[craigching]

"Bills to pay" or whatever your motivation is, does not mean that's the best way to drive business in a software company. Sales is a required part of business and one driver of how products are developed, but if sales were the only driver of how products are developed, products would be one dimensional pretty quickly with tactical "if you do this, I can make this one sale" types of development features. You still need a robust product management team that is (hopefully) looking beyond current sales needs.

Note, that's not always engineering, but sometimes it's hard to get product management looking beyond current sales needs, and therefore it does fall on engineering to do the strategic work.

IMO, it doesn't matter who does the strategic work, sales, product management, or engineering, as long as someone is doing it.