> Overhead is typically 40-50% for this kind of corporation. So not really enough.
Even assuming 50% overhead something just short of 200k remains. I agree, for the US it may be on the lower end of the scale (given the ridiculous costs of housing and healthcare), but Europe or Asia? Way more than enough.
> The issue is whether someone with the expertise to do this would benefit the company and their own career more doing something other than a tech support role.
At least in my experience it is definitely good for people to spend time directly with customers. I agree it may not be worthwile for a chip developer or a documentation writer to spend their full time on doing support - but a set amount of time, say four or eight hours a week? That's direct, unfiltered input from the customers where the documentation is either missing, unclear or buggy.
Generic questions ("which combination of chips to choose if I have an USB-C female receptacle and want to provide bidirectional PD, bidirectional DisplayPort and USB3.2 over it") / 1:1 tutoring like "how do I best route a PCI-E differential lane pair", "how to properly calculate trace widths for said lanes given fab house X's stack specifications" can be directed to less specialist / sales staff or to a partner PCB design house.