Some of this might be a function of your seniority, experience, and overall care about the business.
When I was a more junior dev, I really didn't care about any of the specifics of business decisions. I cared about high-level things the company was doing, but when it came down to the specifics, I just was not interested. When we were updated on where the business was going, of course I cared about how successful we were, but how we got there, in terms of marketing was uninteresting.
Over time, I started to care more about those specific business decisions, because I had enough experience seeing failed outcomes in previous teams & companies. So, naturally, I started paying more attention about what "Robert Smith" was doing in the "communications department". I still didn't fully understand it, though, and this is where you can either believe what they're doing is kind of bullshit, or, more charitably, what they're doing is really hard to quantify.
I believe in the more charitable interpretation now. I've quit my job and am working on my own project, trying to structure my efforts, and I'm realizing that once you start thinking about business beyond just what code you're working on, what you're trying to do is very much ill-defined.
It's not as simple as coding work where you know you are trying to write a specific feature or refactor some code. Instead, at a business level, you have to come up with initiatives and goals which are very hard to quantify. You have to start thinking "I'm working on feature X and I'm hoping this will feed into improving the marketing of Y, and it will attract user Z." But, it's still very hard to measure if those efforts are actually making any difference. So naturally, IMHO, a lot of those goals and decisions start feeling a little bullshitty, but it's hard to avoid because the domain you're working in is so imprecise.
When I was a more junior dev, I really didn't care about any of the specifics of business decisions. I cared about high-level things the company was doing, but when it came down to the specifics, I just was not interested. When we were updated on where the business was going, of course I cared about how successful we were, but how we got there, in terms of marketing was uninteresting.
Over time, I started to care more about those specific business decisions, because I had enough experience seeing failed outcomes in previous teams & companies. So, naturally, I started paying more attention about what "Robert Smith" was doing in the "communications department". I still didn't fully understand it, though, and this is where you can either believe what they're doing is kind of bullshit, or, more charitably, what they're doing is really hard to quantify.
I believe in the more charitable interpretation now. I've quit my job and am working on my own project, trying to structure my efforts, and I'm realizing that once you start thinking about business beyond just what code you're working on, what you're trying to do is very much ill-defined.
It's not as simple as coding work where you know you are trying to write a specific feature or refactor some code. Instead, at a business level, you have to come up with initiatives and goals which are very hard to quantify. You have to start thinking "I'm working on feature X and I'm hoping this will feed into improving the marketing of Y, and it will attract user Z." But, it's still very hard to measure if those efforts are actually making any difference. So naturally, IMHO, a lot of those goals and decisions start feeling a little bullshitty, but it's hard to avoid because the domain you're working in is so imprecise.