Totally agree. The emotional variance a salesperson has to endure on a day to day basis is very, very high. We engineers are lucky to work in a rational space.

Totally agree. The emotional variance a salesperson has to endure on a day to day basis is very, very high. We engineers are lucky to work in a rational space. When things work, they work. When things don't work we can apply rational thought and fix the problem a majority of the time. You can deal with emotional/people issues via straight talk, through your manager, avoidance and/or just quitting. With sales and marketing, they are grappling with a fundamentally irrational (or at least opaque) set of constraints - people, their moods, budget cycles, company processes, etc. Its hard. I used to think sales and marketing was at par or below engineering. My thinking changed over the years thanks to something I saw first hand. My previous employer had a large, all hands on deck, one week long conference every year. As an engineer I would observe how our sales team would interact with clients. Clients, especially the bigger ones, would treat them very badly. Our sales members would put on a cheerful face and continue with their jobs. I would have walked out if I had been treated like that in public. I can only imagine how bad the treatment is when its in private. I've been much more polite to salespeople, even to pushy salespeople, ever since then. I actually take time to reply to (generic) emails for products that I signed up for a trial offer.