Do all product companies treat designers like they don’t do much?

Cred is overly done and confusing now. It is like a nightmare for designers. What has been done on the app bro. Ek cheeze dhundhne me itna time lag raha

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 🤡

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.

I just want to know how designers and pms are placed in a company? Because where I work I feel the PM is really dumb and she doesn't understand ux or even a bit a sense of visual design on how ui should work. She says "I don't really care how a button looks as long as it's there on the page". And I keep her in loop for feedbacks and she just doesn't understand the problem statement. Initially I thought maybe I'm not explaining it correctly but it's almost a year now and I feel she's dumb. She's actually a friend of the CEO so she agrees to whatever he says and he's kind of similar so I don't really know what to say. Also, I always work on a new project without having a PRD in place. So again is that how it's supposed to go where I do the PMs job and a product designers job or how is it? Any comments or thoughts are appreciated 🙏

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.

Engineers saying pms shouldn't exist should for once get what they want. Most engineers I know get anxious enough to take leaves once a customer shouts at them lol

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)

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.