I'm now a UX engineer 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻

I'm also an accounting plumber, a weather detective, a bricklaying manager, a lion-taming intern, a startup-country investor…

I’m a rhetorical point-maker of sorts and here’s my point: Google has these people called UX engineers. I want to point out that just because they have a title at Google, doesn't mean it's not dumb. Nobody ever questions these dumbass titles.

Here are 5 reasons why there's no such thing as a UX engineer:

1- User experiences cannot be engineered. They can only be designed, by definition of both design and engineering. It's like calling your therapist a people engineer. Even if they have an engineering degree and write Python during the session, they're still in a counseling capacity 😐.

2- The thinking is that if you work with UX, you're a UX engineer in the same way that an engineer concerned with agriculture is an agricultural engineer. However, does a military doctor in a mechanized infantry battalion become a mechanized infantry doctor? No, unless they treat tanks, at which point they're a mechanic, not a tankologist 😐.

3- All front-end engineers are, in a sense, UX engineers. Think, man... use your fuckin’ brain 😐.

4- If you do accounting in Mongolia, that doesn't make you a Mongolian accountant. Likewise, if you do engineering in a UX team, that doesn't make you a UX engineer. Think about it... Take your time 😐...

5- UX engineers, according to Google, add coding ability to a design team. They build prototypes to try things out in higher fidelity and ensure technical feasibility, especially that of intricate interactions. An engineer can specialize in this work just like a chef can specialize in Biryani. But we don’t need a name for said special engineers just like there’s no name for chefs specializing in Biryani. That being said, if you really wanted a name, it would clearly be "prototype developer" or a "Prototype coder". Honest, direct, and informative 😐.

This isn't but one of our many dumb job titles like "marketing manager". What do you manage? The marketing? The same way I'm the design manager? The same way a doorman is the door manager? It’s so dumb, dumber than a 48-team world cup, dumber than 5G...

The insight is that writing code can also be an act of design. I once worked with an engineer who's so freaking fast, he can build stuff in HTML as fast as many designers build them in Figma. Does that count as design or engineering? It depends on what were they trying to do:

Design has the intention of making stuff work for people. Engineering is the intention of making things work on systems such as computers, networks, markets, climates, etc... the system determines what kind of engineer you are, not the application.

Here's a quick non-satirical conclusion: Design can happen in code. Engineering can happen in Figma. The medium is irrelevant 🙂. Shout-out to all the Biryani Chefs out there. Y’all make the world a better place ❤️