One of the key challenges that teams encounter is how to smoothly collaborate on converting a design into code. For example, if a designer designs a web component, how can it be most efficiently implemented by a developer? What happens if the designer needs to adjust the design and communicate this change to the developer? These sorts of issues can often lead to inefficiencies and frustrations on a team.

Figma recently announced Dev Mode which aims to smooth design and developer collaboration. The idea is to tie the visual language of designers to the actual component implementation of the developer.

Marcel Weekes is VP of Product Engineering at Figma, and before that he spent 6 years at Slack. Marcel joins the show today to talk about Dev Mode, how it will boost collaboration between designers and devs, and the new Figma VS Code plugin that brings design into the IDE. Marcel also talks about the concept of the “new manager death spiral”, and how individual contributors, or ICs, can smoothly transition to management roles.