[mojomark]

All of this is true, I'd argue, even outside of the SW engineering and product development space.

I appreciate your introspection and honesty. I will be sharing this post with my team. I particularly plan on honing-in on your note regarding validation. I had a very senior SW engineer recently stand up in a specification whiteboarding session and proclaim "this is a fucking waste of time" (while the junior dev's looked at each other with wide eyes that I read as "I was just happy we were finally all getting on the same page with respect to building what the customer is truly asking for").

So... thanks.