Airbnb CEO: Designers Deserve Respect Like Engineers | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb CEO: Designers Deserve Respect Like Engineers

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If by respect for designers you mean recruiting intelligent, productive and talented people, allowing them to have an impact and encouraging them to do great work then I surely agree. Great products have great design at their heart.

If by respect for designers you mean feeding the ego of so called "creatives" while indulging in endless bike shed meetings that achieve nothing then I surely disagree. Better lipstick will not make your pig taste any more or less like bacon.

This is my position.. yad yada yada

Same thing goes for Engineers

The "bike shed meetings" are usually driven by bosses, not engineers or designers

A designer will usually take a briefing and come up with certain (reasonable) proposals.

Then the bosses come and begin to tell that they like green, that they should "look like Amazon.com", and that he doesn't get this, that, yada yada yada

Not to forget the customer is not the boss but people that go to the website or use the product. It's their needs the designer and engineer should cater.

In my experience bike shed meetings are more likely to be about design than other topics. This is probably just because bikeshedding about a green version of Amazon.com is easier than bikeshedding about backoff/retry strategies or sql optimization.

Good designers don't fall in love with their work. At least, they don't when under corporate constraint, because they know perfection is neither possible nor desirable.

I don't think designers are worse when it comes to bike-shedding than anyone else. I've had more problems with product managers and arrogant bosses when it comes to that.

for those of you who missed it yesterday on HN

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

awesome, the if-by-whiskey tactic in play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

good job on not getting caught immediately. :)

It has been my experience in agencies that designers are often the guys running the show at larger companies, with development often viewed as a commodity that is nice to have in-house, but could be traded away to another agency with little difficulty.

As an example, a guy I know that is now a director at a London based agency is hiring a Head of User Experience/Design, and a Head of Development. The design role requires many years of experience with large brands, leading projects, experience working with board members/multiple stakeholder environments with a salary range from £65-80k a year. The development role requires the same amount of experience as a developer; leading projects and people, but has a salary of £50-65k. This seems fairly common across agencies in London and with the pay scale lowered seems about the same in cities like Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, etc.

A company like Airbnb is going to be entirely different from the norm, but this is already common practice across many other agencies. The rise of Apple has done a lot for creatives, possibly a lot more than the technical might of companies like Microsoft and Google have done for developers.

Is this agency you refer to a marketing or design agency?

If so, this data point is most likely somewhat deceptive. The core competency of a marketing or design agency is creative work, and naturally you want exceptional talent in that respect. Such an agency is generally going to be building straightforward websites that don't require particularly skillful software engineering. (And even if they did, it'd be an option to contract out, whereas contracting creativity out is not - as far as I know - a real option.)

If you look at the salary of an equivalent "Head of Development" and "Head of User Experience/Design" at e.g. Microsoft I suspect you'll see the opposite salary situation because of the relative focus of the organisation (although Microsoft is putting a lot of emphasis on design these days so who knows?).

I should have been clearer. Both examples market themselves as full-service agencies.

You're absolutely right that creative and marketing agencies skew their pay towards the creative and business sides. Sadly, in my experience, a lot of full-service agencies side towards creatives over developers, both in pay scale and decision making. I've known a few Technical Directors that seem to be equal in name only, and are often restricted solely to purely technical subjects.

This is humorous to me considering the engineering experience I've had with their site. In a word, lax.

You can attack it from either angle, surely—a tool requires both design and engineering—but you have to strike a balance.

If I had one recommendation, it would be for every engineer to be a designer and every designer an engineer. Only then will you begin to understand the process and problems that the other side faces at every turn.

Anecdotally, being both an engineer and designer has helped me immensely in aspects of each practice in untold ways.

So, yes, the article is right, but they shouldn't be making people think more like designers—that, too, is closed minded and limiting. Aim for a balance between engineering and design that works together. Looking at the problem from any one side is incomplete.

Function and Form. You need to be able to design a system to be an engineer, and the same goes for designers. I would go even further and say that both disciplines are essentially the same with each emphasizing function (engineer), and form (designer) respectively.

Designers as a group tend to include all sort of people into one lump. It includes an artist who can design a photoshop mockup that might be visually appealing but too heavy to load. It also includes multi-talented interface designers who can design an elegant but highly functional widget.

The former don't get much respect because they are often unaware of the constraints that others in the company are working in. But the latter are certainly well regarded in most companies because a designer's work is almost always noticed. Airbnb seems to have a well designed and functional interface, so this statement makes sense for them.

>Designers as a group tend to include all sort of people into one lump

Kind of like the title "engineer": Electrical engineers do everything from circuit design to PLC programming and power generation.

I've spent as much time hiring one designer as ten engineers. In that sense good designers are more rare and harder to discern. But they go and stay where they're respected (like engineers and everyone else) so I don't think this will change anyone's behavior toward them. Despite some of the negative comments here, i think most folks who have worked with a good designer can see the difference and don't accuse them of "superstar syndrome" any more than any other team member. That's not the same as respect and that is why it is hard to get them.

Wait, guys. Wait. Engineers are respected? If designers aspiration is to be as respected as engineers, then design roles must involve toilet cleaning at some stage.

I think it's likely just harder to show functional value with design work. If you're coding, there's something usually active that will happen from the work. If you design something, it's really up to tastes of the people reviewing it - unless its coupled with A/B testing, but even then A/B testing can be done badly, and the metrics you're following could be wrong, too.

Project managers think they are the life of a project, Developers think they are the life of a project, Designers think they are the life of a project.

The thing is, without the project managers and designers, the project still gets delivered...

Programmers, product management, project managers and designers are just roles. It doesn't mean that they have to be performed by different people.

Without product and project management, the right product wouldn't be shipped on time. Every role is necessary.

They are just roles, but the OP implies that when the roles are assigned to individuals, there is conflict.

This is true.

Any software engineer worth their weight is a good product and project manager and knows how not to build something that looks like complete shit.

Strictly speaking, no.

I would say that is possible to have a very basic product without designers and managers, but not without engineers.

Unless the designer or project manager engineers it.

Of course. But that would make him an "engineer", at least in the scope of that project :).

Yes, it gets delivered

If it is usable and drives revenue is a different story

It depends if your market is there already or if you need to build a market. If the market is there already, it really doesn't matter if it's usable or not.

Enterprise software is a fine example of that.

It's hilarious to me how much you're making sweeping generalizations and acting like the smartest guy in the room.

Hey look, someone on Hacker News devaluing the contribution of other team members relative to engineers. How novel.

That is, an unusable mess of a project.

Do you want to just create, or create something actually usable?

Maybe its just me, but I always see people who claim their profession needs more respect don't have a good understanding of _others_ professions. I will tell you now from my perspective designers do amazing things and I have a very high level of respect for what they do. I can't do it, my designs suck. In the same way designers I work with tell me what I do is amazing. I don't think what I do is amazing ,and I get the vibe they have the same feeling towards their profession. When someone starts complaining that they don't get enough credit or respect for what their doing it tells me they think they are awesome and better then everyone else and somehow they need more acknowledgement for their work then the rest of the disciplines that go into making a functioning product.

AirBnB is a beautiful site and better than any hotel booking site.

However, it falls down when hosts are unresponsive after booking. Reminds me of eBay from long ago. We thought of eBay as shopping - until a seller goes AWOL.

But unlike anyone else

Every employee deserve the same respect, including the CEO and the cleaning staff.

I think the term respect is used loosely here. Sure, everyone should be treated with the same respect, but I feel like they're substituting it for admiration.

Engineers are a respected class in California?

Hell's balls, I need to move.

No they don't, they base their attainment on what looks nice or looks to be working.

Engineers base it on knowledge, technique and what really works.

Do you really think that the world let Architects (form of designer) put down buildings without engineer bureaus thoroughly calculating if the plans are really able? I think not.

This world should stop celebrating their extrovert superstars instead of the people that really make this world tick, and stop seeing their shallow remarks as true.

and do you think the world would let engineers put down buildings without architects?

Actually that happens a lot.

Any examples?

Engineers build more than buildings.

No designer input:

http://www.healthcare.philips.com/main/products/mri/systems/...

Do you have a citation on the no designer input? I can't find any indication (I assume you're familiar with the system?) on that page.

No citation but I know the guys who built it and they're all engineers, computer scientists and physicists. The design portion was "how can we make a case that has the least amount of plastic, is easy to clean and access for service". That's as far as it went.

There is no place for a designer as they don't understand how to keep things easy to clean and repair.

> The design portion was "how can we make a case that has the least amount of plastic, is easy to clean and access for service". That's as far as it went.

Are you sure?

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/technology/1202/gallery....

"The glowing light ring of this MRI scanner is meant to distract patients from their procedure and sooth their nerves. The entire unit was designed to help improve the workflow of technicians and caregivers."

But I have to say, when I asked google images for "mri scanner", with exceptions they mostly looked more or less the same to me, so I guess everybody designs them with similar goals in mind. Now, to make an MRI scanner that looks like, oh I don't know, maybe that plant/vagina thing from Pink Floyd's "The Wall"; that would be truly bold design. And altough I'm not really fond of Giger, he should make one, too.

> There is no place for a designer as they don't understand how to keep things easy to clean and repair.

Uhh.. ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design

"Our Healthcare designers are passionate about creating well-designed, efficient and people-focused products and solutions across the whole continuum of care. Our approach to healthcare design is based on a deep understanding of the user-experiences of patients, care-givers and medical staff in order to enhance and save lives."

http://www.design.philips.com/philips/sites/philipsdesign/ab...

There are examples of great design produced exclusively by engineers or scientists. The reason is because good design fulfills a need, and in industry these needs are often technical.

When you throw in the needs of human beings is that things start to get weird. Some needs are subtle (how to you design an MRI machine for people that have claustrophobia?), others might seem ridiculous (say, redesigning the shell because the internals were redesigned, just to signify an upgrade).

Even then, I think engineers make great designers and even artists. Gustave Eiffel had only built bridges until he designed the Eiffel tower , Joseph Paxton build the Crystal Palace because he had designed greenhouses all his life. And so on, there are many examples of great engineers making the jump to design without much effort and great success.

And by God are they ugly monstrosities no sane person would want to live in.

I should know. I live in India and half the buildings here don't have architects. The result is something straight out of Sauron's nightmares.

Engineers are fine and all that, but please, stop putting down other professions. I know the new century has been good to your nerddom, but do remember the people who call the real shots are rarely the people who actually, you know, code.

I am not putting down other professions, I just think that designers should not have the same level of respect that engineers have.

for instance, You (and I) would not be able to react here if it wasn't for engineers to calculate and refine the process of growing pure silicon and causing a revolution of large scale integrated logics. Or engineers creating the integrated computer network called internet.

The history of science is full of examples that show how engineers pave the roads of most areas to enable others (like designers) to build further.

I also lamented the fact that mostly designers and others, whos work is much more clear and in the open are celebrated much more than the people that do really important work to make the world go round.

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