Went to an Anthropic event. Got nice swag. Wear nice swag. Was just casually asked if I was sponsored by a butt hole.

I'm ready for my next therapy session

Altman paid $6.5bn to get documented proof that he received a hug from Jonny Ive.

Yes I would love the opportunity to make half as much money and work twice as hard.

"Disagree and commit" is just power dynamics manipulation. Case in point: you never see someone with less power say this phrase and get someone with more power to commit to their idea. It's the same as "shut up and do as I say". Why employees give it as "advice" on LI is beyond me.

Pretty soon hiring managers will require designers to pull up Figma during an interview for a live-design exercise to prove that their portfolio wasn't made by AI.

genuinely shocked that not all content designers are also content creators. they're virtually the same set of skills amirite??

Tech is always bragging about how it's "democratizing something", and it's never worked out well for anyone but the VCs. Mentorship democratized created 0 new jobs. Ride sharing democratized drove down driver earnings. Can't think of anything that tech truly democratized in meaningful/positive ways.

Designers and recruiters who talk about 'craft' and 'taste' don't actually know what these terms mean. They're just using it as a dog whistle to impress other designers and make them think that they're part of the 'in' crowd.

Went to a designer event at Pratt Institute and it is unconscionable what design schools are doing. You can't charge ~$60,000 / YEAR for a degree that does not lead to a paying job. They're not even teaching hire-able skills. Nobody's hiring a Jr designer to just 'think' about design.

Designers who build and ship ‘high craft’ experiences with ‘exquisite taste' are now widely viewed as more experienced & better due conflation of employment rates & skill. E.g.: a mediocre product designer makes more than most of the best graphic designers, but it doesn't mean they're 'better'.

Getting a design job in a tough market is such an open ended problem, you can easily over invest in some weird area that does nothing but makes you feel like it's doing something.

New business idea after looking at over a dozen unethical take-home design challenges: we do your design challenge for you, give you a presentation deck and talking points too. Only $500, you in?? JK, it's like $3k worth of work. Why are you doing it for free?

I viewed recruiting solely as a problem to be solved, and forgot that I also needed to like to the work of solving the problem. So much of design work to me is just doing the necessary stuff that I don't like but was good at. I forgot I also need to like doing the recruiting work to be good at it.

who's got the most fucked up design take home exercise? show me and I'll do it on live stream. must show company name so I can roast them while I do the stupidass exercise.

It's insane that someone can steal other designer's content to build up a huge audience which then enables them to take paid speaking gigs away from the same people they stole from. That slot could have gone to Ruby Pryor, Amy Santee, or any UXR who creates good, original content. WTF Dovetail?

Petty confession time, early in my career, tech companies would have job fairs where they took resumes and gave out swag like stickers. I would paste the stickers of companies that ghosted me on my computer as some kind of weird motivation. The sticker that I remember the most? 'Infor' lol.

does saying growing shareholder value 3x on a single LinkedIn ad summon the shareholder value fairy and boost shareholder value?

Behold, the stupidest idea I've gotten, so far. Gather all the XU's who work in UX in NYC so we can grab drinks together.

designers think they're innovating with AI but really they're just along for the ride as user testers. The people who decide how designers use AI aren't designers.

Design leaders talk about the impact of AI as binary outcomes of either replacing designers OR giving them super powers like it's a good thing. More likely designers will continue to exist, they'll be able to do more with less, but they'll also be paid less. Just look at robots + warehouse workers.

2025 vibe: "I know the CEO is kind of an awful shit person but the product they make is really useful!"

definitely Russian psyops at play here.

The same designer screaming about the need for user research will spend hundreds of hours on their portfolio without a minute of user research, despite their future 6-figure salary and job prospects riding largely on said portfolio.

it's been years, and Google is still auto-completing my emails with positive encouragement.

I've just been made aware, by a Google designer, no less, that "racism" is a leftist ideology. I have so much to learn.

How to land a job at Duolingo:

Comments made me giggle www.reddit.com/r/Weird/comm...

Changing my job title on LinkedIn to "product experience designer". Expecting a job offer from Duolingo in a few days.

'Craft' and 'taste' have always been a thing in design but they seem to have risen dramatically in the design consciousness in the last 2 years and then co-opted by founders/recruiters/PMs. What prompted this recent resurgence? Did someone important give a really good talk on craft?

A top design recruiter recently justified take-home design exercises because so many design portfolios are faked and/or filled with stolen work. I have a hard time believing it but maybe I'm misinformed. Can a design HM chime in?

Interesting problem we're running into when hosting in-person designer events. Most bars ideally would like people to have 2-3 drinks over a 3 hour span. Most seniors in their 30s/40s only do 1-2 drinks. I could do it in my 20s, maybe. It's going to be hard to book venues in the Summer months.

I truly wish there were an NYC-based Asian women design leadership group. I obviously can't start or run one and can only support it. Can someone please start one so I can help out and cheer on from the background?? Please?????

Lately, I'm seeing a shift from large online design communities to smaller, in-person ones as people look for trust, safety and the ability to talk about sensitive work issues. Almost none of the conversations are around tooling, strategy, or the act of design. While designers want to publicly...

I'm coming to the unfortunate realization that some people I chat with, am friendly with, or are connected with on LinkedIn are actually closeted fascists/Nazis. Tech isn't some utopia of open-minded progressiveness. There are plenty of Technofascists who are clever enough to STFU and hide.

It is AD 1438, and you are in the Aztec Empire. You forget to complete your Nahuatl lesson in Duolingo and your streak ends. At night, the owl warrior pays you a visit...

I'm surprised by how many design leaders align themselves with Felix Lee and ADPList. They're an ethical liability given his rampant plagiarism, exploitative salaries, and their overreliance on volunteerism as a product of a VC-backed company.

Every time I hear a designer talk about 'taste' and how their designs are informed by it, it comes across as 'trust me bro'

Lots of experts talking about how designers can future proof their careers by learning XYZ skills, and they just so happen to sell a product/service that'll teach you XYZ. Looking back on the last 5 yrs, most design leaders were very wrong about how the design skill demand was going to shake out.

If you’re currently interviewing, you likely have thought, “what the business is hiring for and what the business actually needs are completely different.” While you might be right, it’s unlikely that the interview cycle is the best time & place to convince a hiring manager to hire differently.

why we not use AI to filter out spam email? why no use AI for something actual useful? why use more word when few word do trick? save time, me si world.

For those who aren't aware, ADPList is VC-funded. So we're in effect volunteering our time to enrich Sequoia Capital. They're the only winners. Here's a crazy idea: maybe companies should be paying design leaders to train jr designers by actually hiring jr designers as part of a healthy design org?

UX mentorship platforms like ADPList only encourage an arms race without solving the root problem. Imagine there are 100 unhoused families and only 3 houses available. Instead of helping a family beat out the others, we should be increasing the supply of housing.

The design talent pipeline is dead. Companies are outsourcing the growth and education of early career designers to unpaid volunteers outside of work via mentorship platforms like ADPList.

New business idea: Open a shoe store called "Xu's Shoes"

I'm trying to understand what growth design is and people's explanations seem to oscillate between "growth design is just product design" and "growth design is THE FUCKING DEVIL"

Starting to get the sense that Meta might not be a great or stable place to work...

The concept of a dream company to work at as a designer is so fucking dead