2012-05-01
Explanation
This comic lampoons the common engineer complaint that marketing departments are unnecessary and make everything worse. In the first panel, a group of engineers gripe, "Why do we even need marketing? They just make everything dumb." Another enthusiastically agrees: "Man, you'''re right! Let'''s start a company where products are designed, built, and marketed by engineers."
The second panel shows the result of this engineer-only approach: a product billboard for the "MagnaTablet" with the tagline, "If the user interface is confusing, it'''s because you'''re stupid." This perfectly captures the stereotypical engineer mindset -- technically brilliant but completely lacking in user empathy or communication skills. Rather than making the product accessible, they blame the customer.
The joke highlights why marketing and user experience professionals exist: engineers, left to their own devices, tend to optimize for technical correctness rather than user-friendliness. The votey panel drives the point home further with the text "User manual not included because user manuals are for wusses," reinforcing the engineers''' disdain for accommodating anyone who does not already understand the product as well as its creators do.