I think the most important role is someone who can say to the client that they can't do something impossible. This person can't be the developer themselves. And they need to back it with facts.
It was really hard to do this as a developer because it would take a week to gather the facts to explain that something can't be done in a week. So they'd be unhappy that we spent the week on meetings instead of work.
This work also directly makes it easier for developers to do work and easier for managers to schedule tasks. It's also a near irreplaceable role - it would take at least a month to train a new SA's technical skills and a few months for them to understand the user wishlist as well as why the limitations are limitations.
David Graeber isn’t right about everything but look up his book ‘bullshit jobs’, spoiler alert, a lot of people think their jobs are meaningless or even totally useless. The more meaningless it feels the more the pay.
so the more meaningful and interesting jobs are more people want to do it, so the pay comes down?