I spent 2 years as a UI/UX designer before switching to code.

I spent 2 years as a UI/UX designer before switching to code.

Designers who can't code build impossible things.
Developers who can't design build ugly things.

Here’s why being BOTH saved my career…

In my first dev job, I watched a senior engineer spend 3 days building a dashboard.

It worked perfectly. But users couldn't find the main action.

I had to bite my tongue while he argued "the data is there, they just need to look."

They didn't look. They left.

Meanwhile, designers on my team would hand me Figma files with 12px margins and 8 different font sizes.

"Make it pixel-perfect," they'd say 🤨

I would explain responsive constraints….

They'd say "just code it."

I coded it. It broke on mobile. They blamed me.

Sound familiar? 😆

The breaking point…. I rebuilt that same dashboard in 6 hours.

Not because I'm a 10x engineer.

Because I designed it FIRST in Figma, tested the flow, then coded.

The senior dev took 3 days because he was designing in the browser.

I was designing in Figma, building in VS Code.

Here's the system I use now:

Design Phase (Figma)

User flow before pixels
1 primary action per screen
Responsive grids FIRST

Dev Phase (React/Node)

Component structure from design
No "I'll fix the spacing later"
Ship faster because decisions are made

The outcome?

Features ship 40% faster
Users actually complete flows
I stand out in interviews

But here's the part nobody talks about 👇

I don't burn out anymore.

When I was only designing, I felt powerless to build.
When I was only coding, I felt frustrated by bad UX.

Now I control the full stack of the user experience.

Design
Code
Deploy
Measure
Iterate

One person….. One vision….. No translation errors….

The industry wants you to pick a lane.

Learn to code your own concepts….
Learn to prototype before you build….

Which side are you on? And what's stopping you from crossing over?

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