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> judging by the designers salaries - frontend devs are more valuable than skilled design professional. So, this is what you get by paying less. Why should fro

> judging by the designers salaries - frontend devs are more valuable than skilled design professional. So, this is what you get by paying less. Why should frontend devs be not paid more than designers? Many frontend devs have dedicated significant numbers of years to become skilled professionals, just like you.

nbzso 6y ago
As a front-end dev by nature of my business I witnessed the difference my self and can share it with you. When designing a product right and towards long term quality, designers decision has more business value than front-end development. You can use design system for years to come and change front-end tech several times in this period. Todays front-end development is not like in 2008 when we used vanilla JS/Jquery/Ajax, there are tons of libraries and modularity in front-end development process. The low payment for designers is just tech founders devaluing the design process and the result is less qualified designers competing for what is left on the table (spoiler alert: it’s not too much). As you can see from citation, the mentioned startup is not looking for a designer, because they are under 20 people. Design is not important, because in perceived from tech founders view - material design library will be enough:) Don’t get me wrong. There are use cases for front-end development, when experienced developer can be critical for the business and bring immense value. I share my point of view, that if things go in current direction may be in near future design will be generated by neural nets on some “data proven” and “success guaranteed” methodology.
- mavelikara 6y ago
  > When designing a product right and towards long term quality, designers decision has more business value than front-end development. A good design badly implemented leads to a poor product. > You can use design system for years to come and change front-end tech several times in this period. > Todays front-end development is not like in 2008 when we used vanilla JS/Jquery/Ajax, there are tons of libraries and modularity in front-end development process. > The low payment for designers is just tech founders devaluing the design process and the result is less qualified designers competing for what is left on the table (spoiler alert: it’s not too much). Or it could be a realization by founders that design skills have commoditized enough that specialist designers do not provide enough incremental value. If you hold the position that other parts of product development have commoditized with the advent of more libraries, it a strange to claim that design is immune to this change over time. The stance is especially peculiar because you also claim that the value of good design is its ability to be applicable for many years. So, maybe in many domains all the good designs have been explored and consensus arrived at that paying high for a specialist designer is valuable to only handful of teams?
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Or it could be a realization by founders that design skills have commoditized enough that specialist designers do not provide enough incremental value. It could be, yes. Another possibility is that most founders have so little knowledge of good design and what it can do that most of them don't even consider whether it can be used to their advantage. I suspect there is some truth in both of these theories. Some examples that come to mind immediately are Apple, Tesla and Ubiquiti, all of which have been successful despite entering established markets where huge incumbents had vast resources available to compete. That success came after the newcomers introduced more "designer" hardware products that offered slick user experiences, making the competition look old and clunky by comparison, and giving the newcomers enough of an edge to disrupt the market. Something else that is noticeable about all of those companies is that they have built extremely loyal customer bases, which have endured even when they've had problems with products and despite their relatively high prices. It seems to be accepted wisdom among much of the startup community that a business like Apple is unique and there is no point trying to follow the same strategy because we can't all be Steve Jobs or Jony Ive. Maybe a few more founders should be asking, why not?
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Unfortunately, quality is expensive. Customers don't always want to pay for it, and so the businesses serving those customers don't either. This is true of good design, but other things too. For example, how many software businesses today believe having lots of bugs is OK as long as they can keep the money coming in? Some of the most successful sites on the Web have abysmal design and some of the most successful sites on the Web break all the time. And yet, despite those things, they remain among the most successful sites on the Web. Unless and until those of us who value quality can make it pay as a business model, we're always going to lose the argument. The hard thing to accept is that if we can't turn better quality into a competitive advantage, maybe we should be losing the argument.
  - nbzso 6y ago
    I am happy that we have a discussion on the subject. Its rare nowadays. We all share bits of personal and professional true, which is what makes HN a priceless place. "Another possibility is that most founders have so little knowledge of good design and what it can do that most of them don't even consider whether it can be used to their advantage. I suspect there is some truth in both of these theories." Commoditisation of design elements is a chance for startups to hire qualified designer from the start. In hands of a good designer, commoditisation is a prototype tool, not final point of implementation. The problem is that they are not willing to pay for "design", because they undervalue the work of designers and don't understand how critical is for their products in competitive market in which everyone uses the same UI libraries, the same "best practices", the same PM mantras.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      I think perhaps the question we are avoiding here is exactly when it makes sense for a tech firm to bring in specialist design skills. It's easy to say "from the start", but in reality, if you've got maybe 1-3 founders starting a new tech business from scratch, it would be unusual for any of them to be a specialist designer. Maybe one of them has some decent design skills in addition to whatever their main role is, but that's probably the best you're going to get. The first hires will almost certainly need to be developers or salespeople. If you're looking for early funding, you need something to show potential investors and you need to know if you've found product-market fit. If it's a bootstrapped firm that isn't looking for outside investment, you need to bring money into the bank and establish a sustainable cash flow, and no amount of design will do that if you don't have something you can sell and someone to sell it. So realistically, you're probably looking at bringing in specialist designers no earlier than the "second wave" of employees. At that point, you probably already have some sort of MVP and maybe a few further iterations. If a designer can't come in at that stage and effectively guide the existing product towards better usability and aesthetics, I think they're going to find opportunities for work are very sparse. Then the question becomes, do all the commoditised toolkits and marketplace themes and colour scheme generators and icon packs do enough to make an early product useful before a "real" designer is involved? And I think obviously the answer is yes, because a lot of businesses have been doing that in recent years and it's worked for them. They're not ideal, but at that stage, they're good enough. And so finally, I think the fundamental issue is about how a team building a new product without a dedicated designer can use those off-the-shelf tools and make something with good enough usability to be useful and attract business, while recognising that this is ideally a temporary situation and keeping everything as flexible as possible for the next stage of design when it starts to become more important and maybe they're starting to have team members with those specialist skills coming in to take responsibility for that aspect of the product. This is a subject that I see very little discussion about, compared to all the talk about one ready-made tool or another, or how an established design team might respond to different requirements later on.

nbzso 6y ago

As a front-end dev by nature of my business I witnessed the difference my self and can share it with you. When designing a product right and towards long term quality, designers decision has more business value than front-end development. You can use design system for years to come and change front-end tech several times in this period. Todays front-end development is not like in 2008 when we used vanilla JS/Jquery/Ajax, there are tons of libraries and modularity in front-end development process. The low payment for designers is just tech founders devaluing the design process and the result is less qualified designers competing for what is left on the table (spoiler alert: it’s not too much). As you can see from citation, the mentioned startup is not looking for a designer, because they are under 20 people. Design is not important, because in perceived from tech founders view - material design library will be enough:) Don’t get me wrong. There are use cases for front-end development, when experienced developer can be critical for the business and bring immense value. I share my point of view, that if things go in current direction may be in near future design will be generated by neural nets on some “data proven” and “success guaranteed” methodology.

mavelikara 6y ago
> When designing a product right and towards long term quality, designers decision has more business value than front-end development. A good design badly implemented leads to a poor product. > You can use design system for years to come and change front-end tech several times in this period. > Todays front-end development is not like in 2008 when we used vanilla JS/Jquery/Ajax, there are tons of libraries and modularity in front-end development process. > The low payment for designers is just tech founders devaluing the design process and the result is less qualified designers competing for what is left on the table (spoiler alert: it’s not too much). Or it could be a realization by founders that design skills have commoditized enough that specialist designers do not provide enough incremental value. If you hold the position that other parts of product development have commoditized with the advent of more libraries, it a strange to claim that design is immune to this change over time. The stance is especially peculiar because you also claim that the value of good design is its ability to be applicable for many years. So, maybe in many domains all the good designs have been explored and consensus arrived at that paying high for a specialist designer is valuable to only handful of teams?
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Or it could be a realization by founders that design skills have commoditized enough that specialist designers do not provide enough incremental value. It could be, yes. Another possibility is that most founders have so little knowledge of good design and what it can do that most of them don't even consider whether it can be used to their advantage. I suspect there is some truth in both of these theories. Some examples that come to mind immediately are Apple, Tesla and Ubiquiti, all of which have been successful despite entering established markets where huge incumbents had vast resources available to compete. That success came after the newcomers introduced more "designer" hardware products that offered slick user experiences, making the competition look old and clunky by comparison, and giving the newcomers enough of an edge to disrupt the market. Something else that is noticeable about all of those companies is that they have built extremely loyal customer bases, which have endured even when they've had problems with products and despite their relatively high prices. It seems to be accepted wisdom among much of the startup community that a business like Apple is unique and there is no point trying to follow the same strategy because we can't all be Steve Jobs or Jony Ive. Maybe a few more founders should be asking, why not?
Silhouette 6y ago
Unfortunately, quality is expensive. Customers don't always want to pay for it, and so the businesses serving those customers don't either. This is true of good design, but other things too. For example, how many software businesses today believe having lots of bugs is OK as long as they can keep the money coming in? Some of the most successful sites on the Web have abysmal design and some of the most successful sites on the Web break all the time. And yet, despite those things, they remain among the most successful sites on the Web. Unless and until those of us who value quality can make it pay as a business model, we're always going to lose the argument. The hard thing to accept is that if we can't turn better quality into a competitive advantage, maybe we should be losing the argument.
- nbzso 6y ago
  I am happy that we have a discussion on the subject. Its rare nowadays. We all share bits of personal and professional true, which is what makes HN a priceless place. "Another possibility is that most founders have so little knowledge of good design and what it can do that most of them don't even consider whether it can be used to their advantage. I suspect there is some truth in both of these theories." Commoditisation of design elements is a chance for startups to hire qualified designer from the start. In hands of a good designer, commoditisation is a prototype tool, not final point of implementation. The problem is that they are not willing to pay for "design", because they undervalue the work of designers and don't understand how critical is for their products in competitive market in which everyone uses the same UI libraries, the same "best practices", the same PM mantras.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    I think perhaps the question we are avoiding here is exactly when it makes sense for a tech firm to bring in specialist design skills. It's easy to say "from the start", but in reality, if you've got maybe 1-3 founders starting a new tech business from scratch, it would be unusual for any of them to be a specialist designer. Maybe one of them has some decent design skills in addition to whatever their main role is, but that's probably the best you're going to get. The first hires will almost certainly need to be developers or salespeople. If you're looking for early funding, you need something to show potential investors and you need to know if you've found product-market fit. If it's a bootstrapped firm that isn't looking for outside investment, you need to bring money into the bank and establish a sustainable cash flow, and no amount of design will do that if you don't have something you can sell and someone to sell it. So realistically, you're probably looking at bringing in specialist designers no earlier than the "second wave" of employees. At that point, you probably already have some sort of MVP and maybe a few further iterations. If a designer can't come in at that stage and effectively guide the existing product towards better usability and aesthetics, I think they're going to find opportunities for work are very sparse. Then the question becomes, do all the commoditised toolkits and marketplace themes and colour scheme generators and icon packs do enough to make an early product useful before a "real" designer is involved? And I think obviously the answer is yes, because a lot of businesses have been doing that in recent years and it's worked for them. They're not ideal, but at that stage, they're good enough. And so finally, I think the fundamental issue is about how a team building a new product without a dedicated designer can use those off-the-shelf tools and make something with good enough usability to be useful and attract business, while recognising that this is ideally a temporary situation and keeping everything as flexible as possible for the next stage of design when it starts to become more important and maybe they're starting to have team members with those specialist skills coming in to take responsibility for that aspect of the product. This is a subject that I see very little discussion about, compared to all the talk about one ready-made tool or another, or how an established design team might respond to different requirements later on.