The sooner we realize that 'product managers' and 'UX designers' are now as bad as used car salesmen and NFT hucksters, the better.
I'm sorry, I LOVE building products and I LOVE design... but these fields have become grift central. No disrespect to folks in these fields, but remember how you came into this field talking about usability, cooperation, beautiful typography, color theory?
Why not? You can absolutely call people out for using Nuremberg defense. Just because someone ordered you to intentionally mistreat people doesn't mean that you did not intentionally mistreat people.
The most productive approach IMO is a little of both. Build designs that are intended to help people do what they want (instead of what you might want), and be loud about it.
Neither being nice nor mean will persuade people working at Microsoft to be different. Being better and letting them know might though.
Oh I don't have a problem calling out Microsoft at all. But I'm not gonna internet-shame some poor UX designer who is trying to pay her bills in this clown world – just want to encourage her to push back when she can.
Microsoft has always been horrible at building web-based products. Recently they are also horrible at building Windows-based products. And at building Windows.
I'm sorry, I LOVE building products and I LOVE design... but these fields have become grift central. No disrespect to folks in these fields, but remember how you came into this field talking about usability, cooperation, beautiful typography, color theory?
Bring those back.