I know this is going to sound weird, but if you didn't work on a game I care about or worse, worked on games that I think are bad, then I will not take your development experiences seriously.

I'm not saying they didn't happen, just that I would be foolish to value a process that produces products I don't like. The fact that you have such strict separation between programmers and designers leads me to believe your company hires a lot of people they don't need to do jobs in a poor manner. I have very little respect for people who 'design' but can't create. I'm not saying all of them are worthless, but the vast majority of them are. I have a lot of respect for the handful of exceptional designers that actually justify their position with good ideas. Most designers I've come across are stupid meme-chasers who actively make whatever they touch worse.

I enjoy plenty of games that were made by fully-remote teams, such as Mordhau. Did you work on anything like that?