Good salespeople are awesome and I am in awe at their ability to do things that most hackers don't realize. Remembering names, building relationships, and convi

Good salespeople are awesome and I am in awe at their ability to do things that most hackers don't realize. Remembering names, building relationships, and convincing people to give them money. It's very easy to disparage what they do because from the outside it seems trivial. But I attended a sales meeting once and I'm never taking these guys for granted ever again. To put it another way, their entire salary is based around selling your work. As a programmer that pulls a normal salary, that means they have more confidence in what you do than you. Also, company hierarchy almost always dictates that the further you are from the money the more precarious your role is. You could lay off all the engineers tomorrow and the company would limp along for 1-2 years. You lay off all of the sales staff and that company is dead in months.