I'll elaborate: engineering's value-system is about intrinsic value; marketing's value-system is about extrinsic value. Engineering is about the thing itself;

I'll elaborate: engineering's value-system is about intrinsic value; marketing's value-system is about extrinsic value. Engineering is about the thing itself; marketing is about the market. Engineers want the thing itself to be good, by various metrics; marketing is motivated by market needs/wants and competition/alternatives. For example, coherence and high performance are properties of a product, that an engineer might value. But for the market, a shopping list of properties at good-enough performance, may be what's needed. OP's "tunnel vision", undistracted by the market, is how the best engineering is done. But of course, maybe nobody wants or needs this - that's the role of marketing. Typically, engineering is market-led, with the marketing deciding what is to be built and engineering building it. But because engineers can create things that the market didn't imagine was feasible, it is sometimes engineering-led. Henry Ford apparently said the market would have wanted "faster horses". Startups ideally exist at this intersection, where engineeing creates things that never were, and marketing creates needs that never existed. Note startups are often co-founded by a duo of engineering/marketing - because these inconsistent value-systems are easier to have in separate people.