"I come from the product development side of things, which means that generally speaking I’ve spent my professional career surrounded by people who don’t have a lot of respect for “the idiots in marketing”. As you, my loyal readers know, I have outgrown that mindset."
Scott Porad, CTO of Cheezburger Network in “What is Marketing?”
—
I outgrew the “idiots in marketing” mindset years ago, and, honestly it’s almost turned to thoughts about the “idiots in engineering” recently. The marketers may have “dumb” ideas, but engineers who blindly follow specs are far worse.
How many times have you seen something and thought, “that’s really cool, impressive, and powerful, but how do I use it, and why doesn’t it do the one thing I actually need?”. It isn’t about UX or some technical fault, it’s about not having a user-focus ingrained in every employee, and not taking ownership. Sure, the product person failed to some extent, but so did the engineer who didn’t step up and fill the holes. It drives me insane.
* - This doesn’t apply to anyone I work with, they rock.
** - There are certainly places where engineers and others aren’t empowered to think and act so freely. If you work at one of these place, you’ve got to try and change that, or quit your job. That’s no way to live.
