bike gears are numbered now? Is 1 high, or 8? I press the little button at the front to pop one gear up, and push that big thumb lever to push the chain back up the cassette, it's intuitive. If I need to check if the bike is in the right gear (not concerned exactly which one) I pedal a little. What product manager added _numbers_ to bike gears?
Bike gears have had numbers for many decades. The ancient (even then) Raleigh 20 I had as a kid had gear numbers (3), though searching now I see some Raleigh 20s had names instead. Every non-road-bike I've had since has had clearly visible numbers on the gear shifters.
You can ignore the numbering if you've got no interest in which gear you're currently using. Usually the lowest number will be the "lowest" gear - the one that is easiest to pedal up-hill which will be the largest cog on the rear cassette.
I don't understand the complaint. It's useful especially for people not riding every day or dozens of km on weekends. Sure, press or rotate to go up or down, but then you end up cross-chained on the largest chainring and largest cog.
I have had bikes that did not have numbers, but at least had indicators giving you an approximation where you're at. I sometimes miss that on my road bike when I'm not sure if I should change the gear on the front or not. When you ride enough you get a feel for it, but again not everyone does that.
i guess i ride enough - not dozens of kms or daily, but over many years - to intuit the gear, which is helped by the gear mechanism jumping to discrete positions. The first bikes i rode with gears were Marins back in the 90s which had no indicators, there was an old 3-speed Sturmey Archer (had to Google this one) where the gears are within the hub, I don't recall a gear indicator for that, but perhaps there was
