It wouldn't be ridiculous if the programmer is working full time with constant work coming in while the agent is out pounding the pavement. There's no reason t

It wouldn't be ridiculous if the programmer is working full time with constant work coming in while the agent is out pounding the pavement. There's no reason the two tasks of "finding work" and "doing work" need to be done serially. And what you've just described is what consulting firms do. The sales people are out pounding the pavement hitting up prospective customers to bring in work for the programmers (or whatever positions the sales people have claimed they have bodies for). This obviously isn't an ideal situation, for the customer or the programmer, but it seems to be reasonably successful, at least with large consulting firms. It could work better with a customer centric salesman and a small team of developers -- I'm sure there's small 4 or 5 people firms that work like this, with a "sales agent" in house.