The main problem is that anyone who can do both is highly incentivized to go into engineering/coding instead of product design. The pay and respect are usually much better. So then that pool is limited further to people who can design and code well, prefer design, and don't need/want extra money.
Then add on to that our current work culture prefers specialists to generalists: HR and exec teams will hire a product designer with 5 years of design experience and no coding over someone with 2 years of design experience and 5 years of software engineering experience.
I don’t find this to be the case. I’m a senior designer at a FAANG and chose this over being a SWE. And nowadays, the salaries are very competitive between pm, design and eng.
When I was earlier in my career it was a major struggle to stop coding. every place out of university would say there was some kind of design opportunity for me, but then I’d find myself implementing mine and other designers features. I’m glad that’s over.
Anecdotally, I’ve met several eng -> PM and Eng -> design transfers, probably all possible to the leveling of pay and prestige.
I’ll second Foreignborn’s comment. I potentially could have gone the engineering route. I chose product design mostly because I enjoyed it more and felt like I was a stronger designer than engineer. I don’t see much difference in pay or respect. I suppose it depends on the org and whether product design is strategic though.
Then add on to that our current work culture prefers specialists to generalists: HR and exec teams will hire a product designer with 5 years of design experience and no coding over someone with 2 years of design experience and 5 years of software engineering experience.