> All new software needs to be done in the absence of UX folk. Seriously.

This needs further clarification. What kind of software would that be? I read your previous sentence as "I can do the work UX folk do", but you don't seem to be implying that UX is not important, right?

UX is very important, but the somehow it seems that the result of UX folks getting involved often does not result in a better UX. There have never been UX experts than there are today, yet many people feel the quality of UX is going down instead of up.

I wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water. There are good and bad “UX folks.” Just like there are good and bad developers. You just need to keep the bad ones away from your project.

When you’re looking for a “UX expert” and they are showing you their portfolio, ask them to show how their apps look on a phone in landscape orientation or over a slow dial-up connection, or how their designs work with a screen reader, or for a colorblind user. If they say “oh, that’s a problem for the Accessibility team,” RUN away from that candidate!

> When you’re looking for a “UX expert” and they are showing you their portfolio, ask them ...

Also, what was the methodology used to decide the particular UX solution to the problem?

I think a better way to put it is that generally, UX experts know what they're doing. But UX experts aren't the ones that actually design the UI, that's for a UI designer, and those folks are wholly unqualified and have zero business actually making UIs because they don't know a god damn thing about good UX.

A UI designer is tasked with making a UI beautiful, a concept that is highly subjective. A UX designer is tasked with making the UI functional, which is far less subjective.

Guess which person the management takes more input from?