Via Dan Maslowski:

3.3 Responsibilities to your Organization

[…]

3.3.1 be a technical conscience

When the “Emperor has no clothes”, it is the responsibility of the senior technical staff to stand up and say so. Sales people are driven by short term business. Marketing people work with all manner of vague and ambiguous factors. Executives work with the information that other people have given them. Managers work with the directions they have been given. Engineers are the people who responsible for figuring out how this stuff is all going to work … and if it isn't going to work they have an obligation to say so.

When somebody says “good enough for who its for”, it is the responsibility of the senior technical staff to set higher standards. The business people are primarily driven by time and cost considerations, and if the senior engineers don't stand up for technical excellence, we can be sure that nobody else will.

Senior engineers need to regularly ask the questions:

• If not now, when?
• If not us, who?

Roles and Responsibilities for Senior Technical Staff — Mark Kampe