That's exactly why software engineering is more attractive than hardware engineering though? A condescending comment would be something like: "Maybe you should

That's exactly why software engineering is more attractive than hardware engineering though? A condescending comment would be something like: "Maybe you should stick to your pretty R graphs for 'journalism' and leave discussion of software engineering to the professionals who actually get paid to build systems and who haven't, as a profession, fucked up on every metric in the last decade even without including the most recent election." That would be a condescending comment--the one you are remarking on can be interpreted as "hey, designers get to make pretty things unfettered by layers of shaky abstractions and stupid imposed by business and deadlines". Please don't rush to aid the theoretically aggrieved; especially when there are folks in this same subthread going "yep, as a designer, that's the truth".