Andy Zhang - From early Figma to design engineer at Windsurf

This week's episode is with Andy Zhang com/andyzg3/) who was the lead design engineer at com/). So we're going to shine a light on all of the ways you can make an impact as a design engineer including: - Owning more of the frontend polish - Thinking through design patterns and packaging features - Bridging the gap between technical features and intuitive UX - Saying “no” to features to preserve the simplicity of the system He also shares some great stories and advice including: - What it was like working as an intern at Figma with less than 10 people - How designers can start to get more comfortable with code - How he taps into his experience as a PM at Uber while selecting the right design process - + a *lot* more - Rasmus Andersson

com/rsms) - Designer/engineer at Figma, mentor to Andy - Kevin Hou lang=en) - Lead product engineering at Windsurf, Andy’s basketball teammate who helped him get the job Chapters 0:00 Intro 1:10 Andy's internship at Figma 10:35 Finding a role as a generalist 16:22 Moving needles with design patterns 21:24 Systems thinking in a world that's changing so fast 23:20 Andy's creative process as a design engineer 26:38 Andy's process for working on new features 31:03 What happens when there are so many new workflows 34:34 How much coding Andy is doing 40:26 How Andy wants to position his career moving forward 42:16 Andy's favorite part about the Windsurf culture 43:57 Advice for people interested in design engineering Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿

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