Designated agency inside a nine person office, does the wall actually exist

The office manual I got at orientation has a designated agency addendum in it. The client signs, the managing broker assigns one agent to the seller and one to the buyer, and the form says each designated agent owes full fiduciary duty to their own client. Underneath that, the same broker supervises both agents, the same broker sees both files, and the firm collects both sides.

So the split I keep running into when I ask people here.

One view: designated agency is a real improvement. Two different humans, two different sets of notes, and the confidential stuff a buyer tells their agent about their ceiling doesn't cross the hall. The broker sitting above both of them is supervising, not negotiating. In a nine person office everybody knows each other, but knowing each other is not the same as sharing a client's walk-away number. Compared to one agent holding both sides of a price negotiation, it's a different animal.

Other view: the broker is the licensee. The agents work under that license, the fee agreement is with the firm, and the person who decides who gets which lead, which floor time, and what the splits look like next quarter is the same person whose firm doubles its take if the deal stays in-house. You don't need anyone to whisper a number across the hall for that to bend behavior. Post-settlement disclosure makes the compensation visible, which mostly means clients can now see the incentive they're being asked to ignore.

Rules on this differ a lot by state, including which duties survive the designation and what has to be disclosed in writing, so the manual I'm holding is not the answer anywhere else.

I'm asking as the client, not as the person who'd be assigned. If you were buying, would the designation change what you tell your agent?