I don't think the issue is black and white. Take for instance a company where your big money comes from landing big accounts, and the only way to do that is wit

I don't think the issue is black and white. Take for instance a company where your big money comes from landing big accounts, and the only way to do that is with star sales people. And maybe on the tech side the work is rather mundane, and star engineers don't even want to work for the company -- for example, simple landing page setup or setting Javascript pixels to track conversion and other metrics. For software intensive companies where the product is the business, perhaps sales commissions don't make sense. But there are many companies where tech is either outsourced or not the differentiator in terms of competitive advantage, and therefore salaries/commissions skew towards the salespeople making the most. There are certainly issues that can crop up in that case, but the incentives can help.