[bgnm2000]

I’m a designer who codes, and for those who have had trouble expressing the value and finding a role that enables both, here is how I’ve positioned it:

As the primary designer for a product, who can also implement the design - the amount of communication needed between design and engineering literally evaporates.

I tell my devs they can build an ugly v1 of any feature simply for the sake of speed, and I’ll go in after to clean it up and make it look consistent. they don’t need to waste time with CSS.

Design changes so often after implementation, that I don’t even keep a living design file, most changes happen directly in code. If I do need to design something as part of a pitch or meeting material I take a screen shot of the product and just modify that.

Having worked as only a designer, and then only as an engineer, I can’t express how much faster my team is when design is part of engineering.

Speed is most critical to startups, I’ve always found interviewing with startups and presenting this skill set is highly sought after when expressed properly.