Designers are the most underrated people in tech

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Hi friends,

Designers are the most underrated people in tech.

Not because they’re hidden. Not because they lack ambition. But for years, the industry handed designers a role that was deliberately smaller than what they were capable of. Spec the screens. Hand off to engineering. Wait for feedback. Repeat.

That role is over. And the designers who realize it first will be untouchable.

While building ADPList (a global mentorship platform with 800K+ users). I also teach designers to build with AI. And the thing I hear most often from the designers I work with isn’t excitement. It’s unironically,

“Are we getting replaced?”

Now, let’s be real: that’s really the wrong question. And the fact that so many designers are asking it tells me exactly how much the narrative has gotten into their heads.

Here’s the question that actually matters: what happens when the best designers can also build?

That is what we’re living through right now.

Watch this video I made last week, it’s now going viral with 100K views; resonating with so many designers in tech around the world. 🤯

For years, Figma was the finish line. You’d craft the perfect frame, annotate every interaction, hand it off, and then wait. What came back was never quite right lol

The interaction ALWAYS felt clunky. The vision got lost somewhere between your design intent and the engineer.

Imho, Figma was never the problem. The handoff was.

That handoff is collapsing.

With tools like Claude Code and Figma MCP, a designer can go from a frame to a working, deployed product without writing a single line of code. I’ve done it. The designers I teach are doing it every week. Features that would have taken a two-week back-and-forth to ship now take a single afternoon.

Figma used to be where design lived. Now it’s where design starts. The designer who stops at the Figma file in 2026 is leaving the most important part of the job to someone else.

When you ship your own work, nobody interprets your vision.

Read that again twice.

Nobody simplifies the interaction because it seemed too complex. Nobody cuts the Polish pass because the sprint ended. What you design is what gets built, literally. Full creative control is fully returned to the person who had the vision in the first place.

This feels great as a designer.

AI can write your code.

What AI can’t do is know if it’s good.

(I tried “replicating” taste for hours, days, and weeks - still not there yet, if you have done it. Please dm me.)

That judgment, the ability to look at something and know instantly what’s off, what feels cheap, what will confuse a user, what will make someone trust a product or abandon it, that’s still all on you.

That judgment is worth more now, not less.

Again. Read that twice.

When everyone has access to the same AI tools, the output quality ceiling rises fast. The floor rises too. Average work gets better across the board. But the gap between good and great is more or less determined by taste. And it’s not something you can prompt your way to.

Designers who’ve spent years obsessing over the details, you have just become the most important people in any room with an AI.

You have the unfair advantage. You’ve had it for years. Now it shows.

Read this from Dylan Field (Figma’s CEO) at Y Combinator:

Felix Lee@felixleezd

Design has changed. Figma's CEO on the future of design and AI - "A designer's judgment, taste, and agency will matter more than ever." This is especially true with the rise of vibe coding. Important lessons from Dylan Field's convo at YC.

3:01 PM · Mar 22, 2025 · 115K Views

13 Replies · 126 Reposts · 1.24K Likes

Just two years ago, designers would design on Figma, and then face a choice: find a technical person, learn to code from scratch, or dismiss it. So many good ideas got shelved.

All because the path from idea to shipped product was too damn painful. Now, that’s gone.

I built my first personal website (with an AI clone of myself) with Claude Code in a few hours. Not a mockup. A functional product that did something real. I didn’t write the code. I described what I wanted, reviewed what Claude built, told it what was wrong, and iterated until it matched the vision in my head.

Felix Lee@felixleezd

I have a new website. felixlee.dev I am not a developer but this blew my mind. I built it entirely on Claude Code + Cursor. It isn't perfect, but I think its cool and proud for v1. I'm optimistic. Take a look!

2:59 PM · Oct 29, 2025 · 64.4K Views

26 Replies · 14 Reposts · 538 Likes

The entire process felt like designing.

What this means for every designer reading this:

Your ideas need zero permission. You don’t need to convince an engineer to build your side project (painful process, I know). You don’t need a technical co-founder to validate that something is worth making.

You can just build things.

This is the actual reality of building today. I suspect it’ll get even better.

I talk to a lot of founders and hiring managers through ADPList. And the thing I keep hearing, over and over, is that the people they can’t find are designers who ship.

Soleio@soleio

The future is here, just not evenly distributed.

Felix Lee @felixleezd

Designers who ship are now the most valuable hires in tech.

11:37 PM · Mar 5, 2026 · 8.73K Views

1 Reply · 4 Reposts · 104 Likes

Not designers who make beautiful Figma. Not designers with impressive portfolios. Designers who’ve taken something from idea to live product. Designers who understand both what it should look like and how it actually works.

Those people are extraordinarily rare (+ those with taste), like unicorn rare.

And they’re becoming extraordinarily valuable.

A designer who can design and build is a force multiplier. They can validate ideas before an engineer touches them. They can make product decisions using real prototypes rather than static screens.

Feedback loops become tighter, more accurate.

Where speed is a moat for companies, the designer who can move from idea to shipped product in a day is a valuable asset.

Felix Lee@felixleezd

Designers who ship are now the most valuable hires in tech.

4:57 PM · Mar 5, 2026 · 271K Views

94 Replies · 79 Reposts · 1.13K Likes

The opportunity is real. The tools exist. The moment is now.

But here’s the honest version: most designers aren’t moving (idk why, please tell me).

They’re waiting to see how this plays out. They’re watching the AI conversation from the sidelines.

The designers who move now have a window. Not a permanent one.

The early advantage of being the designer who can build will shrink as more designers adopt these tools. That’s fine. But right now, in early 2026, the window is open, and most people are still standing outside it.

Well, the real question is whether you’re willing to spend a few uncomfortable weeks learning how to use them before the window closes.

Some critics/observers say designers should be scared. Personally, I think that’s backwards. Engineers can be replaced by AI faster than designers can.

If you can design + ship, you’re a super valuable designer.

Thanks for reading.

Now, go build something beautiful that people want. 🧡

Apply to join our community (AI designer school) as a founding member (full courses for Vibe-Coding for Designers available): https://adplist.org/vibe-code-designers

It’s time to build, designers.

If you find this guide helpful, ❤️ Like this to come back again, and repost or forward it and share your thoughts. Because more designers can learn to build.

See you next week!

- Felix Lee
Let’s conect on LinkedIn!