[ryandrake]

Many companies have a separate "Product Manager" role for that business, so that the brilliant engineers can brilliant SENIOR implementors. Have a dedicated professional worry about the customer impact, product requirements, etc., along with other non-programming tasks that many developers understandably prefer not to get bogged down in.

[angelbob]

They do. But separating those two roles and having two different people make those decisions tends to result in less-than-optimal decisions. It's the same kind of problem as "let's have the tech done by engineers and the business done by business people," and then your business gets bulldozed by a competitor whose CEO does understand engineering.