The only employees that are above the gross profit line are in sales. Everyone else is an expense. When I was pre-career, I figured that was true. And then ea

The only employees that are above the gross profit line are in sales. Everyone else is an expense. When I was pre-career, I figured that was true. And then early career I believed companies must follow some sort of "keeping this person at $100,000 saves $1,000,000" rule. And now I believe the naive line again: nobody really knows what they're doing. Salespeople claim their revenue, everyone else has to argue themselves into the value of what they sold. If you think about it, every dollar of value is spoken for so many times. The salesperson sold it. The executive brought it to be sold. The system person made it a part of the deal. The line employee made it. The marketing people brought the customer to it. The support people made the customer trust it. The accounting people made sure it didn't walk out the door on its own, and HR hired them all that did it. I imagine in countries or union situations where you have to hire people back when the jobs open back up, you don't get this idea. In fact, a union tells you who goes first and last. If you have cause to fire someone, it's better to fire them with cause.