Thomas Drach

Product design @stripe. Wrote a book about the best products in the world

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

"Easily the best book in-category I’ve read in years; on par with Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things in terms of insight per page" from @skominers

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@0xdiid I kind of want this for JSON as well.

"Let me edit JSON without worrying about whether or not I closed the string properly"

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@0xdiid Should we vibe code it

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@0xdiid Subscribing for more

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

CMD + SHIFT + P toggles/shows dot files in Finder

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

The upshot here is: can traditional product managers and product engineers develop the taste and instincts that a product designer worth their snuff can?

For sure!

But it comes at a cost.

I’d be surprised if I saw more black Red Hat hoodies at The Met trying to figure out what makes a Rothko painting a Rothko painting.

Does the median PM/ENG at a FAANG—or w/e the latest acronym is, maybe I’m dating myself—understand what makes everyone so obsessed with Dieter Rams’ designs? And, could they replicate that in their own domain if they had a gun to their head?

That taste and intuition is much harder to codify via font sizes and tokens that a design system would ingest.

If it’s AI-promptable, then it’s replicable, and you’re taking a competitive advantage off the table!

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

I've been a fan of Gokul since he spoke at @mixpanel back in the day.

To me it seems this thread is arguing that design systems (which are AI-promptable) are replacing designers. Which is true and has been true for ~a decade (before AI-prompt-adoption).

If that's true, it's also true that more engineers are getting replaced than designers. One product designer is almost always working with more than one engineer. If a design systems team goes: a product designer goes, and 5+ engineers go as well.

If design systems are automated by AI then there's more engineers losing their job than designers.

[Gokul Rajaram @gokulr]

DESIGN: THE FIRST AI CASUALTY

I'm increasingly sure that 2026 signals the end of product design as a full-fledged stand-alone function within companies. If so, it will be the first role / function to be eliminated by AI on a go-forward basis.

Instead of hiring FT designers, startups are hiring / will hire design consultants to create a design system that the founder likes (this takes a few weeks max). Once the design system is finalized, PM/Eng feed it into their AI tool of choice to generate prototypes. The design system is refreshed annually by the same consultant.

Larger companies will likely not backfill design roles and will do some targeted attrition to reduce the design department to 20% the size it is today.

If you're a designer, I think you have two choices:
1. Become an entrepreneur: Start a design agency and become the go-to resource for design systems for startups and even larger companies. This can be a good recurring revenue business.
2. Become a builder: Add PM/Eng responsibilities to become a product builder.

Would suggest you embrace this proactively vs waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I'm really sorry about this - some of my best friends and the people I admire most and have learnt the most from are designers - but it seems inevitable.

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

Maybe then, “but other engineering jobs are there to replace those jobs”.

That’s always been true. It takes more hands to make the thing than to draw a picture of what the thing should be. There are less architects than there are people building a building.

The question becomes: how important is that thing that you make?

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@antoniogm 100% endorse! Better than Apollo!

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@0xdiid lfg

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

i kinda want a dodge stratus

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

QA for Designers

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

Someone at @a16z must really like the book!

[a16z crypto @a16zcrypto]

For your weekend browsing...

Here are 19 books for builders.

From histories of innovation and stories of resilience, to systems thinking and philosophy in practice, there's something in here for everyone!

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@soren_iverson can we do the opposite 😅

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@0xdiid nearly perfect should work

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@sarthakgh No more tweeting before 9am for me

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

@readswithravi One of these solves a problem. The other one doesn’t. Ugly’s got nothin to do with it.

[stu ◡̈ @sbgriffi]

nearly perfect @thomasdrach
https://t.co/Het57qgt3c

[Thomas Drach @thomasdrach]

Sponsor gas for users with a paymaster from @coinbase

Docs https://t.co/gAfvuO5Ds4

[greg @greg16676935420]

Tesla will never accept ethereum because it requires gas