First, a developer putting themselves in the place of a user still may not be able to see all of the issues with their product because they are (not sure how to put this better) "too close to the work". It relates to something we talk about here on HN every now and then, namely that "technical people" often miss things that are hard for others because they just can't fathom that x thing that's easy for me could be hard for someone.
Second, I think that, in a lot of places, management makes it super hard for developers to get any data on problems other than general, abstract numbers with zero specifics included. I seems quite unreasonable to expect a developer who is being stonewalled on data or access to users by another business area to work with "our overall churn rate is x%, fix it" and actually figure out what's wrong and what needs improving.
First, a developer putting themselves in the place of a user still may not be able to see all of the issues with their product because they are (not sure how to put this better) "too close to the work". It relates to something we talk about here on HN every now and then, namely that "technical people" often miss things that are hard for others because they just can't fathom that x thing that's easy for me could be hard for someone.
Second, I think that, in a lot of places, management makes it super hard for developers to get any data on problems other than general, abstract numbers with zero specifics included. I seems quite unreasonable to expect a developer who is being stonewalled on data or access to users by another business area to work with "our overall churn rate is x%, fix it" and actually figure out what's wrong and what needs improving.