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

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.

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

good job on not getting caught immediately. :)

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

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.

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.

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?).

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

If it is usable and drives revenue is a different story

Enterprise software is a fine example of that.

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

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.

Hell's balls, I need to move.

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.

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.

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.

No designer input:

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

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

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

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

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.