Hard disagree. Marketers conceive of tractors.

They are the ones by talking to the customers and knowing what they need. They are the ones that know that one engineer has been working on a high power engine, and other on rugged, high traction trailers.

Purely engineering firms fail in the long run as they drift away from what buyers want and chase interesting things because they think they know better.

Cough meta cough

Zilog too

I would’ve agreed with you if you had swapped marketers for product managers.

Marketers coming up with ideas and dictating those ideas to engineers is just wrong

> Purely engineering firms fail in the long run as they drift away from what buyers want and chase interesting things because they think they know better.

Eh, it's not about purely engineering. Many businesses who are not related to engineering fails exact same reason. They only care about short time growth and loses. Happens all the time.

Every time I hear this horse argument I picture a horse that is as strong as 1000 horses and goes 300 miles per hour and I get really sad that they invented cars instead of just giving people what they wanted.

But remember the horse shit you'd need to deal with.

Correction, that YOU would have to deal with. I’ll be three hundred miles away looking for oats.

That being said: you are absolutely right. How quickly the externalities are forgotten.