AMA
Yesterday
1042
PM Manager, early 40s, married and ENM (Ethical Non Monogamous) AMA
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Why I Find Free Palestine Inspiring
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'Hindutva': The Radical Hindu Ideology That Seeks to 'Push Christianity Out of India’
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1083
Last good year to visit europe
We don’t talk enough about how most designers are severely underpaid for the value they create. Ask for a raise.
Agreed
Depends where I think. Senior at FAANG is typically ~300k
Yeah, even with the stocks going down, currently I’ll still make over 400k TC for 2022. Might dip below 400k if it goes down much more tho. Senior designer bay area.
Senior dev at faang is 600-900k
Very nice. I'm at around 300k right now post drop in NY fully remote but not complaining, it's a huge jump from when I was working at a fortune 500
In my opinion, acknowledging a profession is underpaid relative to other professions does not mean someone is complaining. At most FAANGs, designers get paid basically a whole level lower than engineers at a minimum, if not lower. Yes, you are paid decently for a designer, but any engineering partners at your level are paid around the same as a designer one level above you. I get paid more than even the majority of FAANG designers, but that still doesn’t change the fact I get paid one level below an engineer of an equivalent level. Not a complaint, just an acknowledgement of fact.
We make .65 of what Eng at the same level makes (at meta) even though we can potentially create 10x the value per person. When I get a greatly exceeds I’m still making less than an Eng that meets all.
It depends on where you’re at, but there’s a significant gap between some companies.
As someone in UX I disagree, and in fact like other commenters have suggested we're paid pretty well at top tier companies. Having good UX is pure luxury when it comes to an MVP, compared to having engineers who can actually build stuff. Imagine making hiring decisions when running a startup. It's more valuable (and feasible) to have a dev who isn't completely braindead when it comes to UX, and is open minded enough to know the basics proper interaction design and an appreciation for UX testing + gathering user feedback. Think of the reverse - a designer can have all the knowledge in the world about Jobs To Be Done and UX philosophy, but at the end of the day to get software up and running, my first hire isn't gonna be the guy whose practical output is limited to Figma wireframes. If I'm gonna get a designer I'm gonna get him on the cheap while I'm building a proof of concept.
Designers solve problems that any engineer can’t solve. Your product won’t be successful without a good design.
‘Having good UX is pure luxury when it comes to an MVP’ - I think this is a tired misconception; good UX and coherent system thinking is absolutely critical to an MVP having a chance of success, unless by MVP you simply mean, anything being built - or it’s such a unique thing that there is no competitive landscape to consider. I suspect the wider realisation of this is the driver behind the gradual increase in UX/product designer TC over the last 10 years.
I think ppl who disagree haven’t worked with a good designer before lol—a good designer can: - unify business/product/user needs (ideally with engineering input, that seems to vary depending on company) - make planning more efficient - reduce the need to go back and “fix” features from MVP > beyond - eventually make things easier overall by providing a design system/set of reusable components for future work. In short, it’s similar to the relationship between eng and architects.
It has nothing to do with a good or bad designer. It’s all about demand and supply or how many competent applicant do you get for each position. I’m on the impression that there is more supply of designers than SDEs at the moment.
If you think that, I’m inclined to think you haven’t done many interviews looking for competent designers. I interviewed candidates at Meta for years, and only came across 2 competent candidates during that time. Of the 2, only 1 of them was highly competent. There are very few competent designers and almost no highly competent designers out there.
We do provide a lot of value to a business when we are utilized correctly, so I do agree. The conversations about ENG vs DES is something I dislike. Both have their functions to make development efficient. It's hard to find unicorns that can do both (and frankly we don't have enough hours in a day to have 1 person do both efficiently) As for a personal experience with hours saved... I had an engineer tell me that the feature ticket I made for them made what would have taken a day.. an hour. This was done completely async. No hand off meeting; nothing. They requested that they wanted me to make all their future tickets 😂. That's only one part of the process and the thing is.. that kind of clarity takes multiple stakeholder alignment first, I just consolidated it in a nice package for the implementation part of the process. I think saving 1 ENG 7 hours.. is pretty value. Imagine a team of them! It also helps to be a bit technical and know exactly what I would need to know if I were to implement the feature myself.
Update: I just learned that a Walmart store manager makes $200k.
“I could do that,” I say as I design a button in my $1,000 office chair.
I guess that news could be upsetting if you make close to or even less than that? 🤷♂️ I’m sure there’s lots of challenges in that role that I would never want to deal with. FWIW, I do still agree with your higher level point of design being underpaid relative to value delivered, but not sure how useful this data point is. Seems pretty apples to oranges and reads a bit as punching down. I’d rather punch up to get pay equality.
UX designers are invaluable. However UX managers are the most useless folks in tech. Zero value add.
😂
True. That’s why I moved to UX manager. Lol
Absolutely. As UXR I’ll add that we are underpaid as well.
Not just underpaid, I feel like there are too few of you guys! While I can do user interviews, I would really appreciate some more quantitative methods in research. A fair bit of teams seem to be relying on the designer to do everything…
Amazon what’s your TC and yoe? I’m a UXR as well