Should Designers be Paid the Same as Engineers?

When the idea came to light in Cameron Moll’s LinkedIn post that designers at Notion get paid the same as engineers, LinkedIn lit up with applause. Finally, some validation! “Design is just as important as engineering — of course we should be paid the same.”

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: salaries aren’t set by fairness. If they were, teachers and nurses would be paid a lot more than they are, and hedge fund managers would almost certainly be paid a lot less. Instead, salaries are set by markets — and by the business value and responsibility a role carries.

People aren’t usually remunerated based on the knowledge they have or the effort they put in, but on how much they can help generate, protect, or multiply value for a business, and how much accountability sits on their shoulders.

The Fairness Trap

Designers love to argue from principle. We see ourselves as equal partners, so it feels only right we should be compensated equally. But if fairness is the logic, why stop at engineers?

Should designers and product managers be paid the same?
Should QA testers — without whom nothing ships — be on equal footing?
What about marketers, who often earn less than designers but make sure your work actually reaches an audience?

If the answer is “yes,” then we’re not talking about market pay anymore. We’re talking about a kind of corporate collectivism, where everyone earns the same regardless of role. Nice idea in theory, but almost no company operates that way.

How Salaries Really Work

In reality, compensation is driven by five things:

Supply and demand. If engineers are scarce and companies are desperate, their salaries rise. If designers are plentiful, salaries stagnate.
Market benchmarks. No CFO wants to pay wildly above (or below) what the rest of the market is offering.
Negotiation. If you’ve got multiple offers, you can push for more. If you don’t, you take what’s given.
Business value delivered. Roles that directly generate, protect, or multiply revenue tend to command higher pay than those that don’t.
Level of responsibility. Pay often reflects how much accountability a role carries — whether that’s managing large teams or overseeing high-risk parts of the business.

That’s it. There’s no secret fairness committee in HR.

Designers and the Negotiation Gap

Here’s where things get tricky. Designers love what they do. They care about the craft, the company, the culture. And because of that, many are willing to trade away salary for those intangibles.

I’ve seen plenty of cases where a hiring manager had budgeted more, but the designer wanted the job so badly they accepted less. In that moment, they effectively lowered the benchmark for everyone else.

Contrast that with engineers. A decade ago, many went into the field out of pure love for building. These days, most graduate knowing they have a scarce, highly valued skill — and they negotiate accordingly. It’s less about passion, more about the package. And the market reflects that confidence.

The Title Trap

Another strange dynamic emerged in the past few years: designers trading salary for status. Instead of pushing for higher pay, many were happy to accept inflated titles — “Lead,” “Principal,” “VP” — even if the scope and compensation didn’t match.

On a CV, this looks like rapid progression. But in practice, it’s created a glut of self-described “senior” designers whose skills don’t match their titles. That misalignment drags down the perceived value of design overall. Hiring managers see a market full of “Principals” producing middling work, and it suppresses wages across the board.

And it’s not just individual designers. Design leaders bear some responsibility too. Many have preferred to hire cheaper junior and mid-level talent, giving out fancy titles to keep them happy, rather than fighting to secure budget for genuinely world-class senior designers. The result? An overinflated mid-market, an under-resourced senior market, and a career ladder that discourages designers from pushing further up because the jobs are scarce and the reward often isn’t worth the effort.

The Productivity Problem

There’s another elephant in the room: productivity.

When companies hire senior designers, the expectation is they’ll deliver faster or at a higher level of quality. But the reality often looks different. Senior designers tend to take longer. The 80/20 rule kicks in — 80% of the quality comes quickly, but the last 20% drags out, doubling the cost while improving quality only marginally.

That’s bad economics. Companies want more for more, not less for more.

Meanwhile, engineers have embraced productivity gains. The best are comfortable with technical debt, they’re adopting AI tools aggressively, and their output per head has spiked dramatically over the past 18 months. By comparison, design productivity hasn’t moved much.

If designers want to close the salary gap, it’s not just about demanding fairness or even negotiating harder. It’s about proving productivity. If you can show you work 20–30% faster than your peers, if you can harness new tools effectively, then you can justify higher pay. But without that, it’s hard to see design keeping pace with engineering salaries.

The Hard Truth

This is why designer salaries have stagnated while engineering packages have inflated. Not because engineers are worth more in some personal, values-based sense, but because the market has decided they cost more. And designers — through weak negotiation, title inflation, leadership choices, and stagnant productivity — have helped reinforce that outcome.

What Designers Can Do

If we want higher pay, we need to stop benchmarking ourselves downward.

Negotiate properly. Don’t accept below-market offers just because you love the company.
Value substance over titles. A “Lead” role without pay and responsibility to match only weakens the market.
Push productivity. Master your tools, embrace AI, and prove you can deliver more in less time.
Hire better. Senior leaders should fight for true senior talent, not just pad teams with cheap mid-weights.

Because markets don’t just happen to us. They’re shaped by how we, as a community, behave. Until designers start valuing themselves properly and matching the productivity and business impact of their peers, the industry won’t either.