> This book contains three basic ideas. The first is an output-oriented approach to management. That is to say, we apply some of the principles and the discipline of the most output-oriented of endeavors—manufacturing—to other forms of business enterprise, including most emphatically the work of managers. Consider Intel, which is a true manufacturing and production company, making highly complex silicon chips as well as computer-like products built from them. Our company now has over thirty thousand employees. Of these, about 25 percent actually work to make the products. Another 25 percent help them as they supervise the personnel, maintain the machines, and engineer and improve the manufacturing process. Another 25 percent work in administration, where they schedule production, keep personnel records, send bills to our customers, and pay our suppliers. Finally, the remaining 25 percent design new products, take them to the marketplace, sell them, and service them after the sale.

Andy Grove, High Output Management, about Intel (at the time when they were successful)

I think there are many, many (not directly) productive functions that successful business needs to have and engineers often underestimate those (I certainly know I often do).