Apple Is a Design Company With Engineers; Google Is an Engineering Company With Designers

Buzz Andersen, regarding Douglas Bowman’s description of the role of design at Google:

But I think a useful way to think about the difference between the two companies is: how likely is an individual contributor from each category to be present in a meeting with the CEO? Based on my experience at Apple, I’d say the answer is: pretty unlikely for an engineer, far more likely for a designer. I don’t have any direct experience with Google, but I suspect just the opposite would be true there.

The two companies clearly have fundamentally different approaches to deciding how their products work.

★ Friday, 20 March 2009