I think the mistake is in structuring the company so that people have to be awesome on both axes. Either that, or so they're forbidden to become good at both.
Every developer is a designer. (You can't make something without thinking about it at least a little.) Every designer can be a developer if they want. Both skills take plenty of practice.
Nobody is likely to be 100% amazing at both, but that doesn't matter: a lot of day-to-day work is pretty mundane, so nobody has to be amazing all the time. As long as you have somebody great that you collaborate with frequently, you can still get a great product, and everybody gets to up their game over time.
Skill-based division of labor is fine for assembly-line products, but for iterative, creative work (which is what all startups are), I think you need intense collaboration, which requires broad skills. That's why IDEO, a design powerhouse, looks for what they call t-shaped people: http://chiefexecutive.net/ideo-ceo-tim-brown-t-shaped-stars-...
It's a cheesy name, but I think the idea's spot on.
Every developer is a designer. (You can't make something without thinking about it at least a little.) Every designer can be a developer if they want. Both skills take plenty of practice.
Nobody is likely to be 100% amazing at both, but that doesn't matter: a lot of day-to-day work is pretty mundane, so nobody has to be amazing all the time. As long as you have somebody great that you collaborate with frequently, you can still get a great product, and everybody gets to up their game over time.
Skill-based division of labor is fine for assembly-line products, but for iterative, creative work (which is what all startups are), I think you need intense collaboration, which requires broad skills. That's why IDEO, a design powerhouse, looks for what they call t-shaped people: http://chiefexecutive.net/ideo-ceo-tim-brown-t-shaped-stars-...
It's a cheesy name, but I think the idea's spot on.