[goofballlogic]

"an engineer codes what someone else thinks they want" seems a fairly damning indictment of our industry although I think the author meant it tongue-in-cheek.

Lack of ownership of responsibility is still quite a big roadblock for many companies.

[tonyedgecombe]

All the while I was consulting I never met a client who knew what they needed until you started putting something in front of them.

Some of them had already produced detailed requirements documents but those documents never really represented the reality.

[WorldMaker]

The industry is also full of so many stories of a developer trying to say "Thinking ahead, I don't think you want X because it won't do what you really want which is Y", getting nothing but "Just do X, that's what we researched and PMed into all these requirements documents" to only be followed by complaints of "Why doesn't this do Y? That's what we really need." when presented with "finished" software based on the requirements.

[beart]

This is intentionally done at some larger companies. Engineers are resources (owned, not owners) and management is layered in a way that prevents true authority at all but the highest levels.

[raxxorrax]

In practice, that depends a bit if you are getting paid for that ownership as a developer. Ownership also implies a lot of work aside from developing.