GitHub and Figma

I spend an unhealthy amount of time in Figma and GitHub. They share a similar ambition: make everyone a designer, make everyone a developer. I think that ambition has led to a degradation of these 2 monumental tools. Democratization, vulgarization, commoditization, however we call it, has tangible effects for me peon user.

Both products became essential because they were opinionated and focused. GitHub is the home of open source and the standard for versioning code. Figma is the infinite collaborative (vector) canvas. That’s the foundation. Everything on top is like Mac Donald fries: revenue generating, low consumer value (except for the rare limp salty suckers). Enterprise customers dictate the roadmap, and matching pricing structure.

Both have grown into companies rather than tools. Features piled up. Teams turned over is felt in the UX. The products became “ecosystems”. It’s the classic tech going big scenario. The AI competition game they’re playing nowadays is mostly irrelevant to why people use them. We’re already locked in. My code is on GitHub. My design work lives in Figma.

Then there’s all the albeit impressive demos, of unclear, semi-functional products. Like a toddler tantrum, reacting is the first mistake. The second is to be distracted trying to find a use for it instead of realizing that I need less in my cluttered digital life. New features introduce more surface area, more decisions, more noise. I don’t need more ways to produce output, only the market wants that. As user I want fewer, higher quality outcomes. Creative autonomy over production capabilities. There is way for promote this balance. Starting with a clean workspace that respects my eyes. The solution to too much stuff is never more stuff.

They are both equally abusing the myth of collaboration thanks to the Startup culture that took over in the last decade. “Nothing great is made alone” is hard to defeat. An odd affirmation to repeat in an ever more individualistic world. Anyone is one link away from commenting on anything. By now most sensible people have come to realize that this is not collaboration. Instead you get a mix of shallow praise, vague criticism, and scattered ideas: noise. AI agents are now joining the party, great, just what I needed. Figma is to design what slack is to communication.

Real collaboration is slower, constrained by expertise and respect. It depends on shared context, trust, and ownership. Early GitHub and Figma embodied that. The early teams deeply cared and used the product. The siloed organizations of today clearly lost touch with that sense of care.

What made these tools work was taste. GitHub’s model of contribution: the pull request UI, the git timeline. Figma’s balance between freedom and structure: Auto layout! Greatness rarely strikes twice. Few hits, lots of misses.

The result is predictable: more to navigate, more to manage, more discipline required from the user. I don’t think these products need more. They need restraint to retain what made them great.

GitHub is already the home base of modern software. Figma is already a widely adopted design tool. The value is established. Most of what’s added on top exists to justify growth and pricing, improving marginally the core experience. When building your own PR review tool is faster than using GitHub, you have a new choice. Building your own? please don’t, just pay the minimum for something good and fix your planet-sized codebase. GitHub is big and slow but our codebase hygiene standards are at their lowest too. My Figma draft folder is bulging. Frame 123243535664 - anyone? Time for some spring and downgrading.

I hope this did not land as a stream of grievances but a controlled argument. There is no evil at play here, only entropy.