I'm not clear on my future path. I'm currently a senior product designer but everything I read about principal product designer, makes me feel I'm already doing those.   I want to understand from t...

I'm not clear on my future path. I'm currently a senior product designer but everything I read about principal product designer, makes me feel I'm already doing those. 

I want to understand from the market what's the expectation for principal vs senior and how different is it from being a lead.

Role expectations of principal product designer vs senior product designer

Product Designer

Role expectations of principal product designer vs senior product designer- Grapevine

Our team has grown organically in the past couple of years. We have 2 senior designers, 1 mid level designer and 4 junior designers. Have been finding it difficult to find time for each of them. Senior designers who are mentoring junior designers are finding it difficult to complete their work.

What’s the idea ratio between senior and junior designers in a product design team? Design managers, are you also facing similar issues? How are you working on it?

Please share your thoughts and feedback.

Product Design team- ideal ratio between senior and junior designers

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Dear PMs and aspiring PMs 

Every company has its own hirerchy and designation and definition of what PO, PM, BA  is and lot of ambiguity is there. Can we please share what is followed and what we know to clear some of that..

In HSBC, for some of the teams, not sure about all..
They hire for BA role, at AVP and VP level. In Agile working group role, they will be called PO. And VP+1 boss in UK or other markets would be called Product manager. 

In the Startup I am currently working. Role and designations are not clear. They have lead PM, they have principle PM. Generally in market lead= principal. 

Similarly in EY, they hire typical BA profile at senior consultant, and deploy at client site as Senior PO for some clients and senior PM for some. 

Let's share what you know and reduce the information assymtry.

PM hierarchy ambiguity

I have 1.7 years experience.  worked in 2 startups as solo product deisgners. legal tech and ed tech.Did everything  from research,  ui ,moodbboard,illustration, motion,...

since I never had seniors just curious to know...

what do senior product designers do daily basis? how much of it is ui and ux?

UX/UI Designer

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

I joined this startup recently as a solo product designer (this is my first fte role) and i’m being payed 14lpa (12 base+2 bonus) now although the people here really like my work but I personally don’t feel like i’m learning anything new to become a better product designer. I always feel the lack of having a senior PD. 
How much time should i spend in this startup so that when I switch jobs i can get a decent hike as well.

when to switch jobs

Product Manager

Hi, i have been working outside India for the last 5 years, so am not sure of what to enter as expected salary for senior leadership roles in design. Any insights would be great!

Product designer salaries

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

Lately I am seeing a lot of devs transition to product management directly without an MBA. 
Those who have taken that path, is it worth it?

Why did you transition? 
What are some of the things you hadn't consider before making the switch, but faced only after it?
If given the chance, would you continue being a PM or go back to development?

Being a Product Manager worth it?

Software Engineer

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 :)

Growth as a designer?

Visual Designer

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.

Product designer rant

I myself am looking for product design roles. All I see on linkedin and other job portals is that companies only looking for Product Designer 2 candidates/mid-senior/lead designers.

Even if I see any PD1 role, they ask for minimum 1 year experience (internship experience no included). I don’t understand the rationale behind it.

Its getting tough now that I am looking for a job since 2 months and its tiring. 

Is there anyone who understands the current market trend and has an insight about when junior/entry level designers can expect jobs to reopen? Would love to get your speculations on the hiring scene of upcoming months.

Is the market opening anytime soon for entry-level product designers?

Founder

What's the job market like for product designers as of now? Feeling to switch.

I’m interviewing at a bunch of companies and most of them want a generalist in the product designer position. Expecting to take on every responsibility possible, leaving no room for any sort of work-life balance. 

Founders/co-founders, listen up. You might be obsessed with the problem you’re solving. Do not expect others to be equally obsessed. With all due respect, we’re here to look after ourselves and our families. You disguise these additional responsibilities as “learning opportunities” which is absolutely bollocks. You don’t even offer to pay accordingly. 

Just needed to rant. If anyone else here has a different point of view, I’m open to changing my opinions.

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

Hey folks,
I'm wondering what kinda role I should pursue next after product management. 
I'm done with this role, works vary from company to company and team to team. It's tough to make people understand the difference between pre-PMF products & mature products, and how the metrics impact vary across the spectrum. 
And this completely changes the equation of your appraisal or your promotion as well. 
I don't see myself working in the same kind of role after 5 years.
So I'm wondering what kinda role I should look out for?
My general interests are more analytics & strategy centric. What do you guys think??

Where to go after Product???

Data Analyst

Question for senior designers and been in the industry for a long time. This will help others to make decisions in the right direction

If you have to start your product designer career again, what things will you do differently?

I came across this role of Product Development Engineer for which the JD has everything an SDE does. Recruiter told that it is not exactly SDE. Also they pay like peanuts for 2YoE. Something like 11L. What's going on there peeps?

What exactly is this shit Product Development Engineer at Razorpay paying peanuts in salary?

Hey everyone, excited to be doing this AMA!

A brief about me, I work currently as a Director of Product at an Indian unicorn startup 

About my career: 
- Did my undergrad from IIT and then masters from an Ivy league school
- Have been in product for almost 10 years now - across 2 Indian unicorn startups and a publicly listed company

Would love to take questions on what it means to be a PM, growing within the role, building your career, and other things :) 

Will be back here at 4 pm and start replying
Shoot away!

AMA 🎙️: Hey all, I am pmsprint, Director of Product Management at a Unicorn in India!

So I have been doing freelancing from quite some time and have worked on web apps and mobile applications which were completely under me, client just brought the rough ideas of the product they were looking for and so I worked from scratch on those, although I was on learning stage still managed to deliver big projects alone. So I wanted to know does this count as product designer? Or still it will be just UI/UX designer? 
Also I am planing to join a company as full time how much salary can I ask them? Like I have around 2 years of experience although all were freelance projects. I have experience in designing modern UI websites to multi featured mobile apps, web apps and logos. 
If I go for interview how much can I ask in salary?

UI/UX Designer vs product designer

Hi Grapevine,

I am currently applying to Enterprise / SaaS organisations in Bengaluru and getting confused when trying to benchmark my level against different companies as they all use different employee leveling scales.

This is getting to be an issue as the salary range is generally benchmarked to the level of the open position and I'm unable to reply confidently to the recruiters on my salary expectations.

My most recent position was as a Senior Lead UX Designer in an IT Services company.

I was leading teams of 3-5 UX and UI designers for end-to-end design engagements and my clients were large MNCs including a fortune 50 pharma giant. I was also involved in training and evaluating associate designers and expected to contribute to design proposals for potential clients.

Any advice or pointers on how you figured out your own experience and employee level accurately would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

---
YOE: 5
TC: 21.5L

What is my Designer Level?

Hey everyone, I wanted to know exactly what a product designer actually does. What is there day to day activities, what are the qualification needed to be a product designer. I saw most of the product designers are getting really good pay in startup and I am curious to know what's their daily job looks like.

What does a Product Designer actually do?

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Can anyone help me with what most common asked questions are as a product designer of experience 2 years

Role expectations of principal product designer vs senior product designer

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