one is usually when investors enter the picture.

A businessman is a person who has a product to sell, so that they can solve a problem.

This means the product has to work, or the experience has to feel good, or both, or at least something has to make the customer come back. A businessman who is trying to create a user experience, sell products, and earn money will also create, test, fix from feedback, and redo. They care about every product sold, and why that product is designed the way it is, not because they want to understand it, but because understanding it helps them sell it better. A businessman doesn't need to know why the bridge holds, he needs to know if people will cross it.

The Resemblance

Read those two again. Here is something that surprised me when I started seeing it. Both of them are doing structurally the same thing.

They both start with a problem. They both form an idea, a hypothesis, a product, a plan. They both test it, fail at it, learn from it, and redo it. They both need to convince someone else that their work matters, one writes a research paper, the other writes a business plan. They both run out of time and money. They both carry the anxiety of "what if this doesn't work." The loop is identical, what breaks the symmetry is what they consider a win.

The work looks the same, doesn’t it? What differs is what they consider a valid answer. For the researcher, the answer has to be true. For the businessman, the answer has to sell. And that one difference, in what counts as a good result, is where everything else diverges.

“A researcher optimizes for truth. A businessman optimizes for value perceived by the customer.”

The Optimization Target

Let me give you a small example from my own life. My brother wanted to update the product descriptions on his business website. I suggested we build a simple Excel sheet, map each product to its description, write a script, update everything cleanly, efficiently, and in a way that could be reused later. He said create an AI tool to rewrite the descriptions one by one, directly on the website.

I was not wrong. He was not wrong. We were playing different games with different scoreboards.

I was thinking about reproducibility, energy efficiency(knock knock, AI is costly for earth!), clean systems. He was thinking about the customer opening that webpage tomorrow and his own experience getting the work done easily. His scoreboard said, does the page look good and how is the user experience in changing it? Mine said, is this the right way to do it?

This is not a new tension. In product thinking, there is something called the "principle of good enough", the idea that a product which solves the user's problem now is often better than a theoretically perfect solution that arrives late. It is not laziness. It is a legitimate worldview. It just has a completely different optimization target than mine did.

I understood the way he thought, thinking in his shoes instead of creating a difference in point of view. And understanding the point of view of listener and WHAT HE WANTS is important.

The WHY Behind the WHY

When I sit with my Professor, I cannot move forward until I understand why something is true. Not just that it works, but why and what if. Every design choice, every line of reasoning, every assumption hiding underneath an assumption. There is a real discomfort in not knowing. It feels like standing on ground you haven't checked yet.

When I sit with my brother or see any other businessman with similar needs, he doesn't need the foundation. He assumes the foundation from you. And honestly, for what he is building, he is right. His customers don't care why the algorithm behind the recommendation works. They care if they found what they were looking for and it works.

The researcher is uncomfortable when they don't know why something is true. The businessman is uncomfortable when something isn't moving. These are two completely different internal alarm systems. Neither is broken. They are just calibrated for different games.

What I've slowly realized is that I've trained myself to be uncomfortable in both places. I cannot fully ignore the why, and I cannot fully ignore whether it's moving. I speak both languages. I'm fluent in neither.

The Investor: A Third Force

I want to say something about investors, because I think they deserve their own category and most people don't separate them from businessmen.

A businessman who built something cares about it in a way that starts, over time, to resemble a researcher's attention. A founder who started from a problem they personally felt, they care about the product. They care about the small details. They care about what goes into the Vada Pao.

Then an investor enters. And the optimization target shifts again.

An investor's scoreboard is the purest form of outcome-first thinking: return. Not truth, not even customer experience, only return. When an investor comes in, the pressure to move, to grow, to show numbers, can override the care that the founder had built into the product. The founder still wants to ask why. The investor wants to ask how much and by when.

I am not saying investors are villains. I am saying they are playing a different game entirely, and when that game overrides the founder's game, something in the product quietly changes. Sometimes for better. Often not.

It Is Not the Occupation. It Is the Mindset.

I used to think about this as researchers on one side, businessmen on the other. But that's too clean. There are businessmen who obsess over why their product works the way it does, they just call it "product vision" instead of research. There are researchers who couldn't care less about rigor and just want the result. The occupation is not the point.

The point is where your discomfort lives. What keeps you up at night, the unsolved why, or the unmoving what.

I've seen professors online who think like investors. I've seen businessmen on the internet who think like researchers. I've been, in the same day, both sitting with a proof in the morning and a product decision in the evening, feeling the gear shift between them.

Both are trying to solve a problem. Both work hard for their results. Both care about how their idea or product is doing in the world. Both want money to live their life. The sameness is real.

The Communication Gap

Let me be honest about something nobody really says out loud.

When I hear a business person talking about "leveraging AI for scalable solutions", I cringe a little. Not because they are wrong, but because the words are empty. There is no substance under them. No understanding of what the AI is actually doing, why it works, what its limits are. It sounds like someone read a headline and started a sentence. Scientists and researchers hear this and quietly switch off. Sometimes not so quietly. That probably comes across as arrogance. I understand why.

And from the other side, I get it too. Business people look at researchers or software engineers see someone who has spent six months proving something that "everyone already knew," refusing to ship anything until every edge case is handled, talking in a language that sounds deliberately designed to exclude people. That reads as a superiority complex. Sometimes it genuinely is one.

Both frustrations are real. Both are also, if I'm being honest, a little unfair. Businessmen have a zoomed out view which the other party need to grasp to understand what they are saying, and scientists & engineers might have a zoomed in and hearing a zoomed out view might feel cringe or irritating.

The researcher or engineer is not yapping. They are being precise, because in their world imprecision costs you the whole argument. The businessman is not being shallow. They are moving fast, because in their world slowing down costs you the market. They are both doing exactly what their world rewards them for. The problem is they are doing it at each other.

The thing I have found that actually works, and this is not a grand insight and it is works for me, is to listen first and then speak in their language as much as you are able to. Dumbing too much down may hit on their ego, but it is better than losing their focus in conversation. You will not always get it right. Sometimes you will use the wrong word and lose the room. But the attempt itself genuinely trying to meet someone where they think changes the conversation more than any argument ever will.

If your conversation is actually two sided and understanding, great. Otherwise I feel that patience, controlling your frustration, that “ugh” sign on the person when controlled and just Listening to the other person will help a lot. Its not easy communicating one side if the other person doesn’t have the same attitude, atleast save yourself.

How to shake both of their hands.

Learning to hold both questions without letting one kill the other is the hardest and most interesting thing I'm trying to figure out.

I feel everyone needs to learn how to work with the other side, at least a little. A scientist who cannot explain their work to a businessperson will frustrate every company they join. A businessman who never asks why will eventually sell something hollow. You don't have to become the other person. But you have to know how to shake their hand, and mean it.

Find where you fit. Preferably before you've spent a good chunk of your life in the wrong room.

As an aspiring scientist, a young developer, and someone who grew up inside a business family, I try to apply what I learn from one world to the other. It is a handful. Especially explaining theoretical details to someone who just wants the product shipped. But that friction, I think, is the point. That's where the interesting work lives.

I don't know yet which room I belong in. But I've stopped thinking that's a problem rather a skill I want to learn.

With the little experience I have, I hope I've managed to say something useful, mostly to myself, reading this later.

Forgive me for any mistakes in the article, I am yet very inexperienced in this area. I hope I could express my thoughts.