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Lowell Stevens
Jun 15 · 3 min read · Listen

You’re never going to get hired as a UX designer

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I know you’ve seen the articles, the videos, the tweets. Six figures in six months!
Your gangplank into tech, no experience required. Learn on YouTube, apply
online, humblebrag at Thanksgiving dinner this year about your stock options,
your company computer, your beanbag chairs and office laundromat. It’s easy,
right? How hard can it be.
Lowell Stevens
Download Figma, hop to Reddit. Ask about how to break into the UX industry. 1.4K Followers

Post removed? They hate newbies. Hop to Medium. Read an article about how Designer, writer, esports fan. Founder and creative
director @ www.foxandfarthing.com
someone quit their job as a Canadian tree planter and started making $12,000
a month as a UX designer. You start to worry. You preemptively check your Follow
brand new six figure tax bracket. Damn, that’s high. You check mortgage rates,
start home shopping in San Francisco. After all, it’ll only be six months. What
More from Medium
will mortgage rates be like? Maybe you should contact a realtor in the Bay
Area. How much for a new car? A Lexus sounds nice but that red leather Chris R Becker in UX Collective

The inspiration cycle for

interior is too much. Time to settle for a Tesla.
designers

Luísa Quinn in Bootcamp

You’ve been lied to. Do you want to make six figures in six months? Get a CDL
15 UX and UI resources to help
and become an over the road truck driver. It’s a job that doesn’t leave you
you in your journey
posting on LinkedIn about how shocked yet resilient you are in 4 months when
Cojo in UX Planet
your angel-funded startup can’t raise a Series G and lays off 30% of their
How to undertake a UX audit
10,000 strong workforce.
Spotify Design
Why am I writing this? Do I hate newbies? No. The point is that if you’re getting We’re Spilling the Tea: Spotify UX
into UX because you think it’s going to be a 150 day breezewalk into the Writing Questions Answered

Elysium of 7 figure tech jobs, you’re going to find yourself jobless, unskilled,
and taken advantage of. You’ll opt for whatever bootcamp has the coolest logo,
do three design challenges and 20 presentations about user experience, learn Help Status Writers Blog Careers Privacy Terms About
Knowable
73 buzzwords, and get set loose with a cloned portfolio, $6,000 poorer and
joining the miles long line of junior UX design applicants at every single job.

How then will you be successful? How is it even possible? Who is getting hired
today?

First of all, give a shit. Are you doing it because you truly, genuinely love
designing for apps and web? There’s a lot of sanctimonious Twitter threads
about how UI is such a tiny part of UX, but the bitter truth is that at any non-
FAANG job, design will be 90% of your job, listening to your HCI illiterate
technical founder-turned-stakeholder will be 8%, and heuristics will be 2%.
There will be no interviews, no focus groups, no long-winded data-heavy
presentations on Thursdays. It’ll be you and Figma (or God help me, InVision)
working with some deprecated design system or making your own from
scratch while a programmer leans over your shoulder and tells you to make the
button smaller when it’s already 40px by 40px but if you so much as breathe
the names of Nielsen or Norman the technical founder will sigh, wait till you log
off and do it themselves.

Want to actually get a job in UX? Set yourself apart. Learn a low code system
like Bubble or Mendix and make an app that really works. Then publish it. Then
take the user data and refine the design. Then include that in your cover letter.
Volunteer to fix a non-profit’s app or website. Redesign it, code it. Can’t code?
Remake it in Webflow or Wordpress. Take screenshots. Put the before and after
in your portfolio.

There’s no more slack in the UX design industry. The need now is for mid-levels
and seniors. The economy is slowing, belts are tightening, and the door for
juniors is closing. But it’s not closed. It’ll never be closed. The trick is to want it
more, fight harder, and work faster than everyone you’re competing with.

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