The Increasing Value of Design
Top startup salaries now go to designers, not developers. That's not the only sign of increasing value of design.
If you were asked whose salary is bigger in Silicon Valley, designer or engineer, you’d probably point at the coder. Historically, Silicon Valley has valued developers above all the other employees. But there is a massive shift occurring.
Riviera Partners reported that in 2013 engineers salaries varied, depending on the programming language and experience, from $104k to $150k per annum (average amount; the study included managers). Data gathered by Onward Search shows that in 2013 designers were earning, on average, between $101k and $140k (depending on the experience and specific field that they’ve worked in; the study didn’t include managers). If we account for the fact that management salaries were included in the developer survey but not the designer survey, then it is reasonable to conclude that rank and file designers are now making more than developers.
In the past 10 years, the global job market of UX Designers grew by 20%. UX Designer was #43 of 100 best jobs in the USA in 2012. Within one year, the market of UX Design has matured so rapidly that one of UX Design specializations, User Interface Architect, was ranked #12 of 100 best jobs in the USA.
This is one of many signs that design and the whole field of user experience are gaining prominence right now and are highly valued by tech companies of Silicon Valley. Even Google, one of the most developer-driven companies out there, has said that design principles now guide many of their product decisions. With design-focused companies like Nest and Apple thriving, we now find ourselves thinking that design is eating the world.
But despite the rapid rise of designers in the startup world, in most companies, developers and designers still have a hard time collaborating. Designers, developers, project managers, and others are stuck using tools that have them taking three right turns instead of one left. This is one of the reasons why we built UXPin – a platform that simplifies design work and makes it easier for designers to collaborate with other team members. Now, designers and developers can work together in UXPin as equals.
So to all the designers and developers out there, we are excited for this new era of collaboration and we invite you to try UXPin here for free (trial up to 30 days, no credit card required). You will love it.
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by Jerry Cao on
Jerry Cao is a content strategist at UXPin where he gets to put his overly active imagination to paper every day. In a past life, he developed content strategies for clients at Brafton and worked in traditional advertising at DDB San Francisco. In his spare time he enjoys playing electric guitar, watching foreign horror films, and expanding his knowledge of random facts. <a href="https://twitter.com/jerrycao_uxpin">Follow him on Twitter.</a>
