A couple of things irk me about this article, but that could simply be due to the incredible vagueness.<p><i>>"He paused another moment and then said, “I know that’s not your plan because it can’t be done. What is your real plan?”<p>He told us he wanted to see a new version the very next day. The request didn’t seem to make much sense. In fact, to this day I’m not sure what the product will be used for—but we dropped everything else we were working on and scrambled to get the demo done in time."</i><p>So the author worked (presumably quite hard) on something, received dismissive feedback that didn't make any sense, didn't question any of it, scrambled to re-implement on an uninformed guess for the next day then (surprise) got slapped around again.<p>That honestly sounds more like a loyalty/submissiveness test of some sort than anything else.<p>Ideally, that meeting was a great opportunity to challenge the man and earn some respect from him or possibly lose some for him depending on how it plays out.<p><i>>"He wasn’t thinking about the feature; he was thinking about the customer experience."</i><p>What is wrong in the culture / education of engineering that people have to be taught this after they start working?