Should Product Designers really be earning 50-60% less than our Software Engineering or PM counterparts? Is this happening because the industry is yet to catch on to the value of Design and only some companies like Airbnb, Facebook, Netflix etc understand our value? Is this happening because of a lack of pay transparency for designers? Is this happening because designers don’t negotiate or care about the pay disparity enough? How can companies claim they are “design led” or they value design if they’re only willing to pay us 50% of what our SWE counterparts make? I’m not saying SWEs deserve less, I think Engineers are amazing and even undervalued in some cases. You’ll probably look at my TC and say I shouldn’t be complaining, I’m on the higher end (Multiple promos, huge impact, luck, etc) and that’s true, but based on the data I’ve seen, I’m probably an anomaly. The majority of designers get paid much less, up to 2-3x less in some cases. You may disagree with this sentiment, and that’s fine. Many companies treat design as a service, and by nature, our impact is limited to “making things look nice”, but I think there’s a lot more we can do if design is given a seat at the table and if we are compensated properly. From now onwards, I’ll judge how much a company values design by how well they compensate their designers, not by empty phrases like “we are a design led company” or “design has a seat the table here” #tech #design #productdesign #compensation TC ~ 265K YOE - 8
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In my experience designers usually get paid about 5-10% less than a developer or PM. I haven't personally seen those huge 50-60% wage gaps but also I'm in Europe. Brand design on the other hand... massively underpaid.
I agree, designers are typically paid 5-10% less.
This is true for base pay, most companies have standardized ranges for base pay that map to certain levels, regardless of discipline. The disparity becomes a lot more apparent when you factor in equity or bonus refreshers that larger public companies offer, that’s where I see the most variation
Ignorant. Clearly haven’t worked on user facing products before. Product designers make or break products. More valuable than product managers imo. I’m a software engineer who studied at a top cs school with with a gpa at the top ~4%. Don’t @ me about not knowing the difficulties of computer science
I expected this kind of response from Blind which is mostly full of developers. Your perspective might be different if you'd ever designed at professional level. There's a lot of stakeholder management, working with design systems, taking feedback and wearing different hats every day. That's just a few of the things you have to do that aren't actually designing.
This is a fantastic question and I think about it all the time. I used to work at McKinsey where this conversation surrounding have a seat at the table happened all the time in the design org, however, the conversation often never left the designer bubble or really translated to shifting perspectives within the org for non design roles. In my opinion, not all designers are cut out (or interested) in having an impact greater than making things look pretty and unfortunately this lowest common denominator is paid closer attention to because it’s what non designers understand design to be. I think it’s really rare to have designers with design chops and business/ strategy acumen and I think that’s why those who do have those cross disciplinary skills are averaged out. Of course, I don’t really know if this is precisely WHY designers are paid less than SWE. But I do think it’s a contributing factor. TLDR The value of design is complex to communicate to non designers. Visual design craft is easier for non designers to understand. Thus, visual design is seen more narrowly as what design is. Hence impact of the role perceived to be more limited. Wdyt???
Totally agree with you. Product Design as a discipline definitely has a long way to go in terms of communicating our impact to non-designers. You’re right about the narrow perception of designers being responsible for only visual design and I see how that could skew and average out our market value
This is a pretty good observation, further illustrated in the lack of understanding of design by many other comments in the thread. If you think about the money that good design actually saves vs the cost of fixing things deeper into development, there's a pretty good argument for designers to make more.
I think part of it could be a supply vs demand issue. For every designer hired you need 10+ engineers. I think designers are very important, but there’s less demand for them which drives salaries down.
Good point ✨
Definitely. There's also a gold rush of low skilled people trying to enter the industry fresh out of boot camps.
Honestly I starts to ask why Facebook UI getting worse and worse
I actually like the new UI. Its cleaner and It’s one of the more successful implementations of a mobile first design system that scales across different platforms 😅
There are just so many things packed crammed in there with multiple designers working on it...
Building flat screens in figma is easy compared to actually building it.
Coding if and statements is easier than doing research and making boss decisions
Disagree, coding is harder than that too.
supply and demand. no employees, highly paid engineers included, are paid by value.
This statement is dumb. You never pay something for more than its value.
Yup market value != actual value
Yes.
OP, I think the disparity stems from (1) product designers, (2) the industry that hires us, and (3) market dynamics. It stems from us if we don’t know our true value and / or know how to effectively communicate it to others. It stems from the hands that feed us because they place a perceived value on engineering vs design based on trends. It stems from market dynamics because there is usually a bigger shortage of engineering talent in comparison to design talent. I’ll also add that most designers don’t know how to think through a true product lens and so they are only valued as a visual executor versus a strategic thinker and business contributor. If they can grow in the latter, companies will often pay handsomely, albeit still below engineering comp for all of the above reasons.
I completely agree. It has a lot to do with how you position yourself during the interview process and your ability to negotiate. I highlight my product knowledge during the interview process and throughout my portfolio. I always look at engineering salaries/packages when I’m negotiating salary.
Understandable. Like I said, I’ve had a bit of luck, multiple promotions and supersized impact so that might contribute to my higher TC but I can assure you, this isn’t typical for design