[lelanthran]

There's three questions for every product - "Why?", "What?" and "How?"

> I've been a software engineer at a few highly regarded companies for a decade now, at none of them did I have the ability to make large product or design decisions as a software engineer.

IME, even the highest engineer at the company has little to no ability to make even small product design decisions.

I'm not saying whether I think it's a good thing or a bad thing, but the truth is there's a role at every organisation who's job it is to decide what the product should look like and what it should do. That role decides all the "what" questions.

Engineering is all about "How?"

Even the product design role doesn't have all the power - the "Why?" is decided by someone else.