https://uxplanet.org/lessons-learnt-doing-ux-for-3-years-924391915c9f
Recovering at home from a bad cold and a dizzy head, I got some peaceful time reflecting on my 201X, especially the last three years doing Product Design. This is a candid and personal retro.
There are more… However, I do believe dreadful moments are just turning points and learning opportunities in our lives. 🥳
I learned it the hard way from my first UX job at a startup.
Looking back, it was not a smart decision from the beginning. After leaving the world of architecture, I jumped at the first opportunity offered without figuring out my career goals. I did learn a ton in the first couple of months, from how to design responsive websites, to organizing design files and communicating animation with engineers. Yet I got too carried away by the work at hand and wasn’t paying enough attention to understand whether the company was moving in the right direction.
The startup expanded its product offerings way too fast and was stretched too thin. It laid off half of the company less than a year after I joined to save money. After another two months, another big layoff sent away half of the rest. And I became the sole designer on the team.
I was trying to push the big initiative I had at that moment. Sadly with limited resources (yes, many developers were let go), the major part of the project stayed in Sketch and Principle files. One painful truth I discovered is, the longer you stay at a failing company, the less competent you become. Nobody had the bandwidth to care about product quality at life-or-death situations. With less and less time available thinking about product strategy and user experience, and more and more focusing on marketing creatives (yet I want to focus on the UX path), I found myself stuck and frustrated.
So my advice is to always be on the lookout for these signs: