This is exactly why I plan on moving into a sales engineering role (or some other biz dev role that requires engineering experience) in the next few years. Ridiculous compensation multiplier with soft skills instead of the tech skills treadmill for a traditional engineering position.

You don't have to be an incredible developer to extract value.

From what I've observed, sales engineer is a support role for the salesman and it's the salesman who's getting most of the commission.

You know several sales people making $500k/year? I knew the best ones made bank but I didn't know that most of them did so well.

Try $750k plus on reoccurring commissions from sales past. $2M for landing a large contract.

Do you have a throwaway email address or can you name a few companies that would be good targets for sales?

I currently work as a software engineer but intend to move into sales in 2-3 years.