agreed. It is pretty silly. When one has no experience, one should be willing to do a little more research first and talk to a few more experienced folks. There are many sales & marketing driven software companies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is a disaster. Personally, I think that the trick is usually about finding the right balance between business, design and engineering, not putting one on a pedestal above the rest.
No..you aren't talking about one specific time..or at least your article isn't. If that were the case than you'd be talking about why salespeople aren't STARTING companies rather than asking why they aren't RUNNING companies.
Without a talented engineering team, a product won't be able to change or adapt to customers changing needs and opinions.
Sure you can sell a product that isn't fully developed, and outsource your engineering but in all likelihood you're going to wind up with a clusterfuck of a codebase and so much technical debt that your customers aren't ever going to see anything more than the crappy first iteration of a product.
This is all just so silly. By your logic all that is important is that you have salespeople that can sell anything, including a crap product. Is that really how you want to drive a company? Salespeople would have an easier time selling a well engineered and functioning product no?
