@polotek That comment from @simonnickel that I liked so much said: “focus on their field, while listening to concerns" That's the real crux - engineers don't need to try “to understand business outcomes” in order to do good engineering
Relative to Guy’s quote - the implication is that the managers were interfering with the engineering tasks at hand - and I think that grading of companies probably makes some sense. Thinking about engineers being ignored makes me remember the Challenger explosion