Earlier quoted context omitted.
What did the software engineers hope to learn from this tour?
Because hardware is cool. I’m personally of the opinion that everyone who works in software should have to rack a server and bootstrap it. Physically mount it, cable it, and get the *nix distribution of your choice running on it, serving Hello, World. Everywhere I’ve worked, there is a marked difference in the quality of engineers who had played with hardware - even those who merely had expressed interest in it, and…
I think it maps to the proclivity of the engineer to want to understand the multiple layers that apply to whatever they're working on. The more curious, the more likely that engineer is to gain a better understanding of the whole, and therefore presumably be able to do better engineering.