At our small tech company, QA is elevated to a whole different level. The QA lead(s) are involved in all product planning meetings and develop the requirements

At our small tech company, QA is elevated to a whole different level. The QA lead(s) are involved in all product planning meetings and develop the requirements with the product team. Our QA lead has a phd and two have masters degrees! They know how the application is supposed to work better than most of the developers and play a big role throughout development. In my opinion (as the person that leads the developers), this is how it should work. They aren't some separate team we chunk over stuff to at the end of the day.