But for subject matter to be patentable, the patent must be sufficient to reduce to practice. In the movie it was just special effects, which is not sufficient to meet the reduce to practice threshold.
I'd be interested in seeing data from other large tech employers regarding productivity and ROI (on both the training required and the work that could be/is done at home). Author should've been more clear between engineers and support reps.
But what about "post-sale"? I think there will always be customer demand for concierge-level of service. Some SaaS models do lend themselves to self-service, but others don't. Knowing that distinction is key.
Early devs to a startup should always be ready and able to sell. It's not just enough to hire a dev expert in their discipline, but rather all early startup employees need to be well rounded enough to help in the sales process. All things being equal, dev that can sell > dev that can't sell. Startups fail most often from market risk vs technical risk. The early sales process is a key component to finding product-market fit.