it becomes less about the craft of design itself and more about convincing management and non-design leaders about the value of design and why things must be done a certain way within the company

I think you're right. However, after a series of situations where we spent the better part of six months designing, prototyping, demoing, re-designing, getting customer buy in, and getting everything just right ... only to have our manager walk in off the street and declare at a glance that key things had to be changed (often changed to the way things were during week one), and then calming explaining to the manager how that's where we started and the long road we've taken to get it to where it is now and why ... only to be over-ruled.

And then delivering the new/changed application to the client, only to have them ask us ... "Why did you change it?" ... be embarrassed in front of the client, and have an elegant colour scheme changed last minute to something that looks like a circus tent ...

AARRGH. I'm triggering post-tramautic stress.

Anyway ... I gave it up. Decided I would only build elegant usable applications for my own personal projects.

For the last many years, I've sat comfortably in a cube, implementing complex, scalable back-ends that conform to functional and performance requirements. There's nary an icon to be seen anywhere, it's easy as pie and pays much better.