> In any case though, take any highly successful company. Imagine if all the marketing people and product/engineering/design people were suddenly segregated, an

> In any case though, take any highly successful company. Imagine if all the marketing people and product/engineering/design people were suddenly segregated, and forced to work without the other. Who's more worried? I tend to avoid engaging in the eternal engineer vs. sales/marketing debate (nothing ever comes of it), but that sounds like a pretty disingenuous argument. Whether you remove (a) and (b) or (c) from the equation, you're still missing an essential part of the business. Engineers with 0 sales channels make 0 revenue. Marketers/Salespeople with no product make 0 revenue. Who should be more worried? If you're saying "Well, engineers could always try selling stuff themselves, while marketers couldn't code" you're adding, I believe, unwarranted assumptions. The reason people are paid more or less has more to do with supply/demand. Also note that salespeople at Oracle often make more money than their engineers.