> Technology can't be "driven" by people who aren't skilled enough to evaluate and prioritize the work.
And what makes engineers the ones who are skilled enough to evaluate and prioritize the work? They understand the technology side, but do they understand what customers want and need? What will sell and market well? How a product will fit into the company's product lineup? What the competitors are doing? The problems customers are calling support about? Etc.
There are many competing priorities, and I don't think any one person or role can know enough to be able to accurately prioritize what work is most important. You need a team that works well, and members of that team need to be able to clearly explain the benefits and costs of doing or deferring any important piece of work.
As an engineer, we need to know those costs/benefits and how they trade-off against other tasks to make the right decision of which one to do first. That doesn't change if you're the one with the final say, so why does it change when you have to communicate it to a PM so they can weigh it against the other work to be done?
In the OP, the manager is doing the cost/benefit analysis. If Cindy and Bob were great engineers, they would have done a similar analysis themselves.
There is an argument to be made that if your engineers don't know what makes a good product, then they cannot build a good product. It's like asking someone with only a theoretical knowledge of music to build you a violin. With experience and careful guidance by a team of violin spec writers they can probably approximate a violin, but it will not be enjoyable to play unless it was made by someone who understands the needs of a violinist.
And what makes engineers the ones who are skilled enough to evaluate and prioritize the work? They understand the technology side, but do they understand what customers want and need? What will sell and market well? How a product will fit into the company's product lineup? What the competitors are doing? The problems customers are calling support about? Etc.
There are many competing priorities, and I don't think any one person or role can know enough to be able to accurately prioritize what work is most important. You need a team that works well, and members of that team need to be able to clearly explain the benefits and costs of doing or deferring any important piece of work.
As an engineer, we need to know those costs/benefits and how they trade-off against other tasks to make the right decision of which one to do first. That doesn't change if you're the one with the final say, so why does it change when you have to communicate it to a PM so they can weigh it against the other work to be done?
In the OP, the manager is doing the cost/benefit analysis. If Cindy and Bob were great engineers, they would have done a similar analysis themselves.