I agree with the author of the article that sales is important to any organization. It's a chicken and egg game between engineering and sales. No sales means no

I agree with the author of the article that sales is important to any organization. It's a chicken and egg game between engineering and sales. No sales means no customer but no engineer means no product. I feel like sales gets a bad rep from engineering because whenever we do projects, it feels like we do the work and they get the glory and money (which may or may not be true). The worse is when a company cuts out engineers from the decision process for project requirements. We end up being liable to lucrative claims that other make. That being said, I absolutely DISAGREE that everyone should get some hands-on sales experience. Just like how not everyone is suited for engineering, not everyone is suited for sales. The author comes from a product management role so I would guess s/he is more extroverted than most engineers. I have met many design engineers that are ridiculously introverted. However, that's the beautiful thing about engineering. It doesn't matter. If you can design something that solves the customers problem, then you are doing a good job. A good manager would make sure a good design engineer get's shielded from the political bs. Unfortunately, the engineering culture is turning into a culture where we promote those with charisma rather than a good designing skillset.