
Ask HN: Should a Developer get more paid than a Designer? - Berunto
Given both are quite same in skill in their field. There are a lot of different specialisations in both carreers. Just let&#x27;s take a general Designer vs Developer approach in which both are responsible for everything in there area.<p>What are the reasons?
Demand vs supply?
Difficulty of the study?
Practical importance?
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joeclark77
Supply and demand is one thing, but there are also "ceiling" effects. This is
just a hunch (and I'd love to hear some feedback on this) but I would guess
that there's more of a ceiling on developers than there is on designers. So
maybe the average developer makes more than the average designer (again a
hunch), but I'd bet there are a select few really great designers making MUCH
MUCH more, and I don't think the same is true for developers.

I mean, what's a really stupendous developer going to do for you that makes it
worth paying him the equivalent of a 5-man team? a 10-man team?

We could make an analogy to construction. The best construction company is no
doubt going to build your building faster, more efficiently, with fewer
problems, but that's not going to triple the value of the finished product.
The _architect_ by contrast can make the difference between a world-famous
landmark and just another good-enough building.

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sheepmullet
> We could make an analogy to construction

To borrow your analogy:

A construction company that builds single level family homes can't build high
rises. No matter how good the architect is.

Top developers can conceptualise and build products that 100 average
developers couldn't achieve. Not to mention the large reverse economies of
scale.

Case in point: I can get 1000 low skill Vietnamese developers for the same
cost as 50 senior Valley developers. And yet for 90% of the work we do I'm
better off with the 50 Valley developers.

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joeclark77
I'm not sure we disagree. When you say "conceptualize and build", you may be
talking about a developer-in-the-role-of-designer or developer-in-the-role-of-
entrepreneur. Certainly Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. were once
developers, but they didn't get rich because they were employed as coders and
got a bunch of merit pay raises.

So I was simply speculating that there may be a "ceiling" on developer
_salaries_ , that is, salaries received for writing code.

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briandear
Really compensation has nothing to do with skill. Compensation has everything
to do with a demand for that skill. A highly skilled photographer doesn't make
as much as a dev-ops engineer simply because everyone with a camera can "take
pictures" and to many people the difference between a Pulitzer-winning photo
and a decent Instagram feed is marginal. Yet, most people that can open
Illustrator or Sketch and "design" something, while most people can't simply
open Vim and write an application.

My theory is that the value of a good designer is equal to the value of a good
developer because they serve critical, though separate roles in building a
product people both want to use and are technically able to use.

The problem though is that it's very easy to "be a designer" because it
actually doesn't take much technical skill. (Let's not get into a flame war
about the technical skill required to use Sketch or Illustrator -- I get it;
I'm being relative.) It's less "tangible." Is design A better than design B?
The data-driven among us could certainly quantify A vs. B, but generally
designs are subjective. With developers, it's mostly objective: does the
product do X when I click this button. If yes, pass, if no, fail. (Us
developers know that's not all there is to it, but in the C-suite, that's
really the key metric -- does it solve the business problem, many could care
less about code quality or even maintainability, until the dev team starts
demanding resources to solve technical debt!)

So, back to your original question, should a developer get paid more than a
designer? While, I would argue good version of both deliver equal but
different value and thus they should be paid the same, the reality is affected
by supply and demand. There are more "ok" designers than there are good
developers. Yet ok designers are often good enough because frankly many people
don't know good design even if it slapped them in the face with a trout. So an
ok design has the practical effect of being a good design. Meaning: the
measurement criteria is simply "do I like the way this looks." While with
developers, it's much harder to find a developer that can actually execute.
Thus an "ok" developer isn't competing with an "ok" designer because "ok"
developer could potentially not execute the project at all, or at least not
efficiently (thus costing more time,) while even a bad designer can create
something that is good enough.

Which means, ok designers are in high supply, while good developers are in
relatively low supply -- which makes the price for those resources adjust
accordingly.

All things being equal -- yes, they should be paid the same. However, all
things aren't equal. Supply and demand and perception of value are major
factors at play.

~~~
Berunto
Thanks for the good reply. That's why I asked this question. Because it's not
possible to find answers like this out there.

