Love your advice about testing your product. Absolutely true! It’s easy to assume that just because you’re working on a product, that you understand it. I’ve found that this assumption has sabotaged me multiple times.
Such a valuable article! I recently went through a career transition myself — moving from Business Line A to Business Line B within the same company. While both roles are still in the Fintech space, it’s felt like starting over in many ways: rebuilding domain knowledge, connections, and personal influence from scratch.
The onboarding tips you shared have actually been circling in my mind over the past few weeks, but I hadn’t taken the time to articulate them in a structured way. Reading your piece gave me the perfect framework to organize those thoughts. Thank you so much for that!
I completely agree — curiosity is what separates good designers from great ones.
But in today’s job market, I think we’re putting designers between a rock and a hard place.
Take the first designer you mentioned — someone who deeply cared about visual and interaction craft. That’s exactly what we encourage early in a designer’s journey: perfect the details, master your tools. But once they’re hired, the expectation shifts. Suddenly, they’re asked to broaden their horizons, understand the business, and become domain experts.
The catch is: if for any reason they go back to the job market, they’re judged again almost entirely on design details — pixel perfection, shiny portfolios, and cool interactions — not the product and business knowledge they worked so hard to build.
I’m not saying it’s unfair — after all, we chose this career — but maybe we’re asking for too much.
We want UX/UI specialists, coders, PMs, and MBAs all wrapped into a single “product designer” role.
You're 100% right. It's dangerous to assume that we know everything about the product we're working on. Playing with it regularly is crucial, especially in complex enterprise UX, where multiple teams design and build functionalities, and tracking all the changes can be cumbersome.
Yes, you are 100%, today's job market is very tough. What's even worse, the job market of tomorrow, in which AI does more and more, could become even more competitive, and that was my point in this article. Only the strongest designers will survive.
By strongest, I mean those who can adapt to the new reality, possess high agency, and a wide skillset to demonstrate the real value of design, which, as we all should know, is something more than just pretty screens.
On the other hand, I believe the function of a designer is very dependent on the product maturity of the organization. Those with low maturity will be happy to hire people who are great at the craft. The requirements will flow from top to bottom, and everyone will be relatively happy.
Those with high maturity seek designers who can be involved in more aspects of the product development and management.
And I completely understand that for some, it could feel unfair. This is not how some schools and bootcamps teach design, but it's a different kind of problem.
Love your advice about testing your product. Absolutely true! It’s easy to assume that just because you’re working on a product, that you understand it. I’ve found that this assumption has sabotaged me multiple times.
Such a valuable article! I recently went through a career transition myself — moving from Business Line A to Business Line B within the same company. While both roles are still in the Fintech space, it’s felt like starting over in many ways: rebuilding domain knowledge, connections, and personal influence from scratch.
The onboarding tips you shared have actually been circling in my mind over the past few weeks, but I hadn’t taken the time to articulate them in a structured way. Reading your piece gave me the perfect framework to organize those thoughts. Thank you so much for that!
I completely agree — curiosity is what separates good designers from great ones.
But in today’s job market, I think we’re putting designers between a rock and a hard place.
Take the first designer you mentioned — someone who deeply cared about visual and interaction craft. That’s exactly what we encourage early in a designer’s journey: perfect the details, master your tools. But once they’re hired, the expectation shifts. Suddenly, they’re asked to broaden their horizons, understand the business, and become domain experts.
The catch is: if for any reason they go back to the job market, they’re judged again almost entirely on design details — pixel perfection, shiny portfolios, and cool interactions — not the product and business knowledge they worked so hard to build.
I’m not saying it’s unfair — after all, we chose this career — but maybe we’re asking for too much.
We want UX/UI specialists, coders, PMs, and MBAs all wrapped into a single “product designer” role.
Hey Joel, thanks for your comment!
You're 100% right. It's dangerous to assume that we know everything about the product we're working on. Playing with it regularly is crucial, especially in complex enterprise UX, where multiple teams design and build functionalities, and tracking all the changes can be cumbersome.
– Arek
I'm so glad you found something for yourself in this article, especially at this specific moment in your career.
Congrats on the transition! I hope you will enjoy designing for the new business line!
Reading such comments always makes my day.
My pleasure!
– Arek
Hi Luis, thanks for this interesting point.
Yes, you are 100%, today's job market is very tough. What's even worse, the job market of tomorrow, in which AI does more and more, could become even more competitive, and that was my point in this article. Only the strongest designers will survive.
By strongest, I mean those who can adapt to the new reality, possess high agency, and a wide skillset to demonstrate the real value of design, which, as we all should know, is something more than just pretty screens.
On the other hand, I believe the function of a designer is very dependent on the product maturity of the organization. Those with low maturity will be happy to hire people who are great at the craft. The requirements will flow from top to bottom, and everyone will be relatively happy.
Those with high maturity seek designers who can be involved in more aspects of the product development and management.
And I completely understand that for some, it could feel unfair. This is not how some schools and bootcamps teach design, but it's a different kind of problem.
– Arek
DEVO Energy Dome!