Those 'free' AI engineers in your enterprise are mostly sales engineers, says Linthicum
DavidLinthicum · x · 2026-09-19
David Linthicum argues that the thousands of 'forward-deployed engineers' funded and placed inside enterprises by Google, AWS, Microsoft and other hyperscalers are largely sales engineers wearing an engineering badge. These embedded staff learn only a single platform (Gemini, Bedrock, etc.), become one-trick ponies, and enterprises believing they get objective architectural guidance are actually being sold to from within — a structural conflict of interest bad for both the customer and the engineers' careers.
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