However, I do think there's some validity to the complaint, hidden in nuance, and dismissing it outright with even the implication that everyone has equal(ish) value, serves to foster hidden resentment.
The allegation seems to be that any accomplished programmer could become accomplished in sales, merely with effort, because the skill/difficulty required by the latter is much less than the former, while the reverse isn't true.
Even if that allegation holds, a question that remains generally undiscussed is, would that programmer-turned-salesperson still be a competent programmer at the end of such a process? Perhaps more importantly, would such a person be a more valuable as salesperson than as a programmer? The question of if such a salesperson is more valuable than a salesperson-from-the-getgo seems to be implicitly answered "yes" in these discussions, but that kind of diversity of experience bringing additional value tends to be uncontroversial.
Years at big companies taught me contempt for marketing and sales. But there's nothing like finding good marketing and good sales when you're six months to financial destruction . . .
I don’t mean to say there was no value to his skills— but I am saying that it was not hard for me to understand enough about sales to hire a good sales person.
They would of course be a better sales person than me.
The problem is people think your CEO should be a sales person and that’s s mistake.
Sales is a process that’s easy to replicate.
Creating a novel software application isn’t.
Ate hnicwl CEO can hire a great chief sales guy. A non-technical CEO can’t hire a CTO and often ends up undermining the product.
I would have no problem being hands off with the sales department.
I have yet to meet a Non technical CEO who doesn’t think he knows how to design products.