What six years at FAANG taught me about designer growth
Broadening focus, building ambitious things and expanding your view.
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Designers should not be limited by design.
We spoke to Julie Zhuo about her leadership days at Meta. This week, I want to explore a designer’s career growth and what it means for you.
I asked Meta’s Staff Product Designer, Yutong, if she’d be up to sharing her perspective, and I'm happy she agreed! Reflecting on her time at FAANG, this is one of the best reflective posts I’ve read, and I want to share it.
What does it mean to grow as a designer? After 6+ years at Google and Meta, Yutong shares that growth means more than leveling up on the job ladder. This article shares their growth story and a call to action for more designers to join in a new journey - to learn and grow beyond design, way beyond design. The rapidly changing landscape in front of us presents immense opportunities. We can be the inventors of the future. Let’s explore together!
Shoutout to Yutong and Yunan for being guest contributors. To learn more about Yutong, visit her website and LinkedIn!
How we think about designer growth after 6+ years at FAANG
Before we get into it, here’s our background: We are identical twin sisters. We finished our undergraduate in Graphic Design in 2017 and since then…
Yunan worked at Meta for 5 years as a designer before transitioning to be a Product Manager a year ago.
I worked at Google and Meta for the past 6 years as a designer.
Year 1: Hungry new-grad designers
In the beginning, as new-grad designers, we were green and hungry. We knew nothing, so everything was new and cool to us. We hadn’t yet realized that we “should” be thinking about promotions or careers. We looked up to the people around us and tried our best to do what we were told to do.
Years 2 & 3: The career ladder climbers
Well, we didn’t care about promotions… until we did.
Our mentors and managers, out of the best intentions, explained to us how to succeed in the companies. They asked us, “What are your goals?” We hear people talk about performance reviews and promotions all the time. We started to care and compare. We started to have goals—climb the ladder.
Year 4: The confused “Design Leads”
When we got promoted, it felt great initially. But, like many designers, as we approached the “Design Lead” (or “Staff Designer”), we weren’t sure what was next.
We were at a crossroads. Should we… Stay as an individual contributor? Become a manager? Rr… what else? What was more troubling was the question, “Is this it? Do we continue to climb the ladder until…when?”
Year 5: The transition to a Product Manager
Transitioning to be a PM has become a popular consideration for designers, especially for those who work on products that are light on user interfaces. This was the case for Yunan. After working on Meta’s Ads product for 5+ years, she found herself less interested in creating UIs and more curious about product strategies.
Many factors went into her eventual transition.
We realised we knew so little.
Let me explain.
Before her transition as “Design Lead” at Meta (we are ashamed to say this now), we thought we were so senior that we knew everything about design. We thought pixel-pushing was not worth our time and thought we got to choose what skills we contributed to our projects. You get the point.
Our minds were so narrow. We were interpreting our job and ladder descriptions in the most narrow way. We saw boxes and boundaries between different types of designers and different functions.
But, once Yunan started preparing for her transition to PM, her mindset changed. She was a beginner again. She started reading, reaching out to people, asking questions, and questioning things she thought she knew.
Most importantly, she started to think, “What skills does she really need to build good things?” And realized she knew so little.
Year 6+: Returning to a beginner’s mind
Back in college, we had big dreams. Like many others, we looked up to designer CEOs like Brian Chesky of Airbnb.
We thought the sky was the limit.
Working at Google and Meta, time flew by faster than we realized. After focusing on climbing the career ladder for years, we had unwittingly internalized a narrow self-identity. We had stopped thinking that our ambitions could ever be bigger than “Designer at <Company>” (but we wouldn’t have admitted it out loud if you’d asked us).
Yunan's transition to a PM role reminded us that there’s so much more to learn, so much more that we can do, and so much more that we can be.
The sky is still the limit.
It reminded us to think much deeper about:
What do we really want to accomplish as a person?
Why be a designer in the first place?
What does it mean to grow as a designer or, more importantly, as a person?
So, below are our thoughts as of today. 👀
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Designer growth; more broadly
Why be a designer in the first place?
For us, it’s because we like creating things. From sewing clothes for our dolls when we were young to drawing and painting in school to designing digital products now, what we create and how we create change, but we know creating something out of nothing is always what we enjoy the most.
What’s your answer?
Once we are clear that creating things excites us, we can think about how to create and build better.
If our goal is to build amazing products, then design skills alone isn’t enough
Let’s zoom out to the basics.
A great, sustainable product needs to be:
Desirable — people want it and like it;
Viable — can be built with current technology;
Feasible — makes a sustainable profit for the business;
To achieve that, different skills are needed.
Or, we can imagine a “connected brain” for the product team, with each person contributing different parts to the brain.
Different products need different skills. Also, the skills needed change throughout the product development circle.
So, what does this have to do with designer growth?
The 3 ways for designers to grow
Product needs differ, so the skills we contribute need to differ too. Those who stick to a static job description and stay within the artificial boundaries of one job function will reach their limits quickly.
With that in mind, here are 3 different ways for designers to grow:
1. Grow within design
If we zoom into design, we can see that different types of design skills are usually needed, such as system thinking, product thinking, visual, interaction, and prototyping skills.
Unless a designer is super senior and experienced (which most of us aren’t), there are usually some gaps in a designer’s skills.
The problem oftentimes, is even when a product needs certain design skills, some designers may not realise or be willing to grow these skills to make sure the product is high quality.
In my case, there were times when I resisted to grow my visual and prototyping skills. Why? Because early on in my career, I was repeatedly told: “Design isn’t about pixels…”; “Function over form…”; “Product thinking and system thinking are required at higher levels…” So, I associated visual design and prototyping with junior roles.
But what I have realized is that:
There are no inherently superior design skills. It all depends on what the product needs at that specific time.
We have also noticed that the ones who continue to progress beyond “Design Leads” are the most versatile. When needed, they will get their hands dirty and create whatever designs their team needs.
Here’s a diagram:
So, one way for designers to grow is to perfect their expertise. Although there may be fewer design roles available on the market now, those who have the patience and determination to be the best will stand out.
What matters is to focus on the product outcome. If the team needs more visual skills, provide more. If the team needs more prototyping skills, provide more. No skill or work is beneath anyone if the goal is to build the best products possible.
2. Broaden focus
Building a solid foundation in design is important, but there are limits.
The design leader, John Maeda, said back in 2019:
In reality, design isn’t that important.
Our interpretation is that designers should avoid pushing for “design” and “design-led approach” regardless of the product’s needs and context.
If the product needs to be business-driven or tech-driven, then designers should be good partners to the other functions. And, beyond good partners, we should forget the narrow definitions of “design”, and gain business and technical skills to contribute.
For example, if a designer is staffed on a team where other functions don’t spend much time discussing the UIs and interactions (e.g. Ads products).
One way for the designer to react is to feel that design isn’t valued. They may go “fight for a seat at the table” by trying to educate the other functions about users, quality, and craft.
But a more valuable way for the designer to react is to go much deeper — understand why “design” isn’t prioritized and what is the key to the product’s success. For example, what’s more important might be the machine learning algorithm.
Then, the meaningful thing for the designers to do is to educate themselves about these algorithms and be creative in how they contribute. They can use their “design thinking” in completely new ways to help design the algorithms rather than fighting for the prioritization of UI/UX.
Again, the key is to focus on the outcome and gain whatever skills are needed to achieve that. Job functions are always changing, but this much is clear: the most versatile will prevail.
3. Build bigger things
Building better digital products is exciting, but what about building even bigger things—a team, a business, or a new way of life?
The unique skills we designers have are never “creating beautiful UIs”, but “finding problems and solving them in effective and creative ways”. So, what if we take those skills and apply them to much, much bigger things?
Like many designers, we are huge fans of Julie Zhuo! She published an article on “Higher level design.” She wrote:
My friends, to escape from the shackles of role definitions, we must pursue higher-level design.
High-level design means not limiting yourself to activities you do but rather outcomes you’d like to influence.
It means growing the scale of your ambitions on those outcomes. Maybe you start off designing a screen that converts, then a feature that enables, then an app that retains, then an experience that delights, then a business that sustains, then a way of life that fulfills. Maybe you design a way to change the world and it’s real and meaningful in the way you intended, not just some corporate jingo.
We feel more excited than ever to expand our ambitions, learn more, and aspire to design and build much bigger things.
Growth in the Age of AI
AI will 1,000% make some of our existing work irrelevant. But wouldn’t it be great if we no longer needed to do the tedious and repetitive work? For example, what if we no longer need to turn a screenshot into a Figma mock?