I was watching an Instagram reel by Dan Rubin where he presented himself as a photographer, designer and creative director. Reminded me that despite my current job title being front-end developer, I am also a designer. I don’t know how it is for him, but I find it challenging to combine those two roles as the industry seems to expect you are either a designer or a developer, but not both.
Many developers focus a lot on the let’s call core engineering: data flowing from a system to another, making databases more performant, etc. All super important but not my priority. What I have front of mind is that there are people out there using my site trying to find information, complete a task etc, and how can I make that site the best possible for them. I still think like a designer, despite spending most of my time writing code.
And that’s product’s realm in the places I’ve worked recently, and I’d imagine most tech companies out there. I’ve found it hard to cross over, bring those two worlds together.
If that’s also your case, how does it work for you? Have you found a place where you can combine both worlds? You can find me on Mastodon, link below.