The Most Important Teams in Tech | Stay SaaSy

Engineering and sales are the only two teams that actually move the needle in a B2B SaaS business. Engineering builds the product that customers can use, and sales turns that product into revenue and brand equity. Everything else - product, design, marketing, HR - ultimately supports those two functions. Great engineers accelerate product development faster than any amount of product or design effort, and great sales accelerates market adoption faster than any amount of marketing. The article points out that top engineers often have product instincts and top sales leaders have marketing instincts, but without a strong engineering engine a product manager is useless and without a sales engine a marketer cannot close deals. For leaders this means you must treat engineering and sales as the primary customers of every other team, protect their time, and align all resources to their priorities. The piece warns that while these teams enjoy short-term job security, they face relentless pressure to perform, and any failure in engineering or sales is the biggest risk to the business. Knowing this helps you focus on cross-functional alignment, decision-making and scaling the core value delivery.