Valentin Manceaux-Panot

Maybe it’s my algo, but in all this talk lately about how critical it is to hire amazing designers (it is), I’m not seeing many folks mention the other half of the requirements - amazing engineers. Probably every one of those top tier designers you’re wanting to work with have experienced working with an engineer who doesn’t work at the same level as expectations and ambition. This is a near insurmountable burden to a non-technical designer, because they’re limited to the capabilities and ambition of their engineers. My toughest career experiences have always involved being limited by an engineer’s capabilities rather than a designer’s. While yes, top designers will seek cultures where quality and craft is a top priority, but they'll need the same expectation on the engineering quality to support their ambitions. Otherwise, the quality bar only lives in Figma. For example: - Optimistic updates - Ultra fast queries - Caching optimization - Component api DX and maintainability - Concurrency and parallelism - Network optimization - Build tooling and pipelines optimizations - Low (zero) dev env friction tolerance None of these things involve design, yet they’re the foundation of a design’s implemented quality level. Other than what a user see’s, these are the parts of the design a user actually experiences. These types of things are the secret sauce that set good applications from great ones. These are table stakes for great engineers, and the top tier designers you’re looking for are also looking for teams with these engineers. Great engineers compliment great designers. Great designers compliment great engineers. Together, they turn imagination into innovation. Designers create the “What if?”. Engineers control the “Why not?”.