Thread by @tarngerine

we're hiring a [staff] product designer! someone who's EXTREMELY very good at creating consensus, communication, thinking about processes/systems in an organization webflow.com/jobs?gh_jid=21…

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but wtf is "staff"? and how does that differentiate from "senior"/mid-level?

in my experience, i've seen a lot of folks make it up to a "senior" level title, more or less clear what the expectations are. in larger tech companies, i'd equate this to the "resting" level (e.g. IC5 @ FB)

to get there, you basically become really good at designing. you effectively solve the given problem (maybe you even help identify the problem through research), helping to shape the solution. you have a well rounded skillset across product thinking, ux, & craft (and more)

how do you get to the next level? i think a major evolution happened when i started to understand of the [organization] i operate in as part of my 'scope of work'.

a lot of people get stuck when they continue to view their only output as a design artifact

this often comes in these types of statements/feelings

"i just wanna design, not deal w politics!"
"why cant we jsut do this awesome thing i designed? it's being butchered!"
"im going to go work in the corner and come back 2 weeks later with a magical solution to fix everything"

and before i go any further — i think THIS IS TOTALLY OKAY. if you want to just spend all your time craftin a perfect UX/UI, that's great! i know several folks who are just happy being a mid level ("senior" titled) designer, and love it.

but it wont be correlated with a higher job level, especially in mid-large size companies, where "impact" is weighted above all else. it's important to relieve yourself of the notion that a specific design you can come up with can have impact by its own "merit"/cleverness/quality

to move above a "senior"/mid-level to a "staff"/"principal" level, you must start to look as your organization itself as part of your toolset. how are initiatives spun up? how are big, impactful things decided on and shipped to customers? how do initiatives fail?

what are the incentives at this company? how can i use those incentives to achieve the goals i want? who should i get on board, and in what sequence? how do i get these 3 teams on the same page, aligned on the same goal and strategy?

you'll start to view your output less in terms of sketch/figma files, and more in terms of decisions/processes that were agreed upon and adopted by all

these types of outputs "scale" in that lots of other decisions will be made based on it, thereby increasing your "impact"

senior: i made this new component and now everyone uses it
staff: i shaped this new framework that defines how to prioritize new component work and how they should be built

it's a total meme about how product designers love spreadsheets and tables, but it really does become one of your main tools as you think more about creating frameworks/systems that can help you/others solve a large amount of problems

if this thread resonated with how you think at all — PLEASE APPLY TO THE JOB ABOVE!

and lmk any questions :)

[bonus]

it's not a surprise (to me) that one of the "fathers of computing" douglas englebart's last initiatives was an institute dedicated to improving organizational efficiency and collaboration

dougengelbart.org/content/view/2…