I can say that, in my experience, the sales/marketing folks are never truly technical people; they are sales/marketing people who've been trained about the basi

I can say that, in my experience, the sales/marketing folks are never truly technical people; they are sales/marketing people who've been trained about the basics of the technology. However, every company I've worked with always has a technical person review important things like table of contents, chapter outlines, and such. And then there's almost always a technical editor. To what degree they "work" is dependent upon many factors though. I think sales/marketing work, in this regard, as a response from their customer base. If people are saying, "Well, we would spend $30,000 to send eight people to this class if only it featured generics", then what do you think happens next? Big money talks. That's why so many mature products that have "new features" are often features that less than 1% of the companies would use - that 1% of user sales represents 20% of revenue (or something to that effect). It's fine to wax philosophical and debate, "What should a training course or book do?" However, the companies writing the big checks almost always determine what goes in and to what degree. It's hard to sell a training course using phrases like, "We'll teach you the things that you won't use in your real-world job!"