4 ms·

Many go into management, as you say. In my experience the best managers were never even remotely the best designers in terms of pure raw talent. That is sorta s

by vogt 4y ago

Many go into management, as you say. In my experience the best managers were never even remotely the best designers in terms of pure raw talent. That is sorta secondary to your question, and just kinda my own personal inject. At the same time though, I think it supports the idea that staff/principal/"Distinguished whatever" titles for design serve a use case. In fact, some BigCos have adopted that model similar to Staff Software Engineer, etc. FAANG/FAANG-adjacent types. I think Amazon, Slack, Discord have staff+ level designers. I don't know the official job requirements, but I'd assume 7-10+ years of real actual digital product design work. I imagine we will see more of that. People like me who have been around a while or longer are getting older, and not all of us want to pivot to management. Can't even imagine doing it! I've been in this industry for ~10 years, and am getting pretty burnt out on it. Lately though things have been better. If you stick around in the field and find an answer to this question...reach out and let me know? :) Best of luck!

uxcolumbo 4y ago
What exactly is / has been burning you out? PS your profile needs an email address if you want folks to reach out ;)
- vogt 4y ago
  Hey good call! I thought mine was, but thanks for correcting. Truly, I think I just find the design work mundane at this point - maybe just by virtue of doing it for so many years. I do a lot of coding work (throwaway UI component prototypes, that kind of thing) and am finding more joy there. But part of it too is that I work at a big financial corp who are a great employer, but our tools ecosystem and ability to share work with the outside world is _incredibly_ limited. Just a common trade-off of working at such a company, and I understand why that has to be. But nothing fulfilled me more than shipping things at a startup or small, nimble company. Hoping I can get back to that when our family is a little more comfortable financially.
simplotek 4y ago
> I don't know the official job requirements, but I'd assume 7-10+ years of real actual digital product design work. I'm not sure your point stands any scrutiny. Titles such as principal engineer or staff+ levels are not granted by seniority or at an anniversary. They are granted if an individual meets all the technical and organizational requirements, as well as career accomplishments, that make a case for a promotion. You don't get that just by sitting at your desk. Also, principal engineers at Amazon, a company renowned for the average SDE career spanning only around 2-3 years, tend to have been in the company for over a decade and comprise a very small fraction of the whole engineering community.
- moneywoes 4y ago
  I believe average tenure at Amazon was 1 year
- vogt 4y ago
  >I'm not sure your point stands any scrutiny. Titles such as principal engineer or staff+ levels are not granted by seniority or at an anniversary. OK, fair enough - instead of guessing, I went and pulled up some current job postings: -Staff Product Designer @ DoorDash: "You have 8+ years of experience as a product/UX designer in a relevant industry" -Staff Product Designer @ Opendoor: "Experience: At least 8 years of relevant experience as an individual contributor on an in-house product design team" -Staff Product Designer @ Mozilla: "5-7 years of professional product design experience" -Sr. Staff Product Designer @ CNN Digital: "12+ years professional experience, specifically as a Product Designer -Staff Product Designer @ Ro (Roman): "8+ years of experience shipping high-impact and successful digital products across mobile and web at consumer-facing/focused products and brands" So to me, the OP question wasn't "What makes a Staff designer?" it was "What happens to designers as they get older and don't want to pivot to management/PMing?" The answer I was attempting to give was "It looks like there are lots of Staff/Product+ roles opening, which may be good fits for such people." Maybe the main hangup you found was my reference to FAANG/FAANG-adjacent companies, and I may have been off the mark there. And make no mistake about it, I won't hide it - I'm definitely wish-casting here as an old guy in the design industry myself.

by vogt 4y ago

uxcolumbo 4y ago

What exactly is / has been burning you out? PS your profile needs an email address if you want folks to reach out ;)

vogt 4y ago
Hey good call! I thought mine was, but thanks for correcting. Truly, I think I just find the design work mundane at this point - maybe just by virtue of doing it for so many years. I do a lot of coding work (throwaway UI component prototypes, that kind of thing) and am finding more joy there. But part of it too is that I work at a big financial corp who are a great employer, but our tools ecosystem and ability to share work with the outside world is _incredibly_ limited. Just a common trade-off of working at such a company, and I understand why that has to be. But nothing fulfilled me more than shipping things at a startup or small, nimble company. Hoping I can get back to that when our family is a little more comfortable financially.

simplotek 4y ago

> I don't know the official job requirements, but I'd assume 7-10+ years of real actual digital product design work. I'm not sure your point stands any scrutiny. Titles such as principal engineer or staff+ levels are not granted by seniority or at an anniversary. They are granted if an individual meets all the technical and organizational requirements, as well as career accomplishments, that make a case for a promotion. You don't get that just by sitting at your desk. Also, principal engineers at Amazon, a company renowned for the average SDE career spanning only around 2-3 years, tend to have been in the company for over a decade and comprise a very small fraction of the whole engineering community.

moneywoes 4y ago
I believe average tenure at Amazon was 1 year
vogt 4y ago
>I'm not sure your point stands any scrutiny. Titles such as principal engineer or staff+ levels are not granted by seniority or at an anniversary. OK, fair enough - instead of guessing, I went and pulled up some current job postings: -Staff Product Designer @ DoorDash: "You have 8+ years of experience as a product/UX designer in a relevant industry" -Staff Product Designer @ Opendoor: "Experience: At least 8 years of relevant experience as an individual contributor on an in-house product design team" -Staff Product Designer @ Mozilla: "5-7 years of professional product design experience" -Sr. Staff Product Designer @ CNN Digital: "12+ years professional experience, specifically as a Product Designer -Staff Product Designer @ Ro (Roman): "8+ years of experience shipping high-impact and successful digital products across mobile and web at consumer-facing/focused products and brands" So to me, the OP question wasn't "What makes a Staff designer?" it was "What happens to designers as they get older and don't want to pivot to management/PMing?" The answer I was attempting to give was "It looks like there are lots of Staff/Product+ roles opening, which may be good fits for such people." Maybe the main hangup you found was my reference to FAANG/FAANG-adjacent companies, and I may have been off the mark there. And make no mistake about it, I won't hide it - I'm definitely wish-casting here as an old guy in the design industry myself.