I'm guilty of ridiculous analogies, but some of these are just beyond making sense. The one that annoyed me the most here that I saw (twice) was the parallel b

I'm guilty of ridiculous analogies, but some of these are just beyond making sense. The one that annoyed me the most here that I saw (twice) was the parallel between layers taking you down to understanding TCP/IP and socket programming. I'm quite certain I'm not the only person who's ever designed a (fairly rich) web site that does not in any way use networks. An attempt at such an analogy will only show your own lack of understanding of the layers. I've had web designers who do great design and UX work and would deliver it to me in a basic HTML format with at least basic CSS that I could apply in the product. These were successful designers that enabled the team to build high quality products. If I'm going to implement a web design I received in .psd format, you might as well just come over and describe what you're envisioning. You are simply "an idea guy" (though hopefully with really good ideas that I couldn't've thought of myself) at that point and photoshop is a tool you use to communicate that idea. If you work in a sufficiently large organization, that's probably just fine. I communicate a lot of my ideas in .org when I can. Most of the time, my ideas come out in .py, .c, .cc, .erlang, .java, .js, .html, .sass, or whatever else feels like a fit. The fewer people you have between the problem and the solution, the faster things move.