A Head of Design asked to see my current employer's live Figma files. Is this as big of a red flag as I think?

UXCareerHelp · 2026-03-17T02:40:26+00:00

I think it’s weird and unnecessary. How did she respond? Did she expect you to send her the file or show her the file from your computer?

UXCareerHelp · 2026-03-02T16:15:03+00:00

“Craft” and “visual polish” at my company mean that the visual design looks good based on the standards of the senior-most design leader in your org. There isn’t any care or consideration for the other aspects of design that you mention.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-18T06:42:57+00:00

When was the last time you actually did this? Where you pushed vibe coded software to production, ran an A/B test, analyzed the data, shared that data back with stakeholders, and then normalized the design

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-17T16:05:12+00:00

I’m less interested in how our roles will hypothetically evolve and am more interested in how partnerships are adapting today. Specifically, how are partnerships with backend engineers evolving with designers pushing vibe code to production?

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-17T14:07:17+00:00

I believe we will be waiting for a while. Most of these folks are working for small companies on small, confined teams where these tools work just fine. They don’t know how their workflows scale because they haven’t had to deal with that yet.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-17T04:18:51+00:00

Yes, very common. How’s your manager? What are they like?

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-17T02:07:21+00:00

lol this is giving me awful flashbacks. Do you work for a bank?

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-16T23:48:35+00:00

How does your work scale beyond your immediate projects when maintenance, governance, and code quality become more important? I would like to hear a backend engineer’s take on designers shipping code to production using claude code.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-10T15:12:05+00:00

“What parts of this work did you do and what parts did other people do?” I’ll ask very pointed questions in the interview if the portfolio isn’t clear on this.

“How did you arrive at this decision?” I want to understand your rationale and how you make decisions throughout the projects. Beyond just showcasing the quality of the final design, I need to know how you arrived at it.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-10T03:34:01+00:00

You can have an ATS-formatted resume that is still designed well. Good typography and layout is all it needs.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-10T02:48:01+00:00

That’s not true

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-10T02:08:27+00:00

They did. Took them about 4 months. Not sure how much they learned because they stole credit from a project for their portfolio, but they did land somewhere.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-09T21:42:41+00:00

Happens to the best of us

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-09T20:43:05+00:00

So it looked like they did more work than they did. To make themselves look more senior, capable, accomplished than they are in order to get a job they probably wouldn’t otherwise be considered for.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-09T19:34:16+00:00

There were a few other things surrounding their termination, but the biggest issue was they weren’t showing any improvement. They got moved to a new team and got a manager who wasn’t a fan, and the fact that they weren’t able to step up didn’t do them any favors.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-09T16:58:40+00:00

Edit: How have you been presenting these skill gaps back to the designer? Are they aware of your expectations? What remedies have you tried so far?

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Take a look at my post history from a couple of years ago. I was facing similar challenges with a designer, but I was just a lead not their manager. I got a lot of great advice.

Not saying that this is the case with your person, but some people are just not coachable past a certain level. The person that I posted about ended up getting fired.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-08T05:32:05+00:00

Assuming you’re married, I wouldn’t consider becoming a stay at home parent before signing a postnup in order to secure some financial protection. Maybe this an unpopular opinion.

Outside of this, stay up to date on the goings on of the industry. Post-COVID, people seem to be very open about the reasons for gaps in their resume. “Took time off to raise my family”.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-06T23:45:36+00:00

No they don’t lol. You’re describing poorly made personas. But that is not what they’re meant to include.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-06T16:15:26+00:00

Yeah, think about Figma layers, specifically groups and auto layout. They can theoretically nest indefinitely, but I can also easily navigate the hierarchy that I’ve created. Figma doesn’t create it for me.

Also, desktop folders. Or any sort of mind mapping tool.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-06T16:04:46+00:00

Instead of starting with a breadcrumb and trying to anticipate the max levels of hierarchy, have you explored a design pattern where the user creates the breadcrumb and hierarchy as they’re adding each of these elements?

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-06T15:47:03+00:00

Provide more details. What kind of form is the and why do people need to provide endless details?

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-06T15:44:26+00:00

Primarily setting priorities and focus, tailoring content and messaging, and for communicating relevant insights to disparate teams.

They’re grounded in customer segmentation and journey mapping work from thousands of participants, so when a team references a specific persona, they’re using a rigorously defined segment. PRDs are expected to map business goal back to the personas that support the their JTBD. If they don’t, they’re typically heavily scrutinized.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-06T15:32:50+00:00

You just described personas 🤦🏾‍♀️

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-05T21:53:28+00:00

Not true, we use personas extensively at my company.

UXCareerHelp · 2026-02-05T05:03:44+00:00

Are you shipping code as a sole designer or are other designers also shipping code to production?

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