I don't know where this person got the idea that a company "run by engineers" would result in good products. Engineers don't always care about the end result. I've seen engineers completely compromise the utility and experience of the product to make their own job easier or more fun. If it "sounds logical", they assume it's good and don't ask more questions about how it will impact users.

Would you hire a mechanical engineer to run a car company? The mechanical engineer cares if the transmission is highly efficient; they don't care if the seats are comfortable, or if the car can fit standard wheels/tires. Those are the things the car's user cares about. They expect the transmission to be efficient, but they equally expect it to be comfortable and compatible.

"Infrastructure" isn't a raw mechanical component. It's a product with an entire "life" outside the technical. How it's controlled by a user, its responsiveness and intuitiveness, how they (and 3rd parties) interface with it, its operational and failure modes, its outputs and inputs... all of that's separate from the internal workings.

It's the difference between a car having a door, and having a door that fits perfectly, opens with ease, and closes with no effort, gaps or seams. A ton of extra work is required to make that happen. Making the door is easy; making it fit well is much harder.

Putting a nerd in charge will not fix the focus on the end result. You need to put people in charge who are obsessed with the customer's experience. Say what you will about Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs, they at least got that right.

take astral, planetscale.... Pi even - so many good orgs where the product is the result of engineering passion