As someone who's been a hardware engineer at Apple and left specifically because I saw they were getting rid of the headphone jack, it is not the engineers that get to make those kinds of decisions. The decision to remove the headphone jack was so they could sell you $100+ air pods that would then also work with your Apple Watch. It was not because there was no space or that ingress protection was unachievable, or it cost to much, or people didn't want it. Trick Dacy is right.

By the way, I rock a Linux phone now with a headphone jack, removable battery, microSD, and have an Android with a headphone jack, microSD as my backup. If the Fairphone 6 had a headphone jack, which is the #1 requested feature on every forum post I've seen, it would be the perfect phone, especially given it can have both Android and Linux on it.

I read it. I found it increasingly confusing. I thought I was being very clear in making a singular point: engineers rarely if ever decide what features get built, unless their input on what's cost effective or possible is properly considered. In this case meaning engineers saying they want or don't want a headphone jack on a phone would probably not be a thing because they know if it did they would be ignored. Here's how this actually went:

Execs at company ask some team to find a new way to make revenue. They come up with the idea to remove the headphone jack and start making and selling wireless headphones and (bonus) adapters for people who don't want wireless. The CEO loves the idea and forces it to happen. The engineers were told to design a new phone without it. Some of them gripe about it but no one cares. Maybe even one guy quit over it. The phone gets made anyway because engineers don't decide features. They decide the how not the what.