Looking at tech, designers have held very little power historically. Examples are few and far between, with Apple being the most notable outlier. Old Apple did

Looking at tech, designers have held very little power historically. Examples are few and far between, with Apple being the most notable outlier. Old Apple did not change the status quo much - it was a golden child for less than a decade after all - the 80s and 90s saw very little tech companies where designers were calling the shots. Only when New Apple rose from the ashes did tech start to deeply prioritize value design. Nowadays, many startups have design cofounders, major companies like Airbnb or Dropbox regularly and prominently show the influence of their design teams, and so on. It definitely feels like an overcorrection right now - many designers will surely be amongst the first to go in the next recession. (As far as fields other than tech, they’re all completely different stories regarding their relationship to visual design)