Game design is more broad, with topics such as deciding game mechanics, balancing damage, coming up with monster types, balancing the economy, designing item functionality, making sure the game is fun, etc etc.

So is this role vacant or what?

That article is kinda old. I'm sure things have changed now.

Nope, in big companies overworking of employees during crunch time is not uncommon. Since you know, a lot of big companies are actually big because they put profits in front of anything else.
Here's a video illustrating the point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGar7KC6Wiw
That's why being indie is a lot better.

Probably should be in Gremlin Chatter, although if it asks SK on how it works, then I guess it can stay here.

As for the actual question, it again depends on the video game company, but mostly likely programmers are mutually exclusive from designer. Which makes a lot of sense, because that's his or her specialty: programming or designing.

Generally that's how it works in big companies. Exceptions are small independent companies, or horizontal companies like Valve (Valve works in a very different and creative way compared to most companies). Three rings for example is a small company, the dev team is around 7 people, so everyone contributes to stuff other than their main duties. You may find Ian (artist) handling the difficulty of the game and making everyone have a hard time killing monsters for example. I don't really know much about how they work specifically though.

If the dev team is say, 100 people or more (as in many big budget AAA games), you can imagine the design area and programming area are a lot less connected, and your input is a lot harder to get through. It's not like nobody cares about what you have to say, but they may not have time to listen to you, or your ideas may not be as good as you think. You were hired to code software, and that is what you should be paying the most attention to.
Working for EA, yeah it should probably be like that, just work on what you're asked to. EA is a horrible company, I advise you to never work for them, no matter how much creative freedom they would allow you. Also here I'm talking about games EA develops, not games that EA publishes, which are two different things.

I know nothing about Insomniac, they have a job page here if you're interested I guess http://www.insomniacgames.com/careers/job-openings/

Also programming is generally a job without glory, if you do things in the most fantastic way nobody notices, but if you do a bad job and the game has bugs and such everyone complains.

lol, yeah, probably doesn't belong in these General Discussions, but i can answer a bit.

Tohru-Adachi
Q1) So, first, is a Software Engineer the same as a Engine Coder/Object/GUI Designer? What is GUI?

Engine coding/Object/GUI Designer can fall under the broader term "Software Engineer". It basically means you're either programming or designing the systems that will be programmed. "Systems" can be anything from a weapon/character system to how a menu flows and works. GUI (graphical user interface) is basically something you see on the screen and interact with. Menus, buttons, whatever you see on screen.

Q2) How does coding work in general? How hard is it to learn, and how to code it in general?
In GENERAL, it's like listing out a bunch of instructions. Like this:
Every frame:
- If the mouse moves, store the mouse position.
- Find and store the angle between the mouse and the center of the screen.
- Face the player in that angle.
- If the mouse is clicked, tell the character to attack in that direction.

Once you get the general ideas, it's mostly a matter of picking up a specific programming language that does the job you want it to (ex: if I want to make a quick game that I can put up online for desktops to play, that's a job for Flash/ActionScript3. If I'm trying to make Android apps, probably Java) Don't try to reinvent the wheel unless you want to know how the wheel works (ex: if you do AS3, there's an engine called Flixel that does things like handle drawing/basic physics - if you just want to test ideas, it's nice. Though if you really want to get a better idea of the inner workings, you'd want to start from scratch and just play around with something).

Q3) Does the Software Engineer can help in design outside of their role(like Map Making and the story)?
That depends. Smaller groups/companies tend to have more fluid roles.
Ex: I am a junior programmer/technical artist in a smaller team inside a relatively small company, so I get to participate in design talks and once in a while get to do fun things like sound/music. At larger companies, things tend to be more split up so you're only in charge of that-one-part-of-the-game.

Q4) What is level designing? How does this differ to other roles in "Game Design"?
Level design is generally things like layout. If you were level-designing something like Mario, where would you put enemies? How much space should there be between blocks? What's a good way to design the level to subtly teach the player more complicated patterns?

Design can be anything from story [pff]/character/enemy/puzzle/menu/level planning to tweaking stats/reading data to figure out how to correctly make the game enjoyable, keep players, or make money. Once you actually finish designing the game, you probably should be able to correctly test it, get data from testing, and figure out how to make the game better. You don't just come up with a design then fly off and party for a year while programmers make your game.

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Shoebox:
If a designer doesn't know how to program, how can they ask the programmers to create something?
In general, people who become designers (rather, are HIRED to be designers) are able to think about the details of things they're designing. Traditionally, they've made things like design documents (look them up online!) which tend to be detailed enough for programmers to have an idea of what to make. Putting it in a Spiral Knights situation: can you think of all the different things Wolvers do when you attack them? A designer probably laid out those behaviors long before a programmer tried it. This isn't always to say they're exclusive - there's design work in programming too, it just doesn't look as pretty lol.

Also, if a designer is also acting producer and doesn't know how to program, how can they make decisions on what needs more priority in terms of implementation?
Producer is a different thing from designer. Producers are usually the people that talk to clients and/or manager projects. Usually, features/milestones in projects can be broken up into different time periods (hey, notice how we're getting news/small updates every 2 weeks or so? notice how the content focus has been on missions?). Anyway, it's not just magic- usually they'll talk with their team to get an idea of what they can get done. If something can't be made on time, it'll either get pushed off to a later release, cut off, or be forced in via long crunch days (..nights).

Tantarian:
"That's why being indie is better"

;P remember though, being a game developer (developer being anyone involved in design/programming/artistic creation) for a career is well, for making money doing something you (hopefully) love or are good at (either designing, making art, or coding). That's why many people ended up at Zynga, lol.

If you go indie, you also have to know how to be a business person (unless you're a hobbyist and just want to make little free games for fun) - you generally won't be making 100k+ selling apps for yourself unless you're good and lucky, but you'll probably also be making silly little games you might not really want to make on the side in order to have some cash flow. It's something I'd have loved to do instead, but it's way risky and I'm only planning to go that route as a last resort :P