"User" Experience and the industry
User experience often ignores the user side of things. It should be defined by the user's experience, not the stakeholders. Although all users aren't the same and can't be put into a single box, they need priority over the needs of the stakeholders.
If your goal is to create a good "user experience," and of course it is, then you need to understand that if the company achieves its goals but the user doesn't, you have failed. You have created a bad "user experience." Also, you have lost that user as a customer and as an advocate, which therefore means you failed to achieve your company's goal as well. Failing the user means failing the company.
On the other hand, if the user has a good experience and the corporation fails to achieve its goals, then you have succeeded. That user will very likely continue to be a customer and an advocate. You will get another chance in the future to achieve the corporation's goals.
If the company actually cared about how good its user experience was, they would invest time in listening to users. A quant survey is not "listening." Listening is research and demands time, effort, and skills. And responsive action.
Practitioners and mid-level managers are caught in the middle between two irreconcilable forces. Their products make their users unhappy, but the company's true values won't let them actually create happy user experiences.
Not only is it very, very difficult to change the company that employs you, but it's also very bad for your career to try. And worse, you're not just trying to change the company's products, but you are trying to change the company's values.
If you want to be a "user experience" professional creating good experiences for users, then you need to assault the gross inequality in the tech industry. If the power in the company comes from the top, there from the demand for real change for good UX should be either started or at least supported. The issue is that most of the people on the top, care about sales and revenue. It’s about the fight for survival.