Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED
- Figma CEO Dylan Field said that AI was causing a “shifting and merging of roles.”
- “AI makes everyone feel the need to be more of a generalist,” he said on “Lenny’s Podcast.”
- He said Figma conducted a survey where 56% of non-designers said they complete design tasks at work.
Designer, engineer, researcher—they’re all becoming increasingly similar, according to Figma cofounder and CEO Dylan Field.
Field scaled the company from an idea to a public company with over 1,600 employees. Many of those employees are now experimenting outside of their fields, he said on “Lenny’s Podcast,” adding that AI was making distinct job titles less and less relevant.
“I think that we’re seeing more designers, engineers, product managers, researchers, all these different folks that are involved in the product development process dip their toe into the other roles,” he said.
Field said that he saw a “shifting and merging of roles” in the last five years and expected it to accelerate in the next five years.
Figma did research around this job merging, he said. Seventy-two percent of respondents said AI tools were one of the top reasons behind the expansion of roles.
“Part of that is that AI makes everyone feel the need to be more of a generalist,” Field said.
AI is pushing employees out of their career boundaries. What once required complex coding knowledge now requires a simple vibe-coding tool, so some non-engineers are taking on more technical tasks. Many employers are focused on “upskilling” their workforce.
In Figma’s survey, 56% of non-designers said they engage “a great deal” in a design task. A year before, that figure stood at 44%, Field said.
Fifty-three percent of Figma’s respondents said that deep knowledge was required to do a task well, even with AI. Field said he found the number interesting and that it demonstrated an “impulse towards more generalist abilities.”
Host Lenny Rachitsky asked for Field’s takeaway.
“We’re all product builders, and some of us are specialized in our particular area,” Field said.
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