Unicorn Rare Hybrid: On Being A Designer And A Developer

The Position of the Unicorn Hybrid

Let us look at the *suicide, I mean hybrid position of web developer combined with a designer. First let’s look at the position that wears skinny jeans, cargo pants, carries a MacBook Pro, and has a trendy beard. Ah, you guessed it, the right brained web designer.

He can visually see things while working with such programs as Photoshop, Gimp, Fireworks, to create the site layout and then uses another program such as Dreamweaver to inspect the product.

The left brained web developer is known for wearing cargo pants, stubbled jaw, and carrying his keyboard around like a newborn knows different programming languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and can build a website from the ground up.

So what happens when this real-life Jekyll and Hyde scenario plays out in the tech industry and why would someone go this route to be a one-stop shop?

Why Be a Unicorn Hybrid

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Looking at a number of jobs in both industries, there are around 1,336,300 jobs for web developers and about 200,870 jobs for web designers. While there is a huge difference in the amount of jobs, there is a big difference in pay as well.

Designers make around $47,820 and developers about $115,000. It isn’t the rocket science to know that when looking at the comparison, having more of the developer benefits is going to weigh a lot more in your favour in monetary and job options.

Having an Agile Startup Team

Lean Startup methods save money and time by not wasting energy on a so called waterfall process and tunnel vision from one end to the next. When having an agile team, design and development must run parallel in order to achieve innovation and strategic thinking while responding to changes in real time.

Having flexible team members with more knowledge allows taking advantage of collaboration which can achieve understanding how different steps impact other processes efficiently and quickly.

Startups are Everywhere

The Unicorn Sighting might not be so rare in startups because of the increased need of more versed workers to cover more areas when funds are low, and there is less product demand.

This is a good option when you need e-commerce strategies such as a killer designer to create your layout but also need a developer to increase loading speeds.

Becoming A Digital Nomad

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Ah, the quintessence of remote worker, the Digital Nomad. This title gets dissected and thrown around so much it is quite unnerving. It is like when the girl in your group goes to order food and has to tell everyone she is vegan. Let it be known that no one cares about your Digital Nomadism or your food beliefs.

Going back to Rare Unicorns, when you have been so driven that you achieved the background of wearing skinny jeans and learning the design side as well as the ability to code efficiently. The doors will burst open in the job market, and you should be able to work on the road and most any country that allows it.

Many employers would love to be able to have a one-stop shop and have their product from birth to a finished product. In essence, this makes you very marketable, and you could achieve your own business by being an entrepreneur or market yourself as the Unicorn Hybrid with both traits of design and developer.