[tsotha]

The sales organization gets priority in Oracle. They're never going to start a project by asking "what would be cool?", but rather "what do our customers want?". Not the path to the most technically satisfying jobs, but companies like that stand a better chance of making money.

I've worked at a few (smaller) software companies, and from what I can tell the ones that go out of business do so because they make really cool products that either 1) don't get connected to the right customers or 2) are missing some critical feature customers need because developers didn't understand the business space. Both problems are the result of a poor or unsupported sales organization.

As a technical guy I get irritated by the sales people as much as anyone else, especially when they try to promise away my nights or weekends. But a software company won't survive without them. Based on my own experience I'd say the most successful companies could better be described as sales organizations that do software instead of software companies that do sales.

[va_coder]

I agree. I also think managers with discipline and ok intelligence are better than managers that are really intelligent with little discipline.

The disciplined managers focus on what needs to get done and do it. (The don't spend part of their day reading HN ;)