I think what's happening here is we're conflating "developer" with "product designer." And often, yeah, they're the same - but if you're in a big enough team th

I think what's happening here is we're conflating "developer" with "product designer." And often, yeah, they're the same - but if you're in a big enough team that you have one person doing the designing and another person doing the software architecture and another doing coding, it's the designer hat which needs to be at the coal face watching the users use the product and understanding their pain points.