At the margin, every employee makes the company money or saves the company money. You do a marginal analysis: if you get rid of the employee, does the net income go up or down?
Whether the contribution to net income is direct or indirect is irrelevant in determining that person's contributon to the bottom line. 1 accountant who bills $500,000 isn't really different than 10 engineers who build a product that brings in $5m of revenue, in terms of the bottom line.
Direct versus indirect is, however, relevant to compensation. It's much easier to negotiate a higher salary when your contribution to the bottom line is direct and easily measurable. But that goes to my point of there being more things that go into salaries than supply/demand. Whether your contribution to the bottom line is direct or indirect shouldn't affect salaries, theoretically. In theory, people don't get paid what they're worth, their salary is set by market forces and supply/demand. But in practice that's not the case.
Whether the contribution to net income is direct or indirect is irrelevant in determining that person's contributon to the bottom line. 1 accountant who bills $500,000 isn't really different than 10 engineers who build a product that brings in $5m of revenue, in terms of the bottom line.
Direct versus indirect is, however, relevant to compensation. It's much easier to negotiate a higher salary when your contribution to the bottom line is direct and easily measurable. But that goes to my point of there being more things that go into salaries than supply/demand. Whether your contribution to the bottom line is direct or indirect shouldn't affect salaries, theoretically. In theory, people don't get paid what they're worth, their salary is set by market forces and supply/demand. But in practice that's not the case.