How to deal with this nightmare? 👻

I have been doing designs for the past 5-6 years and stuck both professionally and financially. In my current job(2 year completed) I am not seeing any growth at all, no proper design process in place, no growth for the designer cause there is no ladder on how someone will reach the top in your organization, moreover they still use sketch as a tool, so i don't even know how to use components, libraries, styles vgerg vgerh. This is the first requirement for nowdays to choose any company that you know figma. Feeling a bit sad today that my juniors that I have guided in the past are now in good product companies and doing good both professionally, financially and life wise, I started applying for a job 1 year back and the first thing they asked was do you have a figma file, second this is a very simple work you are doing, i am depressed. Choose company wisely i think , i am getting only 7 LPA

Early in my career, I was working with a client who was always frustrated with me. I was also frustrated with her because she always used to give design inputs and had horrible taste and decision making was absolute shit. I got so angry at that woman that I added a middle finger gesture in the reflection of the water. It was super unnoticeable but if you really knew where you were looking at then you could make it out. The craziest thing is that they actually posted that in their social media. 😂 What is your design horror story? 😂

been working at a product based startup as the only ui/ ux designer for over 6 months now. work is usually solving for and designing new features, or thinking redesign from user grievances. the products were already designed for them by an agency before my joining and feel poorly designed to me, but does the job for the users. decisions regarding usage and the how-tos of implementation are taken by the product leads. in such a scenario, i don't see myself taking product decisions, but i try to suggest my ideas (mostly accepted) when we frame the requirements and solutions. how do i grow from just largely only designing what my leads tell me, to actually making an impact with the products we have? background- i'm an electronics engineer, landed a design internship at a startup a little before graduation and they offered a full time role after. accepted it over my placement and it's been over 6 months in this role. thanks & cheers :)

I've been in this field for about 15 years now and post-covid this field has become a borderline joke and I feel embarrassed about Design in India. Do not think that Designing involves ONLY a lot of Visual Design work, importance to "craft", motion design etc. The kind of work you need to do should involve a LOT of user research, planning, testing, domain knowledge, technical knowledge and actual hands on design work. I don't get to do a lot of it today but back in the day it was all that we were taught by our Design Leads. Now because of these influencers whenever I tell people that Design is innovative and based in Behavioural Science, they assume that my work is easy, doesn't take much time, I just have to design screens etc and I keep on explaining to them that you're wrong and there's more to it. Thanks to clown influencers, kids think if they follow these clowns they can get into FAANG or some top tier company. I'm really scared of the state of Design in India 5 years down the line when these design kiddies become more senior.

Is it just me or design culture in India is just becoming worse? Saw a lead designer come in for work. Sit down for 5 minutes and make crass jokes and then leave. What even man. I am super disappointed. All the best people I have worked with have either left or are about to leave. All the women in office become uncomfortable with these jokes and it is visible on their faces. They then take credit for our work and speak really well to the senior management about "HE" has done. I transitioned to design to learn and grow in my career but this is the least ambitious field I have seen in my career. What do you think?

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've noticed a trend of being asked to create elaborate strategies, extensive market research and other creative collaterals when it comes to the assessment rounds. They usually take inputs and then reject them in the final round. How should we protect our ideas while simultaneously participating in the interview process? I recently had a company ask for a strategy, reject me and then immediately announce a part of what I had given as an input. It was a shitty company and that was what was expected from it anyway but what about other big companies who do the same?

So, for some context, I recently joined my new company about 4 months ago. I was previously working at a well known design studio and wanted to try out product companies. My manager is very bossy and literally micromanages everything. Things they do: 1. Has 2 1:1s per week. 2 fkn 1:1s every week. One on Tuesday and one on Friday just to check up on how I'm doing and there is literally nothing to update during that time. I mean I'm not going to make any significant changes within 2 days. My time gets wasted and I've suggested that I don't think we need two calls like this but they dismissed that point. 2. Does not know when to diverge or converge. If we are approaching a deadline, they are still in an exploration mode and constantly ask me to explore more. Being super unrealistic. And then randomly call me out by saying, we need to wrap this up quickly after asking me to explore more. Like tf? 3. Most importantly, super confusing in the sense that they contradict their own opinion in the same call and all the calls end up with no conclusion. Do this using X method, then next day they say why are you using X method, you can try Y method too bla bla. This happens every time and I'm left speechless every time. I get on calls with them to get clarification on my issues but end up getting more confused. 4. Gives feedback and expects it to get implemented. If I say no or suggest a better alternative, they become defensive and pin it on me saying, I need to explore more etc. I do explore a lot but there should be a full stop to when I should stop exploring. Also, literally anything I do has to go through them, and they have to give unnecessary advice even when the work I am doing is coming to a closure. Every Sunday I dread that the next day is Monday. Feeling very down off late, what should I do?

I am working as SDE 1 in a good Indian startup. It's getting toxic day by day. Late night workings like 3AM and working on weekends is normalised like anything. Since I am new to IT ( no sort of politics never) and have almost 2.5 Years of experience, I am facing issues in getting credits. Last appraisal cycle in January, I was nominated for promotion but wasn't given to me, reason: you have not worked with architect and he was making decisions. In that case, architect should have been distributed tasks to us. one SDE3 is leading one of the projects ( not a big one ) and manager/architect is not much interested and never join any standup or retro, I have contributed immensely to that. Now since it is completely driven by sde 3 , he takes updates from us and show his work infront of seniors and director + announces like his work and seldom we get thank you in threads. Like if you did one function or wrote complete flow, for both thank you. Because of all these reasons, my work is not getting recognised. There is no one in team to help in this. Whenever a manager or Architect show cases some features or release, it's pretty evident that his team has done it but when a sde 3 does it, it is not the same. It conveys the message all or 90% work is done by him. I would like to take some suggestions from my seniors and fellow mates here. Hierarchy - sde 1-2-3-4-EM I can't leave or switch right now due to some critical persona reasons.