Thank you for articulating what's been on my mind for quite a while now.

"With that choice, project goals became increasingly centered around company needs rather than user needs. Our language changed to better communicate with stakeholders. Words like "polish” and “value” gave way to “adoption” or “engagement” or “platform cohesion.” It’s laughably easy to rationalize that these things are good for users too."

I’m trying to understand how anyone managed to convince us that becoming more senior meant caring about users less.

I think it all stems from biases in human psychology, such as being agreeable and easy to work with will get you further with product dev stakeholders than being perceived as hard to work with and a bottleneck for product development to ship on time.

Working at a for profit company where shareholders/investors and executive leadership have perverse interests (C.R.E.A.M), your paycheck rests on the fact that you can prove your value in generating more revenue than if they did not hire you.

Designers who are more senior can go toe to toe with MBA goons and explain in their business school speak (e.g. adoption, engagement, retention, etc) cause this speaks to the business' return on investment on a per project basis and largely justifies keeping a designer "resource" on payroll along with mitigating liability (i.e. accessibility CYA type stuff) otherwise your design work would have just been outsourced to the lowest bidder. Seniors need to be able to speak in terms of vision/ roadmap/strategy and that requires business acumen and playing the political silo'd corp game. They risk their seat at the table if they can't balance user needs with business metrics being tracked by the powers that be.

Green/junior designers cant speak the language of business or just lack visibility/allies in the political aspects of big silo'd orgs to make their case for design vision or strategy. They are focused on leveling up and designing with their rose colored glasses until they've paid their dues and learn how to play the political game in their company and justify their worth to the decision makers paying their salary... so you can leave your soul sucking corp gig promptly at 5pm and get on with your life... cause your job as a designer is actually making some 1% shareholders filthy rich unless you start your own company.

/ramblerant

TL:DR at the end of the day, a business is in business to make money and your livelihood depends on proving you can do this through ensuring an easy to use, thoughtfully designed product which allows more people to use the product and ultimately generates more $$profits$$ for shareholders. The users never mattered and we are just lining the pockets of the 1% shareholders/executives. Maybe AI will make us irrelevant in the coming year when developers are replaced by machine learning and we are replaced by computer generated style guides and pattern libraries?

I need a drink, also if anyone knows of any fulfilling design work I'm listening, seriously burnt out of the enterprise corp game. Any veteran designers please chime in and tell me it gets better, haven't even started a family yet.