Comment Re:As a programmer (Score 1) 735
but we arn't as important as the guy's who tell us what to make, or the guy's who get people to pay for it..
I guess anybody can grasp the difference between toilet paper and a rocket booster motor in terms of development effort, marketing approach and target audience.
I am somewhere inbetween. We supply specialized tools for preclinical drug development.
In the last two years there was a 80% turnover in the sales and marketing workforce. Without any apparent detrimental effect on business.
Of course there are many parameters to this, but I certainly would not deduce that marketing and sales people are system critical in our situation.
On the other hand I could remove three people from the company (60ish employees) and make sure the whole thing hits the ground within fucking months. And those are the people that thoroughly understand what we are doing, as opposed to sitting around in airport lounges or answering email inquiries for a living.