It was different where you were but the billG and early Ballmer years devs had a lot of power. Like to the point where PMs had training on "soft power" or more

It was different where you were but the billG and early Ballmer years devs had a lot of power. Like to the point where PMs had training on "soft power" or more bluntly how to get a dev who doesn't want to do your feature to implement how you designed. A good dev certainly wasn't going to get into any trouble refusing a "brain dead" feature in those years.