April 26, 2023
🚌 Roadtrip Nation After Job Elimination: What I Learn From 50+ Coffees
During the end of my time in undergrad, with a ‘meaningless’ liberal arts degree I somehow came across a series on PBS called RoadTrip Nation. As one of those kids without a plan after college, this docu-series was my lifeblood — I practically memorized each episode. It chronicles 3 grads, who drive around the country interviewing people that inspire them. It could be a lobster fisherman, Basketball GM or clothing designer — they get to pick. When I lost my job, I conducted my own RoadTrip Nation ... below is what I learned.
In total I interviewed 75+ people.
Top highlights:
- “Being in a job you hate is soul sucking, take your time finding what is next.” Adam, Designer
- Knowing what I don’t want to do (ex: BeReal app), helped solidify what I wanted to do next. Ciara, Recruiter
- “Amazon and Google don’t need you, we actually need you, come here”. Karin, Chief Design Officer
INTERVIEW 1
Richard, Product Manager
What I learned:
-
If you want to become a Product Manager, you just have to start doing it (like learning design thinking)
- Reason he worked at IBM and not Amazon: Amazon shy on remote work and IBM had a 3-month Bootcamp Program
- Product Manager at all times has to run-the-business, you can hand over building product to design & engineering
INTERVIEW 2
Ciara, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Asked great questions: What is the one distinguishing factor I am looking for in my next job?
- She loves working with designers cuz the conversations are always interesting
- Knowing what I don’t want to do (ex: BeReal app), helped solidify what I wanted to do next
INTERVIEW 3
Hilary, Project Owner
What I learned:
- How you handle getting let go is how you will handle a breakup ... and it says a lot about your stability, character, etc.
- Our spouses don’t know what we do, which is wonderful & infuriating
- Job role names at each company are going to be slightly different in what they want you to do
INTERVIEW 4
Naveen, Designer
What I learned:
- Every job I apply for I cater my portfolio, I include nothing from X company
- I was refreshing hearing someone say “You are a talented designer.”
- Being ex-Amazon means something. What does it mean to be ex-Mars?
INTERVIEW 5
Charlie, Finance
What I learned:
- Practical advice was very helpful ... sign-up for unemployment, linkedin professional and mark yourself open to work
- Product managers make the most (mid 200’s), followed by engineers and designers last
- You’d be a great product manager, gotta be forceful without being annoying
- Small company great, less alignment and more decisions being made
- Work for a company where the cofounder still is employees and is doing the funding
INTERVIEW 6
Ryan, Designer
What I learned:
- Great to have some give perspective that not in my immediate circle of friends or work circle
- Practice telling your story
INTERVIEW 7
Laurel, Design Director
What I learned:
- AF is organized around the three in a box all reporting to the chief digital officer
- Weekly calls regarding metrics but no qualitative data
- Short development cycles (ex: had an idea in summer, a few months coming up with idea, launched in the fall, etc.)
INTERVIEW 8
Monica, Designer
What I learned:
- Heavy writing culture at Atlassian
- Thought leadership is expected tool to move up
- Product teams are more organized because it’s clear what they are working on ..(ex: confluence a tool for onboarding)
- Service teams are much harder since you cut across and no one knows who “owns” what
- To apply for a job: back channel with an internal person for a rec … don’t fill out an application (like being setup by a friend vs swiping right)
- I also get worried that we aren’t showing are partners enough “tangible value”
- Zone a, b, c salary
- She’s realized she’s more detailed focused … realizing what you are good at
INTERVIEW 9
Aaliyah, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Can you do B2B or B2C … both. Starbucks internal app for store managers
- She is sniping time with designers to make “profiles” for lead generation
- Market is more contract positions to eliminate long salaries without flexibility
INTERVIEW 9
Esteban, Designer
What I learned:
- No one is starting their dream job with 2 kids thinking “here’s what I’ll do next” … you need time to process what happened
- No consistent reason people are being fired … 1 year stay … 20 years gone
- I want to do parenting and work at 100%
- Hiring manager / process decides if you join or not
INTERVIEW 10
Kate, Operations
What I learned:
- HEB Design: happy hour tues, wed, thurs
- 80 designers total with 15 in San Antonio
- Design ops accelerate design inside HEB
- She agress that her customers are internal employees
- No single design executive, three leads
INTERVIEW 11
Vernon, Recruiter
What I learned:
- I can’t tell you the name of the company I am hiring for … reasons below
- Confidentiality - they may want to keep the hiring process confidential
- Competitive ad - they don’t want competitors to know
- Pre-screen - recruiter can pre-screen to ensure they are a good fit
- Market research - they may want to gather information about the job market and expectations
- Product or service which are you leaning towards?
- This org has a commitment to service design
INTERVIEW 12
Jerry, Designer
What I learned:
- Punchcut is doing research for the credit builder program and leading concepting workshops
- Navigator card “semi-affluent” … rolling out … end of Q2 … low risk investment at the beginning, slow roll-out
- Anna Deleon - knows design and has became a director … little green. Didn’t have the 1:1 attention like Jarrod.
INTERVIEW 12
David, Director
What I learned:
- I see you as a connecter of strategy and people at a higher level
- Look for jobs with design not in the title
- We became a digital company and not operations .. founder was operations
- Look for amazon type company that still operates like a startup
- I was starting to get dumber at last job
- David presents options to people … you could do x and lose trust or y and it not be ideal but earn trust
- People are burned by design taking 3 months to uncover problems they already knew existed
- Employers will say they want a player coach but they really want a player
- Got his job through a connection
INTERVIEW 13
Adam, Designer
What I learned:
- Doug was doing the Doug show is how I came to IBM (New Orleans conference)
- Job search is disorienting did it at the pandemic
- Being in a job you hate is soul sucking, take your time
INTERVIEW 14
Karin, Chief Designer
What I learned:
- Turned company down 3 times and they came back with “they don’t need you at amazon or google”
- Company is 26 proof of concepts held with gum and string
- Best job I’ve had in 10 years
INTERVIEW 15
Joel, Product Manager
What I learned:
- Still the Wild West for product development … the guy who took the agile course last week is now the expert
INTERVIEW 16
Tori, Recruiter
What I learned:
- It’s always good to see what the market is doing even when you have a job
INTERVIEW 17
Stacy, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Very genuine with the recruiting process, I sincerely hope that I hear back from you.
INTERVIEW 18
Ploy, Designer
What I learned:
- I hope you give yourself from gratitude during this time
- You made a big impact on me regarding design facilitation.
INTERVIEW 19
Nick, Design Director
What I learned:
- What is your unique skill set you bring to the team?
- You have to double dip in the people management and individual contributor when you want to transition to manager
INTERVIEW 19
Courtney, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Look at salary ranges before hoping onto an interview
INTERVIEW 20
Liqing, Design Principal
What I learned:
- UX has been a desert inside AFT … 100 products that don’t work together
INTERVIEW 21
Rachel, Design Researcher
What I learned:
- Hand written interview notes
INTERVIEW 22
Mohammad, Product Manager
What I learned:
- Technical question : how u writes features ... who cares?
INTERVIEW 23
Lia, Product Manager
What I learned:
- Measures sucess by ... I want to win awards
INTERVIEW 24
Martin, Design Director
What I learned:
- Design is going through an identity crisis
INTERVIEW 24
Nora, Design Director
What I learned:
- You are clearly seasoned
INTERVIEW 25
Michael, Recruiter
What I learned:
- You need to pass a security clearance and come into the office
INTERVIEW 26
Brandon, Design Director
What I learned:
- Service designers should be providing good service to their partners
- Meetings verbs, outcomes nouns
- We told our design partner … no problem we can do that offsite for you
- Our team works at the initiative and epic level
INTERVIEW 27
Bri, Product Manager
What I learned:
- The product manager left and their was I hole and someone said I’d be good at it
INTERVIEW 28
Brian, Product Manager
What I learned:
- Senior leaders wanted to stop investing in Last Mile … just keep the lights on
- Design has a high bar … y’all work too hard
INTERVIEW 29
Janessa, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Do I have a preference in design from scratch or existing?
INTERVIEW 30
Hannah, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Kroger cares deeply in discovery work
INTERVIEW 31
Ciara, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Companies think deeply about the design founder
INTERVIEW 32
Stewart, Recruiter
What I learned:
- Product - what we build
- Service - how and why
INTERVIEW 33
Claire, Design Director
What I learned:
- This role as e2e service design principal has been hard to find
INTERVIEW 34
Bruno, Design Director
What I learned:
- Most teams are focused on design delivery
- Pushing on squad … alignment on OKRs
- Tech, Product, Design and Data — QUAD
- Hired Silicon Valley Group — Marty Cagan, Inspired
- 80% discovery, 20% delivery
- Takes a strong product-leader to take the strategy and make it consumable
- Take current roadmaps, strategy, current ticket items and build epics out of them
- Take each epic and align each of the user stories
- Get people aligned and making them feel like they are part of the process
INTERVIEW 35
Troy, Design Researcher
What I learned:
- Everything starts and ends together
INTERVIEW 36
Wazza, Design Director @ Atlassian
What I learned:
- What makes good design?
- Tell me a project you were most proud of?
Atlassian Process:
- Portfolio
- Craft x 2
- Value interview
INTERVIEW 37
Zillow, Behavior Questions
- Tell me a time when you were given a complex problem with a tight timeline.
- Tell me a time when you could have delivered a better result — what would you have done dfferently.
- Tell me a time when you proposed a big idea that failed — what happened, what did you learn?
- Tell me what you would do with an unlimited budget. What would you do? What would you learn?
- Tell me a time when you worked with another team to work through obstacles … what were the obstacles? How did you overcome to make connections.
- Tell me a time you delivered a difficult message at work. How did I deliver?
- Tell me a time when what a customer wanted was in conflict with an internal message.
- Tell me a time when I gave a service design deliverable that was not a service blueprint. How did I go about building it & what challenges did I encounter.
INTERVIEW 38
Wazza, Design Director @ Atlassian
What I learned:
- What makes good design?
- Tell me a project you were most proud of?
Atlassian Interview Process:
- Portfolio
- Craft x 2
- Value interview
INTERVIEW 39
Michelle, Zillow Recuiter
What I learned:
- Comes down to the recruiter … some companies they have a policy
- We really deliberated a lot … a difficult decisions
- 3 candidates … all had different strengths
- Strengths
- Strong in discovery, research, sysntheis, stakeholder
- Value prop definition
- Buy-in from stakeholders
- Strong communications
- First formal role as a service designer .. we have never had a dedicated service designer
- Came down to passion in service design … didn’t hear it from me