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Comment by asoneth | Hacker News Reader

Came here to write the same.

I used to teach at a UX grad program where students were required to learn both design and development. But doing both on the same project was almost always a mistake -- the designer has to deeply understand and advocate for the end-user's mental model while the developer has to deeply understand the technical model and constraints. Attempting to do both often end up conflating them or compromising on at least one of them.

Sort of like how many lawyers are skilled enough to handle either prosecution or defense but few do both on the same case.

I think there's a Nielsen/Norman article on this but can't find it at the moment.

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I think it takes really senior designer/developer that can do both solo. Those people exists but still it's better to be responsible only for just one because it's tiring and demanding.

The best people added the other skill over time after they have been already excellent in main one (in my experience mostly designers learned to code rarely it goes other way). But teaching it from start side by side as equal seems like it would slow down the process. That doesn't mean i wouldn't want designers to learn to code from the start but just keep it simple at first.

Of the hundreds of my students and coworkers who had both design and development skills, only a few could fill both roles on the same project without compromising on either.

But when hiring I rarely bother reaching out to them. It's not just that being responsible for both is tiring or demanding, but a project team that dedicates one person to each role delivers faster than a team with one person wearing both hats. And given that people who can do both well at the same time on the same project are exceedingly rare, they typically earn high six figures (or comparable equity) so there's not much in the way of cost savings either.

Having said that, maybe it'd be worth it for a founder or an early employee where there is a strong pressure to maintain a low headcount?

On the other hand someone who can do both code and design has huge advantage of knowing where to cut corners, how to use platform features effectively and thus higher chance to make robust solution. But you need to have envinroment that allows this.

Perhaps, though personally I haven't found that to be an advantage compared to having two separate roles with decent communication skills.

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