“I’ll let you click the ‘squash and merge’ button,” one of our founding engineers said to me.
“Are you sure?” I replied, half joking.
Three minutes later, my changes hit production. I’m a designer and I pushed code to production without writing any (thanks to my BFF Claude).
For most of my career, the process looked something like: I design it, collaborate with engineers to build it, and what ships to production looks like a drunk version of what was in Figma… close, but still made me nauseous just thinking about it.
To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. I stared at a blank terminal, talked to Claude, stared some more, crossed my fingers I wouldn’t bring production down… rinse and repeat. Roles are blending and far too many people are protective of theirs. Engineers are spinning up decent designs. Product managers can ship code. Designers can do all of the above. Everyone is a generalist now and that should be celebrated.
But generalists without depth are, dare I say it, mediocre. You still need people who understand their craft at a level AI can’t reach. AI is built on patterns and the best creatives break them. Designers have always had to evolve and we’re doing it again.
Design’s role has always been the team who knows what to build, why to build it, and how to build it. The difference now is that they can also ship it.
I’ve been in rooms with higher-ups who checked my LinkedIn before they’d make eye contact. If my resume didn’t have a FAANG logo then I was deemed as background noise. If I looked remotely “too young”, my opinion didn’t matter.
I get it, hiring talent is hard… but you have to admit, it’s funny how nobody questions your experience when the product impressing investors is your work.
Great hires have passion, intuition, and the ability to push on old ways and pioneer new ones regardless of background.
And just last week, I, a designer, shipped code to production without an Ivy League degree or ever collecting a paycheck from a company so large even your grandma would know it. I'm just a girl who refused to be put in a box and tried new things until it worked.
The best designers just became the most dangerous people at your company.