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Comment by oneplusone | Hacker News Reader

I just don't believe this. Companies are just not willing to pay for it. I can easily get a 50% increase in pay as a developer. If they really had a hard time hiring designers they would give salaries comparable to developers.

Personally I am giving up on design. I will still be doing design, but for personal enjoyment. My next job will most likely be a full-time development position.

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It depends on where you live. Designers in New York make as much as the developer. Especially if you can actually do a bit of the technical stuff yourself.

Front end designer/programmer hybrids are very highly paid. Likewise with iOS.

Having a design background can be a more flexible career as you can go work in fashion/media/publishing. It's also a lot easier to pick up contract work with definite endpoints.

The problem is that it's much easier to quantify a developer's output. Does that dropdown include all 50 states? Great, here you get paid. Do people using the dropdown know that its to enter a state? Well one guy says, "ya duh" and the other says "hmm not really".

It's also much easier for the skills of a developer to become commoditized for many of the same reasons. When what is needed and delivered is so easily quantified, it is also easier to find another provider of said services.

What makes a skilled designer so rare and desirable is the fact that they will bring up issues and concepts that may not even have been thought of until their input was garnered.

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