[darkerside]

This person doesn't seem to realize that the plumber was selling them a bunch of shit they didn't really need because it was a good way for them to make money. The analogue would be an engineer proposing a gold plated submarine instead of doggy paddling across the lake. This plays into the worst fears of the product manager, that you are engaging in resume driven development that benefits you, your sense of fun, and your personal growth, over what is best for the product and the company.

[EZ-E]

> This plays into the worst fears of the product manager, that you are engaging in resume driven development that benefits you, your sense of fun, and your personal growth, over what is best for the product and the company

I saw someone do exactly that - the problem to solve was simple, but one of the goal of the tech lead was to be able to do a tech talk about the solution, he was just in the company to deliver this project so unsurprisingly it ended up being massively over engineered and a difficult to maintain. To add an attribute in the response of an API you would unironically need to edit 10 files, and this is for a small service.

[et1337]

Only 10 files? Must be nice!

[EZ-E]

It's a small service and we were a small company...

[andyg_blog]

I think I did realize that. However, if you as a homeowner say "I really super duper don't want any scale buildup OR the minerals to be dissolved in whatever comes out the faucet" then suddenly the proposal is actually reasonable.

Metaphors only go so far. Try to see what I'm really saying here: quality has a cost. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by preemptively reducing quality on account of some ill-conceived notion about how the relationship between product owners and engineering works.