Many of us were working before product managers became a thing.
When I went to school engineers were trained to work directly with customers and subject matter experts to gather and develop requirements. And that’s what we did when we started working.
I think dividing work into programmer/UX/product manager is an actually huge regression.
This is so true. We waste so much time now because of the separation of these roles which must inevitably come together in the real codebase where the rubber meets the road.
Software is of lower quality today and requires far more do-overs than it used to. As someone who liked working closely with customers and making decisions in all these areas (for their benefit), it has made the entire career far more of a slog than it used to be.
Also, I find these endless internal cyclical conversations to be much more draining than actually writing code. Looping over and over with planners and ideas folks isn't energizing like actually writing the product is.
I think dividing work into programmer/UX/product manager is an actually huge regression.