Comment by tsunamifury
8 hours ago
Sorry this is just the interior trapped nonsense that engineers find themselves in. Please touch grass
Product designers have to intuit the entire world model of the customer. Product managers have to intuit the business model that bridges both. And on and on.
Why do engineers constantly have these laughably mind blowing moments where they think they are the center of the universe.
I agree so much with the both of you, to the point it's difficult to avoid cognitive dissonance one way or the other.
Software people do what they do better than anyone else. I mean obviously! Just listening to a non-software person discuss software is embarrassing. As it should be.
There's something close to mathematics that SWEs do, and yet it's so much more useful and economically relevant than mathematics, and I believe that's the bulk of how the "center of the universe" mindset develops. But they don't care that they're outclassed by mathematicians in matters of abstract reasoning, because they're doers and builders, and they don't care that they're outclassed by people in effective but less intellectual careers, because they're decoding the fundamental invariants of the universe.
I don't know. I guess I care so much because I can feel myself infected by the same arrogance when I finally succeed in getting my silicon golems to carry out my whims. It's exhilarating.
We keep seeing things like cryptic error messages shown to end users simply because of the disconnect between the programmer and the end user.
If the programmer gets to intimately understand the user's experience software would be easier to use. That's why I support the idea of engineers taking support calls on rotation to understand the user.
Both can be true at the same time, a product manager who retains the big picture of the business and product, and engineers who understand tiny but important details of how the product is being used.
If there were indeed perfect product managers, there would no need for product support.
You seem to be assuming a certain org structure with very clear, specialized roles. Many teams do not have this, and engineers are already Product Engineers. It sometimes even makes sense (whenever engineers dogfood their product, startups, or if it is a product targeting other engineers) and is not just a budget/capacity issue.
Similarly, by siloing the world model in one or two heads, you disable the team dynamics from contributing to building a better solution: eg. a product manager/designer might think the right solution is an "offline mode" for a privacy need without communicating the need, the engineering might decide to build it with an eventual consistency model — sync-when-reconnected — as that might be easier in the incumbent architecture, and the whole privacy angle goes out the window. As with everything, assuming non-perfection from anyone leads to better outcomes.
Finally, many of the software engineers are the creative type who like solving customer problems in innovative ways, and taking it away in a very specialized org actually demotivates them. Many have worked in environments where this was not just accepted, but appreciated, and I've it seen it lead to better products built _faster_.