Look, I don't wish to be insulting but with a comment like that, I find it hard to believe you worked in any business. While engineers maintain some level of control over product design, like making the product actually function (although I've even seen that thwarted by management) they do not usually have the last say in things like ergonomics, interoperability, improvements that cost extra, appearance, business development and many other design parameters.

By management I should point out that I am including anyone who is above the design engineer in the process.

I've seen business development guys promise customers impossible functionality because "that's what I thought they would want."

I've seen schedules created by systems engineers that could not be met if we lived in a Star Trek universe.

I've been in meetings where production logic was similar to; if one woman can give birth to a child in 9 months, nine women can give birth to a child in one month.

I've seen budgets slashed to the bone or critical people removed from projects for a host of reasons, good or bad.

In an actual example I was in a meeting where the manager of business development didn't know what the term PC Card slot meant. When he was presented with the product design in a meeting, he asked where the PC Card slot was. So the engineer pointed out that it was internal to the unit, on the motherboard where they were always placed. He did not like this because there was no actual slot on the outside. When it was pointed out that that wasn't really possible without completely redesigning both the motherboard and the enclosure he insisted we put a slot on the outside. When told that the PC Card slot couldn't be reached from ANY slot on the outside of the enclosure he made us redesign the end plate to incorporate a PC Card shaped slot that served no purpose except to stroke his ego, and add a costly change to a product with existing tooling and necessitate a PC Card slot sized plug to seal the unit against moisture be designed. We, from that day forward, referred to that end cap as the vanity plate.

Yeah a good manager would do all of those things you said assuming his manager doesn't stop him, but that's the point, managers suck. That's why we hate then.