Within the last year the team that I work for adopted Figma after many months of negotiations with senior leadership in the broader company.
Watching config when dev mode was announced shortly thereafter was like a proverbial gut punch. We had just won the fight to get designers paid seats, so seeing that this functionality is hidden behind a paywall was a reality that came all to fast. There is no way we will get developer seats here. It’s just reality. (I understand the justification for charging a licensing fee, don’t get me wrong!)
There are certainly benefits to dev mode for smaller orgs and startups, but in an enterprise environment where a functioning DSM and component library exists, the cost is not worth it from an engineering perspective. And I would hate to lose the collaboration and efficiency gains that come with building prototypes in Figma.
So I guess this is a plea to the Figma team (and a plea to anyone reading this! please provide feedback if you’re dealing with a similar reality!) to reconsider the pricing of dev mode. Or offer a “basic” version that is similar to what inspect used to be, so we can continue to use the software without a large cost increase. I may be a bit bold in saying this, but I anticipate we wouldn’t be the only enterprise/organizational company that would be forced to find other software if inspect mode is stripped to nothing and dev mode licensing is forced to keep the same functionality ☹
