Mind you, I know this has probably never been the case looking for example at Apple, Google or other shops that worked in similar spirit, but as a mainstream ph

Mind you, I know this has probably never been the case looking for example at Apple, Google or other shops that worked in similar spirit, but as a mainstream phenomena you have to not look further than the late 90s or early 2000s to find that average programmers in mid tier companies harboured a mix of non-empathy, non-sympathy and user frustration over a complicated interface and a designers call to do something about it, was regularly met with arrogance, a sigh or a frown. Of course, this can also be credited to the fact that ui design for software was at a much different place in general.