I mostly agree with your parent post and your response. I think when technical people who have excellent understanding of user needs usually produce better product/service than designers getting together in a room with post-it notes - this may be an unpopular opinion but I've seen it time and again - "Design Thinking" is largely a buzz word in all places I've worked.

Also, just to nitpick - Apple has produced some of the worst products with no understanding of what the user wants - for e.g. Apple Music App. Also, Google, a recent one - Google Meet hides its mute/unmute button and in a completely undiscoverable way. Imagine driving a car where the brake pedal disappears only to appear when you hover your arm in a particular position left of the steering wheel. Now you can apply brakes. That's what they're doing with Google Meet, when I want to unmute to say something, I have to hover my mouse on the bottom of the screen and the unmute button pops up. Why isn't it always visible!? If I were leading that project, I would ask the team to scratch the entire UI and rebuild it and make sure these things don't happen again.