[Dirak]

> [At larger companies...] Talking to users is for PMs, silly! You stick to what you’re good at. At best you get a summary of user insights and a reasonable task priority list derived from it. At worst you get a confusing task list built off a mistaken understanding of users and the manager’s selfish vision, and no one can explain why each task matters.

Not necessarily. At the large companies I've worked at (>200 people), a UXR will drive the interview process with users, starting with compiling a list of questions from engineers, then conducting the interview sessions with users in which engineers can sit in, and then disseminating the insights and setting up a meeting to make the insights into a actionable engineering projects.

Working with UXRs is a dream, as they're trained to conduct interviews in an impartial way, leading to insights that are less biased and higher quality. Contrast to when I worked for startups and I or someone on my team would interview users, very often the feedback would end up contaminated because the interviewer would ask the wrong question, projected their biases into the questions, or even worse into the insights.

[esafak]

Untrained people might want to read these books:

* The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

* How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business.