I’ve seen some quite negative reactions to Doug Bowman’s post, which insinuated he was ungrateful for his position at Google. Most of this seemed to hinge on the phrase “I can’t operate in an environment like that.“ But I think this phrase was widely misinterpreted. It doesn’t mean "I don’t like working in this environment”. Rather, it means “You are forcing me to deliver an inferior result based on a flawed belief.”

That belief is that data can’t lie.

The frustration for someone in Doug’s position is that he is hired as an expert in his field, eager to share his experiences. The problem, though, is the people in Doug’s position are often hired under the incorrect assumption that a designer has amassed information in their career, not experiences. That assumption leads to a second flawed assumption: that all decisions will be based on hard facts.

— Theocacao: Measuring the Design Process