Find your Design Career fit
With an ever-evolving skillset, your environment can help shape your Design career trajectory
Find your Design Career Fit
The thing about careers in tech is that no opportunity fits neatly into any particular category or checklist. Whether you went to design school or a bootcamp, your Product Design education didn’t end up with you getting a License to Practice Design, or a narrow band of specializations that give you and potential employers clarity on exactly what they can hire you for.
This comes with unique challenges and opportunities when finding the right job early in your career. You’ve gotta catalogue your strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, and needs for yourself — then convince employers that your rare combination of skills and growth potential are the right fit for them.
Right Now, Inc.
At the risk of mixing metaphors here — let’s think about your next career move like dating. More likely than not, you’re looking at one of two options:
Mr./Ms. Right — you know they’ll be your person long-term. This is hubby/wifey status, a relationship that will last. Of course it comes with its own growing pains, but that will allow you room to grow and evolve alongside one other.
Mr./Ms. Right Now — you serve each other’s needs today, and your commitment and loyalty to one another is a bit more transactional. If you play your cards right (and you’re both equally respectful of each other’s choices), you’ll benefit from the relationship and there won’t be any hard feelings when you part ways.
How might we apply this mentality to your potential employers? It’s the difference between Right, Inc. and Right Now, Inc.
Right, Inc. — a lot less prevalent today as people kick off their careers; gone are the days of joining a company right out of school and sticking around for several years. It’s still possible to find this, and an incredibly valid path, just likely not in your first job. The stability, trust, and opportunities that stem from mutual loyalty credibility built over time can yield a whole host of opportunities over time.
Right Now, Inc. — where you’re more likely to end up, and that’s okay. But this is where you think hard about what you’re looking to get out of your job. And it’s also crucial to check in frequently on whether or not you and the company you work for are meeting each other’s needs.
Finding the Right Design Job for Right Now
Being embedded in a startup as the first and only Product Designer means something completely different than being an employee of large UI/UX department. And each of those options is also different from working at an agency. Oh, and don’t forget that you can also freelance.
Check out UX Planet’s Where Could a Career in UX Take You? for a thorough list of considerations when weighing the most common options:
Join an Agency
Join an agency for the pure variety of work, opportunities to learn from more senior design practitioners, and availability of working hours. You can really get reps in on solving a wide variety of problems, and learn to do so quickly.
On the flip side, you don’t get any long-term ownership of a project. This can result in not really being able to learn from a project and improve on it over time. Moreover, communication is tough when there’s less clarity on ownership — there’s high complexity in iterating on initial ideas and a frustrating path to shipping something meaningful.
Also — clients. Clients can be fickle, finicky, frustrating, and are unfortunately the final decision-makers when it comes to your work.
Ultimately: alignment is challenging when the engagements are shorter-term and more transactional.
Go in-house
By going in-house, you get the chance to really invest in a product or feature area. You get to go deep in your problem-solving and take your time to make a more resonant and meaningful impact in your work. Unlike working with clients, you have a lot more ownership and weight you can throw around because of your ability to understand the ins and outs of your products and users.
You’ll get to work closely with stakeholders across teams — not only to touch, feel, and influence the process of bringing your visions come to life; but to get a better understanding of the business as a whole. When you understand how your priorities come with tradeoffs to the business, it makes you a powerful asset to the organization.
You’ll gain first-hand insight into all areas of the company, and master the art of aligning both user and business goals — an extremely valuable skill in today’s market.
However, remember that you may be a lone warrior in fighting to prioritize a design culture. This is a huge drawback especially in smaller shops where you may be the only Designer. You may find yourself in the fire figuring out a ton on your own, and you may be stuck with feature areas that you’re no longer excited about after some time.
Freelance
Freelance if you want more freedom and control in your clients, flexibility in your schedule, and potentially the ability to earn more. But let’s be real — the work is incredibly unpredictable, you’re stuck building your own routines and discipline, and otherwise alone in your professional growth and development.
Making the call
Before laying out what each option means for you — get clarity on what matters to you most and then reach out to a variety of organizations that fit those criteria. This won’t fall neatly into one of the three categories (agency. vs. in-house vs. freelance) either! For example: UX Planet points out that agencies give you the chance to learn from a lot of other designers. If mentorship and learning from others is your number one priority, you may still find that at a large company with a robust Product Design organization. Or even at a small startup that has a designer as a founder!
And let’s be real about Right Now, Inc. — your needs will change over time, and so will the needs of the companies you work for. You don’t have to pick one path and go down it forever. What’s crucial is that you commit to a company for as long as you can deliver real value and they provide you with the growth and fulfillment you need.
Want to get reps on rapid problem-solving and delivery? Join an agency. Been there for a few years and hoping to dig deeper and have more buy-in with an actual business? Start looking in-house =]
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