[xyzelement]

>> I never quite understood why the typical tech company product organization is so obsessed with finding the perfect graphic designer, instead of the perfect engineer.

For what it's worth, a personal anecdote - I didn't work with UX people or product managers until after I spent ~12 or so years as a developer/development manager.

My first impression of UX and PdMs was "wait, that's a job? This is stuff I expect my engineers to do. I wouldn't let my engineers get away without understanding the business or not obsess about the user experience."

Ironically I am now a product manager and what I have learned is that the answer is very simple: "perfect engineers (using your definition) are FUCKING RARE." In a startup you probably can structure your org around a handful of them, but by the time you're say Google-size (and way smaller than that) if your demands for a dev is "must be great at UX/business too" you just won't hire that many people, so you allow yourself to scale by breaking out the roles instead.

I miss the days of doing it all and try to get into it as much as I can, but I can't recommend that as a company strategy.