> Sounds derogatory to the person you're arguing with. Is that your intention?

No, I was referring to the manifesto, and circling back around to my initial comment on the manifesto. Moreover I did intend for this to be self-deprecating, as I said, I have gotten this wrong in the past and been naive in the same way that I critiqued the manifesto for being naive. I am sharing lessons I've learned the hard way.

> IMO you should've chosen milder language

I'm honestly surprised, saying "I understand" is pretty friggin' mild language... I don't see clearly what your interpretation is or why you're finding it offensive (it sounds like you're finding it offensive?), feel free to clarify.

> you do sound like you were dragged in a meeting, and the mystical they "explained how the real world works" to you, and then you took their side

Well, I am summarizing here. We all are. I can't share the subtleties or make this soft without writing my life story. I do try to extend benefit of the doubt in forum discussions, and I hope to receive the same. I try to assume that people understand there are always corner cases and subtleties we don't have the time to explain.

> But the way you word your responses here makes me think you're more of a business person now and not an engineer.

Is that somehow bad? I have been an engineer in the past, I have been an engineering manager leading teams inside large businesses, and now I am a (startup) business owner and engineer at the same time. I believe my experience doing both gives me a unique perspective that many engineers who have no business experience lack, and I'm sharing that perspective here. I happened to have come to the conclusions I've written down here while engineering, before I ever became a manager or business owner, but I think my management and business experience only makes my case stronger, not weaker.

The manifesto reads as if it was written by an engineer who has no business perspective, and my issue with it is not that it was strongly worded, it is that the goal is misguided. I believe, based on my experience as an engineer and a business person that avoiding timely communication and avoiding budget discussions in the name of a personal definition of "quality" are bad goals that rarely result in actual high quality software that actually helps the business. Moreover, engineers adding their own unchecked notions of quality is a super common highly documented and much discussed way to incur mountains of technical debt, waste large sums of money, and deliver projects extremely late.

> I think the disconnect between managers and programmers always stems from if we should look at the programmers as assembly line workers or craftsmen.

The thing is, this is a fear programmers have that business people, by and large, do not share. Managers need programmers to work their craft, they generally don't know how to write code, and know it, and broadly speaking they have a deep respect for people that write code.

When programmers declare they're not going to participate in estimates, or even just drag their feet and complain that estimates are impossible or inaccurate, and when programmers avoid talking to managers and complain that email is preferable and weekly face time has no point, the programmers are the ones putting themselves in the position of being thought of as assembly line workers.