I don't care about the product as much as I care about the code.

Well, that's the thing. You have to shut your programmer brain off and turn on your business brain. The code never really was that important. Delivering value to end users is the important thing, at least to the people that count.

Tim Bryce, one of the foremost experts on software methodology, hated programmers and considered them deeply sad individuals who had to compensate for their mediocre intelligence and narrow thinking by gatekeeping technology and holding the rest of the company hostage to them. And, he said upper management in corporate America agreed with him.

If you place a lot of value in being a good programmer, then to the real movers and shakers in society you are at best a tool they can use to get even richer. A tool that will soon be replaced by a machine. The time has come for programmers to level up their soft skills and social standing, and focus their intelligence on the business rather than the code. It sucks but that's the reality of the AI era.

you're a tool to them even if you are miserable instead of enjoying what you do.

Do you think the product is not the code?

From a user perspective, yes. The product is what it does, not how it does it.

But for the person building the product it very much is how it does it.

I think we (developers) need to get over that. Code was always the means to an end, which is providing a product to solve a problem, not the end itself.

The code is still the means to the end. AIs still write code, that is compiled and deployed and operated in some manner.

It isn't, no one is buying code on it's own - but it's a component of the product. I dislike the phrasing above since it assumes the two are distinct things.

Honestly, it never was. Personal projects not withstanding, if there is a product that should always be the focus. Code is only a means to that.

If the product is software the code is the product.