I think this was TFA's point about "engineers have been begging to be involved earlier in the process forever". Which is absolutely true.

It has to be someone's job to push back on the Product Guy's stupid idea and answer all the awkward questions about the not-so-happy path with it. Unfortunately, because of the way we've ended up with this process, that person is often the engineer tasked with building it, without any effective political power to challenge the design process.