Comment by lowsong

    I have met many programmers throughout my career, and very few of them want to talk to stakeholders, much less customers (exceptions are freelancers and founders, especially of software development shops). And, “having clarity on the priorities” boils down to “just tell me what to do and don't switch it up every two days”.

Then you have met many programmers but very few engineers. The kind that want to avoid thinking about the wider context and only be told what to do will never progress past a mid-level. By the time you get to staff+ it truly is never about the code, and there's a reason why staff+ salaries are an order of magnitude higher than mid-level ones.