The Steps to Nowhere

There were fifteen of us crammed into a tiny office, and I shared a desk with two college interns. It was 2011, and I was twenty-four.

It was my first professional design job after two years of looking. I felt old.

I would slap twenty-four-year-old me in the face. I was extremely lucky to find a design job with a strong design mentor at a growing tech company.

But...in my head, I took my first step too late because I was comparing myself to other people. I was afraid to mention all the exploring I had done, and I became ashamed of the "late start" I got after university.

I felt like my career always had to be moving upwards towards some place. What's up there? They never really tell you.

I call this the Steps to Nowhere.

The steps are the pre-defined steps that companies force designers to take in order to get a promotion. They're also completely made up.

Stairs are an outdated way to look at your design career, but it's how an H.R. person will see it.

If you focus all your energy on the steps to nowhere, eventually you're going to fall off the cliff. Just like in life, it's learning that provides the key to growth.

Mapping New Paths

If I were to visualize a design career today, I think it would look more like a map than stairs. Looking back, real career growth for me always came from wandering into exciting situations.

When I felt stuck, I would find something that excited me. Once I had explored this new territory, I would find a unique career opportunity hidden in a mess. These weren't "steps" in my career. They were tangents.

In design, we're still figuring out how to chart our wanderings. For many of us, our job title wasn't even a thing when we were in school.

The Individual Contributor (IC) path is really starting to take shape in design, and people are starting to understand the complexity of the field.

It's still very early days in fields like UX, but the map is beginning to take shape.

Illustration by Diana Thai

Siva Sabaretnam writes about a very interesting way to think about designing career paths in this article. It's encouraging to see things besides the IC or manager path.

What does your career map look like? How do you navigate the unknown if the field is still emerging?

Designing Career Growth

One of the best career navigators that I know is going to be speaking at our meetup this May. Dee Scarano is an industry leader in workshop facilitation, and she is also known as the Beyoncé of Design Sprints (she's going to kill me for mentioning that).

I'm excited to hear about her path to becoming an innovation coach, and how she's pioneered new directions in her freelance work.

Event Details: Wednesday, May 19th @ 7:00-8:00 PM

We don't have to be locked into the same pre-defined steps as traditional careers. We're designers. Shouldn't we be able to design better roles for ourselves?

Until next week, design for the unmapped futures.

-Jeff Humble

Designer & Co-Founder of the Fountain Institute

P.S. We just announced the next start dates for our six-week course, Advanced UX Design for the Real World. Check it out!