What’s with these companies and their expectations from designers to do everything?

In early startups specially in b2b, product designers are not designers they're rather design support. Always restricted to reach till minimum viable ux. Though whatever gets shipped at the end is better from past but power of shaping product is largely placed at PM's table and engeneering table (feasibility). Now you can avoid complaing and show high agency, partner with PM in defining Product but the default power house is still PM, not the designer. Also you don't have time for this because designs need to shipped to add to next sprint. At the end you just take a deep breath and sigh because you made something better, bit better if not far from what existed before. I guess high impact/ product definition work gets done by designer in big orgs only not only early age startups.

It seems unfair to me and others like me who are trying to get into the industry. People who are in the industry very well know that they didn't get an entry because they did some Jony Ive-level work. The majority of them simply got lucky in 2021. Now everyone wants superheroes in the name of product design. I wish I was doing the same job search in 2021, things would have been different.

Mostly so called "Design Leaders" "mentors" are always spewing gyaan in my office, LinkedIn, social media but actually fail to implement those stuff. Every other week we have this call where designers are supposed to talk about a topic and every designer comes with such complex presentations, use big words as if they are saving the world or something. They unnecessarily complicate such simple topics and then go on to call themselves designers 🤡

My company acts like developers are the sole reason the app ui exists. I’m not trying to diss them, it’s a team effort, everyone is involved. But when features go live it feels like nobody gives a shit. If it does well, devs get commended. Design is never given any recognition. It feels like no matter how much we do, we’re never contributing enough to be considered impactful even if numbers are going up. Is this the case everywhere?

Looking at the sad state of UX market in India makes me think about the scene few years back. In 2018-19 many folks who found coding or other roles a little difficult switched to UX. UX design was glorified even more by few design influenzaaas as if its the only coolest job left in IT. Most of the experienced designers we see today are earning good but shit in their pants when asked to do good visuals. They are good at talking, use lot of UX jargons and give gyaan on Linkedin comments and constantly ridicule designers who are good at visuals to sound intellectual. We don’t see talented illustrators, motion designers, vfx folks get the appreciation they deserve. Also these skills are difficult and takes hell lot of practice to master and has a high entry barrier as well.

Field is saturated and you will seriously struggle to find work. Not gate keeping, just laying out the reality. If you're up for the challenge then good, if not then you should look at some other fields. Product design is kind of weird now and is tougher than you think. It is no more a creative field where you can come up with unique ideas or have fun creating stuff. It is intoxicating, tedious and requires constant fighting with the stakeholders, listening to your micro managers and implementing stuff they "ordered" you to do disguised as feedback. Did I say, it is mostly copy work nowadays and portraying it as a whole new feature/design that is unique to your org/team? It’s 1% creativity, 99% stroking the ego of your managers and bosses just so you don't get laid off. (Not at capgemini, burner account)

We have had new designers recently in the team which have made our life hell. Only thing they want is pixels perfect design to be made due to which our projects deadlines have stretched a lot and bothered our work life balance. Introducing new designers to a team can bring fresh perspectives, but it seems these individuals might be focused heavily on perfectionism. Their insistence on pixel-perfect designs is causing delays and affecting our team's workflow and deadlines. While their dedication to detail can be commendable, I think it's essential to strike a balance between quality and efficiency to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Also these folks are making everything so design heavy that we also have had CVR drops. New design looks flashy and barely good to use for normal users. Thoughts?

I'm seeing so many posts where startup employees are cribbing about things like layoffs, work culture etc etc. Doesn't seem like they have perspective on everything it takes to build a startup. I've built a failed startup myself and have immense respect for founders who are grinding it out there in such difficult recessionary circumstances. And then you have so many of the engineers and PMs cribbing about basics without talking about important things like learning growth, building for the future etc. Why such myopia? I work at a big tech and envy the speed at which startups move, the big responsibility everyone gets to handle, the fast career growth. All these things are being cribbed about. They crib about founders wanting more. Their job is to ensure success, not to give lifetime jobs to entitled people. They have more headaches you can imagine. In my small startup I had a million headaches. I can only imagine how hard it must be to run larger ships. Is everyone joining a startup these days looking for a get rich quick scheme?