A Junior Designer’s Field Trip
My 3 takeaways from conversations with designers from leading tech companies.
Introduction
Being in my final semester of college, I, like most other students, will inevitably move on to the next dreaded/coveted phase of life after graduation: work life. I know I will be pursuing a career in design but the reality of the day-to-day role of a designer is still blurry and I had burning questions for other designers:
“What’s a typical day/week like for you?”
“How is career progression like for a designer in your company?”,
and “What advice do you have for a junior designer?”.
To get a better idea of what I was getting myself into, the most obvious way was to literally go out and talk to designers themselves.
Thus, with my savings and a huge leap of faith, I bought a plane ticket to Silicon Valley, skipping class, to talk to designers from leading tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.
My 3 Takeaways
I cold-emailed several designers from different companies for coffee and was able to schedule meetings with designers from Google, PayPal, and Facebook. The knowledge gained was so insightful and the trip was worth every penny spent. There were a plethora of things that I learned and I would love to share my 3 biggest takeaways here.
*What I learnt is based on conversation with in-house designers and might not entirely be applicable to agencies, startups, or consultancies.
1. Develop Your Hard Skills First
This would be the first step for getting a design role at any company. Without demonstrating solid design skills and process, you are not convincing anyone to put you in their teams. Master your tools, do internships, or work on side-projects to improve your craft.
Design is about solving problems within constraints. So when sharing your work, talk about the pros and cons of each design decision, the trade-offs considered, and how you explored alternatives.
Soft skills are equally as important. I was told that soft skills such as leadership and collaboration are a big part of your day-to-day job as a designer. We cannot build a product by ourselves— but a team can.
Designers will need to:
- Paint a picture to convince your team and higher-ups for buy-in on your proposed ideas & solutions.
- Collaborate with developers and product managers to understand business goals and technical constraints to comprehensively solve problems.
- Let go of their ego and be comfortable with criticism.
As designers, understanding humans is half the job done. Working closely with humans to solve these problems, is the other half. It is important to improve these soft skills and an internship is a good way to start.
2. Career Progression: Individual Contributor or Manager?
One is likely to start off as an Individual Contributor (IC). After some years of experience, one can choose to remain on the Individual Contributor track, or go on the Manager track or an IC/Manager hybrid role.
As an Individual Contributor, you will definitely be doing more hands-on work. You will have ownership over your work and a chance to see your work developed end-to-end. You will also work closely with researchers, data scientists, product managers, and developers throughout the product development process. An IC’s work is pretty cyclical — research, design, prototype, test, evaluate, and then repeat. Lastly, as an IC, you will still have various opportunities to lead and take charge.
As a Manager, you will be in charge of a team of designers to meet the design needs of a product. The manager should function as a support role and leverage on the team members’ strengths and help steer them towards their career goals. It is a role that involves excellent communication skills, exceptional people management, and a solid foundation knowledge of design. A hybrid IC/Manager has dual responsibilities of managing a team and contributing to a design project (kudos to these folks).
I was also stressed that both roles are equally as important in companies like Facebook and Google. Not everyone is cut out to manage, but it doesn’t stop one from being a leader in other aspects —It all boils down to leveraging on what you do best and being proactive.
3. There is No Perfect Job
Every job has its own pros and cons. I follow a 3P’s framework by Bobby Goshal of High Resolution when evaluating a new role: People you work with, Purpose in your work, and Pay to settle your bills. You would wanna aim to get at least 2 out of 3Ps when looking for a job.
From my conversations, it is not realistic or pragmatic to aim for a role with all 3P’s. You might not be working on a project you are passionate about. You might need a job to just pay those bills and put food on the table. Or you might be in a toxic environment where people are hard to work with. You might even find yourself being the only designer with the most design expertise in the room where they will probably ask for your input on UX and you are not entirely sure.
Of course, you are totally not alone. At most mid-sized companies and above, there are internal channels and designer networks for you to bounce ideas off and gain feedback. For instance, Facebook has Weekly Design Critiques to share one’s work, get feedback, and see problems in a different perspective. Externally, there are many supportive design communities on Slack and Facebook Groups that will help if you ask. There is no perfect job — it’s the opportunities created by yourself by making the best out of a given situation that makes it one.
4. Bonus: Ditch the Student Mindset
This advice is based on personal experience that has helped me in my journey as a self-taught designer. If you are a student/intern, try to stop thinking like one and treat the work you do as that of a full-timer. By adopting that mindset, you will become more responsible for your own learning and always strive to deliver higher-quality work. If you do not know certain concepts or tools, you will be naturally inclined to learn the required knowledge for the job.
By understanding that learning was beyond the classroom, my desire to learn skyrocketed once I felt like I wasn’t learning much in college. In fact, most of my design education was through online classes, reading case studies, and through regular practice of my skills through projects and internships.
But without a doubt, enjoy the benefits that comes along with the ‘student’ title. As a student, mistakes made are usually more forgiving and less costly — a perfect chance to take risks and experiment doing out-of-the-norm things. And yes. You will reap the rewards for trying (which is much better than doing nothing).
Ending note: If there’s one thing to keep from being a student, it is to always have an attitude for lifelong learning — as designers, our line of work is always evolving (designers should learn some coding too!).
I’d like to thank the people whom I met up with during my trip for their valuable time and brilliant advice. If you enjoyed the read, smash the clap button 👏🏻 or check out my other works on my portfolio.
