I think there is certainly a middle ground between "engineers do all the decision making" and "engineers do none of the decision making." I'm not sure the autho

I think there is certainly a middle ground between "engineers do all the decision making" and "engineers do none of the decision making." I'm not sure the author was advocating the former. Rather, I think the author was saying that the possibility to influence the decision making at a fundamental level is what makes the SV-like companies great. This follows my experience. Even at a FAANG, product managers aren't going to get every detail and edge cases are going to pop-up, so requirements are going to come from a back-and-forth between product and eng throughout the process. That back-and-forth is the key, not expecting engineers to figure out all the requirements, nor from product managers either.