Knowing some markup, or even programming, doesn't 'water down' your talents as a designer. Just like knowing some design principles doesn't water down your ability to code. Or like knowing photography doesn't water down your ability to cook.

Speaking from experience--I've being doing this mixed role for almost two years now--what will water down your talents is time. The more bases you cover, the less time you have to deep dive into each one. You have to spend more time learning and practising. You have to develop discipline to know what to focus on and when, and when to ship 80% and when to ship 110%. That's the hard part. You also have to manage your time and work/life balance so you don't get burnt out.

As somebody who is looking to hire a designer, I can tell you we only look for hybrids. If you can do both effectively you can massively boost your value to a business.

It does 'water down' your design abilities over time.

Understanding how your designs work is one thing, that's a must. Coding it isn't. Spending 50% of your time implementing the engineering of your design is 50% less time you spend practising design and improving.

This stuff isn't like riding a bicycle. Especially around the visual side of design — try not drawing for a year, skills fade over time. You'll have to work hard juggling those plates, keeping up with your peers that are focused on either design or engineering. It can get exhausting.

But of course there's advantages, you can build stuff. That's empowering. You have a lot more options when freelancing.

This is something I'm trying to work out myself. For my clients my ability to design and code saves them money and time. Though when I work with front-end developers I notice how focused I am on the design compared to when I code it. That focus results in better design. I'm working on this, it's a challenge to make sure I don't get spread too thin, respecting my design and engineering process and making sure neither eat into each other.

I think the real question is not what effect it has on your skills. The question is, what role do you wish to have? Do you want to be an isolated specialist (pure visual designer) or a T / π shaped team player (designer & frontend developer).

I think it's a huge benefit for you to know both with a massive "BUT...".

If push comes to shove, what are you the best at? If someone walked up to you and said "Tell me the one thing you kick ass and chew bubblegum at", what would that role be? How would you define yourself?

See... I think being solid at multiple things, but not great at any one of them will hurt someone down the road as you strive to become more senior. Being really great at one thing, but knowing other stuff really well is much better. Why? People are hired for a particular skill to make something great. Unless you're management, it's crazy to expect someone to have responsibility and focus in two different things. You want to be specialized, but diverse in your knowledge and abilities where you have an understanding of how what you do impacts others.

The one thing you don't want to be is a "generalist". You're not marketable that way at all when push comes to shove. Of course we all want hybrids... but we also want someone primarily for a specific role. If I'm building a new app and need a new hire who rocks design, I'm gonna probably gonna pick the person who's 10/10 at design and 5/10 in code over someone who's 7/10 at both... because I NEED a kick ass designer first and foremost.

I've seen/heard of people being left behind in aquihires and such because they weren't really great at any one thing. Strive to be an "a-player" at something.

Part of what takes you to the "next" level is your knowledge and interest in the other stuff. This is where some people can mess up. The trick is to know a lot of different stuff, but still be an "expert" at something. Many assume it's all about "breadth" and just try and learn a ton of different stuff. They then wonder why they aren't being promoted or not getting that job they want so badly. There's a subtle, but very important difference here.

• Being great or known for one "thing" and knowing a lot about other/different things related is good...

• Knowing a lot about other/different things, but not being great or known at one of them is not good...

Look... learn as much as you can, grow as much as you can... but find out what you really love and be sure to make that a focus. Never put yourself in a position where you can't say "I'm kick-ass at (A) AND I know some (B) and (C), but I (A) is my passion".

As others have mentioned, I think this is an argument of time and focus. For startups of 3-4 people, having a jack-of-all-trades is great and allows you to move fast, with minimal communication problems.

Soon, however, the workload will exceed what any one person can take on, and duties need to be divvied up. For larger companies having somebody of real calibre in a certain field (UX) becomes a must; the goal is to integrate that person with a clear, defined job role.

Any good designer/developer in their respective roles, in a large enough company, will almost certainly have enough on their plate to mean they are strictly doing their particular discipline, in my opinion.

This is a polarizing topic. I lean on the more is better side.

Gaining knowledge can never decrease what you already know. The idea that learning anything new will diminish you in anyway, sounds like something from the Inquisition.

Learning is good, not learning is bad.

Yay.

This is what developers have been doing with DevOps for a while already: "You it, you build it, you maintain it".

This is also what we're doing at Wooga: You design it, you will implement it. This does not necessarily water down your abilities as a designer, it will rather change the way you design.

Laurence,

One thing to consider is this. Where do you want to go with design? My team has some hybrids but it's pretty damn rare they flip flop back and forth. They more act as a bridge of design and front end. Most product designers will be jumping in and out of

1. Design and Business Research
2. Data analysis/User testing
3. Prototypes up and down the fidelity spectrum.
4. Business/Market validation
5. Visual Design which includes everything from color, to type, to iconography to illustration.

Thats a huge gamut for one individual. To include front end coding, something is going to have to either suffer or get pulled out of that list. Knowledge of code is fantastic, but to fill the roll above plus front end development is too much. Hope that helps.

I started out as a designer who could build simple websites. The more I got into it, the more I liked it. The more I liked it, the more I found there are people that are better than me at it. At that point, I realized I was neglecting the design aspect. I now try to surrounded myself with developers so I could learn from them. I primarily design but I love to get in the code as well.

To answer your question, I think there is a huge benefit to filling a mixed role because I've come across several developers who can't design. You need to be comfortable with your role as a designer first or else you start going down the road of learning to be a great dev who kind of knows design and not the other way around. At that point, yes, your talents as a designer could get watered down if you lack the passion to return to the design side of things.

I don't think it in any way 'waters down' your design skills. If you are primarily a UI designer I think it brings a lot to the game. A huge issue in agency work is the disconnect between designers and developers. If you understand how developers have to render the page you can improve the interactivity of the site. Thinking outside of the norm and creating something that not only is feasible but a great user experience. In the end it's simple. Knowledge in one field will not water down your ability in another. (@ian Goode )