Believe it or not, there are still people out there that think that a technology company is really about two types of people: engineers and sales people. People to write the software, and people to go sell it. Everyone else is overhead and at best a necessary evil.
Ironically the combination of sales people and engineers (even good sales and good engineers) is probably one of the surest paths to mediocrity or worse. It almost always leads to specials, wasted release cycles, weak products, frustrated engineers, and especially unhappy customers.
Nice piece by Marty Cagan at the Silicon Valley Product Group.
Who is leading the research for the next big thing in your company? Is it engineers? sales people? Or the market? NIHITO.