How to Work with Designers: A Cheat Sheet for Engineers and PMs

Nice opinions, but the primary feeling I get from this is "Designers are closed-minded prima donnas, and the only way to work with them is to talk their language and care about the same things they do."

As far as I am concerned, the primary job of a designer is communicating a message. If anything, designers should probably be given less slack over time for their personality flaws, because their whole job revolves around communication and empathy toward a user.

Why not reflect that same empathy inward toward the company? If your design team is the center of your empathy toward your users, your design team should equally be trying to lead positive communication efforts with engineers and PMs to find a common ground, build a common vocabulary, and understand everyone's stake in the game from the onset in a diplomatic and friendly fashion, especially so as the designer becomes senior. After all, what problem is more abstract than the meta-problem of intergroup communication?

I don't think posts like this help construct meaningful dialogue between departments and only serve to reinforce existing clique-oriented behavior. Interdepartmental/inter-role communication is "us vs. them" only if these types of attitudes are allowed to foster in the corporate culture.