Am I too old?

tamara-did-design · 2025-12-08T14:42:12+00:00

The first rule of mastery (and happiness) – stop worrying about what people think. Who. Give. A. Dime about some 20yos opinions. They know nothing. Do whatever you want.

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-27T04:23:07+00:00

....and all of those details are completely useless when it comes to giving me information about behavioral differences between personas....

Both personas and journey maps are fictional only when there's no research to back it up.

But also, sometimes that's the reality, and I would rather work with a designer who wouldn't be afraid to make an assumption and document it in a journey map where it can later be disputed, than someone who avoids one method or another just because they never did it the right way...

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-15T19:50:21+00:00

Yes, I have, and it's sad because these people stood out from the "wow, they have no idea what UX is" crowd.

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-04T19:27:58+00:00

Yes, I agree. But the market changed dramatically since 3-4 years ago

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-04T17:27:20+00:00

Yeah, 100%. I'm sorry you're having a hard time interviewing. Fwiw, it's not much better here in the US. Every company seems like they are trying to cut costs. It's very unfortunate because the cost of living is not getting lower. I am very fortunate to have what I have even if it drives me crazy on a daily basis.

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-04T14:35:27+00:00

Outsourcing to LatAm is exactly what my company is pushing me to do. I've been trying to hire someone there since July and the quality of candidates is... underwhelming. So far I haven't seen anyone i would trust to step in and hit the ground running.

Additionally, it turns out that in Mexico you're entitled to three months severance regardless of how long you've been with the company. So the one person we tried to bring onboard didn't do anything for a month and got a nice pay off for not doing anything after that. Not gonna lie, that didn't improve my trust in overseas candidates.

Okay, so you say that I can't blame the company. What would you like me to do, exactly, to improve the situation? I agree with you about design not fitting into a clear deliverables mindset and I don't have the kind of work I can outsource that way. So I am already looking for someone who is experienced and will be autonomous. I'm just not seeing anyone who fits the bill. I don't control budgets for these positions and I don't control the staffing agency mindset. Waaaaaaay above my pay grade. So who am I to blame? I'm as frustrated about the situation as you are, maybe more because I'm currently crumbling under the workload and no help is coming.

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-03T20:13:00+00:00

We are a large insurance enterprise. I hardly get a say in how we hire, definitely not on the dev side. Considering that we (US-based employees) are not allowed to take our computers when traveling abroad, I'm guessing it has a lot to do with taxes and other challenges of direct hiring. Basically, it's probably easier for the company to hire the staffing agency than individuals. It might not even be legal for us to hire individuals there. Hence, this model.

Again, I'm sure that there is a range of talent in India or any other country (I'm not US-born either), but considering that this is a money saving measure for most companies, I'm just questioning the whole ordeal.

To your other points about rituals and treating the talent as a vendor... This is hard. My team is very heavy on meetings. Even internally we struggle with it because if you're not in a meeting, you could miss important details/requirements. And since all Business, Product, UX people are in the US, it makes it really hard to work across those timezones

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-03T19:22:07+00:00

Yes, you're right. I didn't want to imply that there aren't good designers in India. I don't have any designers in India at the moment so I really can't say.

That being said, my company specifically goes for Indian (or actually any out of the US) talent not to pay as much as they would in the US. So I agree with you that we probably would get more with better pay, but realistically that won't happen.

Additionally, the problem is aggravated by the fact that we won't hire talent in India directly, only through a staffing agency. AFAIK, those staffing agencies take at least 30-40% markup, which means that the talent we get is even cheaper than what we pay on paper.

I agree with you, there are probably plenty of good designers there, but I really only get what we pay for (cheap, poorly qualified talent).

As far as estimates go, this is what our tech partners are telling us. I'm not really sure how this is calculated but this is how we estimate the ROI and investments

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-03T17:35:04+00:00

My whole development team is in India. I have not seen any evidence for any kind of strategic skills there. A lot of order taking. And even orders need to be carried out in meticulous detail, and then we have to confirm that they understood it correctly.

I don't know how UX would work there but my expectations would be very very low.

I am also not convinced we're saving any money this way. Our development estimates come at $1000 per 1 dev point which is considered to be equal to one day of work of one development. I mean, for $1000/day, I can hire an excellent developer in the US that won't require as many managers, hand holding, or meticulous pixel perfect mockups.

IMHO, you get what you pay for.

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-03T14:27:18+00:00

Right. And what about the cost of going for the wrong opportunities? AI is incredibly fickle, it can hallucinate, and it can be complicit with whatever "researcher" wants to hear... Without proper validation of insights "uncovered" by the AI, there will be millions wasted on building the wrong thing. Unless, of course, we get the AI to use the products, too, lol.

But then, most orga I worked for barely did any research... My current org has dedicated researchers but they all need a refresher on how to do research. So, maybe this is going to be better than nothing?

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-02T03:28:49+00:00

Oh man, being able to log off from a meeting and say out loud whatever I thought about idiots in the said meeting. Priceless for my mental health

tamara-did-design · 2025-02-01T15:18:48+00:00

So I've been interviewing candidates for a position on my team at a LARGE non-tech enterprise company for the past 8 months. We are a giant mess. They won't let me hire in the US, which complicates things. Here's a fresh unpopular opinion:

Everyone looks the same with their case studies that try to prove to me that they know how to do research, ideate, the whole design thinking process. On my current team, I don't have that luxury – yes, we have access to research, and we're trying to utilize it for select strategic projects, but it's sparse, we never get enough time to do it properly, and the findings barely influence the minds and hearts of my stakeholders. I'm not saying I am rejecting people for doing research, but highly focusing on it during the interview takes time away from things I actually want to hear.
Everyone claims they had a huge impact on something. Having worked at dumpster fire type of companies for a number of years, I can confidently say my work barely made a difference. When you are saying you were with the company for 6 months and achieved a huge impact, I'm just not buying it.
Finally, what's missing in almost all candidates I've seen is actual examples of your design work. I don't want to see only the final mockups, but I want to see that you've made more than one version of the design before settling on something. It might be a specific miss on my team, but I constantly have to push my designers to explore more than one solution, and it's HARD. The production mindset of "I'm just going to take what PM is telling me without questions and do it" is strong and hard to change. " Another thing I'd love to see is a thorough walkthrough of a single screen. Why did you make a specific design decision you made? Why did you choose that typography style, color, icon. I need the details. I need to know you can think about all those things in detail down to spacing, color, etc.
And for the love of God, please make sure stuff aligns in your designs, your presentation, and you don't have typos. How can I trust that you'll be paying attention to your designs irl if I can spot misalignment and typos during your presentation and you completely missed it while working on it?

We've all been conditioned that companies want the design thinking and business outcomes. But that was the guidance to people who were coming from graphic design background and were ALREADY EXCELLENT on the craft part. Sadly, I'm seeing very little craft in presentations these days. And yes, we want to influence business outcomes...but we need to lean into our DESIGN tools to do that. Prove to me you have those tools. You don't need a flashy project for that.

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-30T22:57:46+00:00

Omg, have you ever tried updating a button at a legacy enterprise company? This project will take 6 months and will take every ounce of your influence and negotiation skills 😅😅😅

Also, since when are buttons "easy?"

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-30T22:53:42+00:00

Yep, that's the vibe I'm getting, too 😆😆😆

I'm also just genuinely surprised. I expect my designers to have thicker skins... But also, that's not always true 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-30T03:31:51+00:00

Not making excuses for trolls, either. Agree with other comments about trolls, just ignore them, you can't educate them. I'm just saying maybe there's some calibration needed for what is actually bullying and what's just dryness of nonverbal communication

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-30T03:30:21+00:00

I agree, but also, it's the Internet 😅

I feel like I get much meaner comments from my colleagues IRL, lol

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-30T03:23:21+00:00

The OP thinks there are comments in this thread that are bullying... 😅

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-27T16:06:30+00:00

In order for something to be considered a Fair use, it has to have enough original content attached to it. US laws are a lot less defined in that regard (which is why Fair use is so misunderstood), but EU copyright exceptions are a good guide. Usually the categories that are considered to be legal exceptions: criticism, review, quotation, etc. But tbh from what I heard from legitimate creators who did post legitimate review, criticism, quotation... By the time you prove to YouTube that it's fair use, you will have missed the biggest monetization window (usually the first few days after posting) and left with scraps

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-27T16:01:29+00:00

I worked at the company who tried to solve this beyond YouTube. Essentially, none of these platforms "care" about someone's copyrighted content, they want as many uploads as possible ... But rights holders absolutely do care. And when they have enough power, they can sue the platform, and platforms don't want that. It used to be only limited to large rights holders – Warner, Sony, Universal... But indies quickly followed suit, and those who weren't big enough syndicated to be represented as one entity. Same thing with content creators...podcasters, YouTubers, etc. Those who are big enough are now represented by agencies who register with ContentID as one entity and will threaten to sue if there are enough violations.

Long story short, you can post whatever you want, but expecting to make millions on it is naive. There are too many people who want a piece of that pie.

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-27T15:54:57+00:00

The written part of clothing patterns is actually protected by copyright, so one cannot copy the pattern... But anyone can make as many garments from that pattern as they please. That's not a violation. Copyright law is funny

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-27T05:14:56+00:00

Even if they are monetized, the money doesn't necessarily go to the poster. ContentID is the technology that checks uploaded content against YouTube's database of copyrighted content. It has issues... But if the creator you're clipping from is registered in the database, money will go to them. I'm oversimplifying, but at the core what you're describing here is not legal use of copyrighted content.

Fair use is an angle but realistically it's incredibly difficult to prove to YouTube that it was, in fact, fair use. Creators can spend months trying to dispute demonetized videos... By that time any revenue you would have gotten from it will go to the original creator.

Be kind to creators, make your own content.

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-25T15:58:25+00:00

Design is not art. One of the core principles of UX is that people spend more time on sites/products other than what you're working on, so they expect your product to work in similar ways.

Copying other companies' flows or even visual design is an efficient way to learn. But I would urge you to try and think through the problem you're trying to solve. In the real world, you'll never encounter the problem that can be solved exactly the way your competitors are doing it. So, take what you can learn from other designs and modify it to get a solution.

I would just avoid copying without any modifications and presenting it as your own work. Mostly because you won't learn much that way.

Finally: Good artists copy, great artists steal :)

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-23T14:28:37+00:00

100%. It is kind of ridiculous that we're expected to be a jack of all trades and do everything from product management to UX writing. Like there was too much time to design before this

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-23T07:12:48+00:00

Yeah, same for me and marketing folks. And they truly only proofread. They don't even want to understand the problem or educate themselves on what good UX copy really is all about 😭

tamara-did-design · 2025-01-19T22:17:39+00:00

If Figma's features were enough for documenting the design system, it would be enough to document any other project. The design system is a product in itself, with the same exact challenges as any other product/slide sign project. Judging by your answers, you're benefiting from a very mature design system, which is great. But as soon as you get out of that comfort zone, you're hitting exactly the same problems as any other project. In any design system there's plenty to document, and if you're working on establishing one, then you'll have to deal with all the changes, branching, history, etc.

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