> Ideally, I want engineers focused on building, not taking discovery meetings with potential customers, messing around in Figma, projecting financials, writing

> Ideally, I want engineers focused on building, not taking discovery meetings with potential customers, messing around in Figma, projecting financials, writing ads, or any other role This is a very short-sighted view and one of the reasons a lot of engineers hate their jobs today - even though they might say they “just want to code”. Software engineering is ultimately about building things for people (or machines), so the more distance you put between the engineering and the end goal, the worse outcome you get. You can definitely have specialized functions like marketing, copy-writing, design, but they all work together in a multi-disciplinary team, understand what they are building and why so that they have shared knowledge and goals. On that strawman argument, nobody expects developers to routinely do client meetings or financial projections, though they should be able to delve into that if it will help build a better product. To continue your analogy, in great kitchens everyone knows the dishes they are making, the whole menu, get to taste it, and can probably take any other station if required.