Along our career we often make compromises. I don't on something hostile to users but I surely stopped having pride on my work, partly to keep collecting a paycheck. Management, team dynamics.. are all influencing the path your product will take. Politics, economics are all factors in this too, few years ago people could jump ship easily, now a lot less so.

I'm coping through HN Hiring threads to find additional gigs that align with the need to contribute for others with less constraints.

> I prefer to have hard discussions about pivoting or making changes so that we can improve the product, or company, for our users.

Right.

The user and the client are two different groups of people. If you want to make things better for the client, then sure, that's rational.

If you want to make things better for the user at the expense of the client, then that's irrational.

If you want a job that lets you serve the users, then get one where the users are also the client.

In most dev jobs, the software users are not the same group of people as the client.

It's a fatalistic attitude. Some kind of is/ought fallacy. This is why we need precepts like "Focus on the user and all else will follow."

Came here to say that.

Saying that "engineers work for the company" is a very reductionist take, taking away personal conscience, judgement and moral compass, leaving only "get in, do work, collect reward, go home" cycle. This what robots do. This is what algorithms do. Humans shall and are much more than that.

When I was the tech lead of a Linux distribution, I fought my teeth to make that thing work for the target audience who will be using it, and developers who wanna work and develop on this thing. It was not volunteer work either. It was my paying, day job.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."