But that argument goes all the way down the value chain. You'll end up with something like food production > transport > tech. The chain can be as long as you feel too.

It is a radical proposition that a farm day laborer adds more value than an elite tech worker because 'the system would stop without food'.

The value add is controlled by the person who decides what "value add" is. That is the executive, original product designers and customers (who may well be represented by marketing in some businesses, I dunno).

Food surplus comes from mass production not farm hands. The guy who handles 20,000+ acres of crop is more productive than the average dev and makes more money.

http://www.cornandsoybeandigest.com/are-1000-acres-part-time... “One of the most difficult factors for many 1,100-acre or less farmers to accept is that, unless they have livestock, they're probably underemployed. Thirty years ago, 1,000 acres was enough to support Dad, me and three hired men. ... As one industry sage puts it, “It's not the 1,000-acre farmer that needs to worry. They can still support themselves with off-farm income. The guy who needs to worry is the 3,000- to 5,000-acre farmer who knows he needs to reach 10,000 acres if he wants to stay in business.

If your farm is too small, then lease it to someone who farms, say, 10,000 acres by leasing smaller chunks. Then get a job in town!

The reason this argument doesn't hold water is because the underlying infrastructure supporting the company as a whole is just a commodity. There is nothing special about the food or the transportation or even the server infrastructure that the startup uses, it's all fungible and thus there is an efficient market around it.

But engineering and sales for a single product are inextricably linked. If engineering does not create a good product, that directly affects the success of the sales people; and vice versa if the sales team sucks then a great products potential value can go unrealized.

Yes, we call that Society and as you're seeing Puerto Rico none of the tech matters if you don't have basic infrastructure. They definitely add more value than us.

Are they under-represented and under-valued? Probably. Just like IT, they only get noticed when things screw up or go wrong.

It isn't binary: value is created by all parties involved. It's just, in my opinion, that if we normalize the value created to be 1 for the product team, then engineering's value is less than 1, and sales and marketing is (more often) greater than or equal to 1, most of the time. Exceptions exist. But they're not normal, by definition.

> that if we normalize the value created to be 1 for the product team, then engineering's value is less than 1

Well yes, if we make completely baseless "normalizations" than that's true. Obviously, there is no reason to do that, but sure, if we do it that's the result.

An engineer's value can be exponential and can even go well beyond their own lifespan.

Sales and marketing impact is immediate and falls off over time while engineering's impact is slow and can speed up over time.

Right, at a start-up the value of product, sales, and marketing is huge compared to that of engineering. Most engineers can create an MVP that will deliver the promises of the other 3.

The problem is trying to scale that product once marketing and sales do their job. I think the value of each of these 4 changes depending on the company size and tend to normalize to 1 as the company scales to the size of Google, Amazon, FB, etc.