[MrZongle2]

"If your boss can't sell which things are part of their output and which are external, they're not doing a very good job."

The world is full of bosses who aren't good at their job. And bosses who are flat-out ignorant, capricious or lazy. None of these factors will protect the technical person mentioned in the grandparent post.

And you'd be shocked at how many state/federal resources have a single point of failure. Add to that small-to-medium sized companies, and suddenly there could be a lot of people taking (possibly irrational levels of) heat from their bosses.