Designers & Researchers Are Hurting, a Real SimCity, and the Open-Sourced Figma Rival

Hey Reader,

The air is crisp with the sound of the job market falling all around. Let's start with the bad news and then play with some toys. Sound good?

PMs are winning, while designers and researchers are not

I always watch Lenny's Newsletter for the data and job market posts because they are very thorough (even if they're always a bit too U.S. focused).

In his latest post, State of the tech job market: late 2026, Lenny used TrueUp data from 9,000+ tech companies and Live Data Technologies hiring records, he dives into how the tech industry is doing.

NOTE: this will not include agencies or non-tech companies.

Here's who's doing ok in the AI era:

• Product managers: open PM roles are at a near four-year high, up 75% from the March 2023 low, and PMs now make up 21% of hiring, up from 16% in 2021.
• Engineers: demand has stalled for the first time in years, with open roles up just 2.5% in the past year. About 113,000 US engineers were hired in the last 12 months versus 239,000 at the 2022 peak.
• Designers: about 1,900 open product design roles worldwide, down 28% in a year, and only 12,600 US hires versus 27,600 in 2022. There are now 3.8 open PM roles for every open design role, up from 1.9 in early 2023.
• User researchers: the steepest drop of any role Lenny looked at. About 1,800 US hires in the past year versus 5,300 in 2022, which is down 66%, and much of what's left sits at a few big companies (Meta and Google made about one in eight US UXR hires in 2025). At the tech companies TrueUp tracks, only 108 UXR jobs are open right now.

That's a pretty grim situation for anyone that isn't a PM. Of course, this data is only based on tech companies. Dive into the jobs that are available at TrueUp here. Or, you know hug your job like everyone else is doing right now.

One interesting insight: Figma is still king when it comes to design skills. I guess PMs still haven't figured out a way to learn or replace that tool entirely.

A real city that became a SimCity

Ok, if the job market numbers are a bit depressing, I have the perfect therapy for you.

​Tiny València is a pixel-art map of the real city in Spain. The maker rendered real 3D city data from a fixed camera, and then used an image model to generate the whole municipality.

You can zoom in and out and my favorite part is seeing real planes flying overhead. It's free with no ads, so take a mini vacation while you try not to think about the job market.

Play an instrument by waving at your laptop

Ok, if Tiny València wasn't enough to distract you, I've got another one.

​Air Theremin by Pavel Gurov is a fun little web visualization that works like a real theremin. Use your webcam an hands to change the volume and pitch. On mobile, you can even tilt the phone to change the sound.

This is a great example of how body gestures can be an interface with no buttons. Open it with the whole team when your next meetings starts and bring a smile to everyone's face.

The smug little face we all make

from the Fountain Institute socials​

A flat-packed, slightly duller, worse world

An open-source AI-native Figma rival

​OpenPencil is the latest Figma killer. It's a design tool that can read Figma files and can be powered by any AI tool. Unlike Figma's MCP server (which is read-only), OpenPencil's lets you use AI to write as well.

It even has collaboration mode. It's got 9.5k Github stars, so it's trending but still hasn't hit the mainstream.

Make your own halftone machine without writing code

​Blueprint is powered by Claude and builds generative design tools for you and your clients. You can build a halftone generator or a dither tool that clients can use long after you're gone.

You can publish with a link and require a password or email. The free version gives you 20 credits and 3 tools. But honestly, this might just be the inspiration you need to vibe code something similar.

These types of things make great fun extras for clients that will have them feeling good about giving you their hard-earned cash.

Skillbox: a place to keep your prompts

​Skillbox is a Mac app that organizes your AI agent skills across all your tools. It collects skills from your computer, GitHub, or its own catalog, and groups them into collections.

It also does some smart management of your skills: pausing unused skills and flagging overlapping ones. It also scans skills for prompt injection, so there's a security aspect as well.

Make your own super fancy database that works across tools or ya know...just keep using that notes doc like a Neanderthal.

Ok, that's a wrap.

If you're having intrusive thoughts about becoming a PM, don't do anything you will later regret.

Talk to you in 2 weeks! ✌️

Jeff Humble ​Designer & Co-Founder ​The Fountain Institute

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P.S. If the job market chart made you want a skill AI can't flatten, check out some of the free events and talks.