I remember that, around 2010 perhaps, I had a discussion with a friend, working at a local then hip, now corporatized software house. My passion was usability testing; I thought at the time it was my "passion for people".

They seemed to think most projects they sell cannot afford usability testing. Which to me seemed weird; after all, casual hallway testing a la joel spolsky really isn't resource intensive.

Reading this what I was more passionate actually developer's grip on reality. Having experienced user testing open my eyes several times, I had a keen sense of how we can delude ourselves into images of what our users ought to be - and in turn, what their domains are about in our heads.