[j_baker]

See? Now you're going back to "engineer is a dumb machine who translates other peoples' thoughts into code" land. Reality is more like this:

"The sales side figures out what customers claim they can't live without. The product side figures out how to turn those perceived needs into a product. Development figures out how to make it meet with reality."

[sanderjd]

You're both being far too black-and-white or even adversarial - the jobs of both the product and development teams is to talk to each other to determine how to realistically make the product that the customers want.