The point that "Web design" is part of pop culture is something I've had a very hard time with working as a dev at non-software companies; Everybody from every

The point that "Web design" is part of pop culture is something I've had a very hard time with working as a dev at non-software companies; Everybody from every department wants to have a say about how the website looks. Web devs are expected to acknowledge and obey the opinions of those with "pull", i.e. "Gary from sales", the CEO's wife, or whatever "hot new hire's behind" the company is currently blowing steam up. Projects would always end up as "designed by committee" and way worse than they'd have to. Management just shrugs, even if they understand the problem. After 1-2 years nobody remembers why the result is as bad as it is and assumes that the web dev just isn't that capable. But the web dev, even if he's got a "Head of.." title is never seen as equal to the Head of Sales or Head of HR, so the cycle continues. I've heard many devs envy people like me who work in non-IT or non-Software companies: "Nobody understands your job so you must be able to do whatever you want!" - but the opposite is true, because people don't understand how little they understand about web dev. They think it's all the same, from building a service like Gmail to the CEO's teenage son's band homepage. Around 2006 I've even got someone from marketing with no technical background whatsoever set up a "think tank" inside the company because his idea was to "create a Facebook competitor". As in, world wide social media juggernaut, using the resources found in our company: 1 web dev, 1 infrastructure guy, and one Windows help desk person. The shocking thing was that his superior didn't immediately shut him down, but let him waste everybody's time for weeks.