Employees are leaders, designers, artists, programmers, support, lawyers or accountants. People who are occupied with directly adding value to the company. Employees will spend their day sitting at a computer to work.

The term differentiates itself from staff, who are occupied with keeping operations running smoothly so the employees can work, e.g. cleaners, cooks, maintenance, etc.

A lead designer's job is to lead the overall construction of a single project. They can become famous and seen as the creator of a line of product in the eyes of fans.

They are differentiated from leaders, who are not designers, but instead lead the entire team they are on, handling HR and project related tasks.

A design can refer to 2 things:

• The design of product, i.e. what it should do, how it should be constructed, etc. Usually comes in the form of a design document
• Hardware design, which is the final physical look of a piece of hardware

Unless hardware is specifically used, design will refer to the first of these 2, e.g. a description of how a product should work and be constructed.