You Suck as a Design Leader

Why I rather have no design leadership than weak design leadership

Leading us downhill? Credit: Jehyun Sung

This article won’t start out well, because I’m sort of at rock bottom in my career and it seems that I’m projecting my frustrations of the industry out in the open. But I promise you, my rants are merely neutral observations and opinions.

I love talking to people, and over the last 2 months of unemployment (I am now employed), I called upon designer friends all in Asia and Europe to get their opinion on the current state of Design leadership and how it has impacted our careers.

Spoiler alert: It ain’t great. Hence the article.

We seem to have found ourselves in an era where clout matters more than productivity, and when Design’s productivity and impact is questioned, we somehow re-direct that discomfort and blame our Engineering and Product counterparts (or other happenings in the industry) for not enabling us to be more productive.

“We’re not the ones touching the code or deciding the business, so it’s not our fault.” or “AI is replacing designers!” or [Insert office politics statement here].

If you have no idea what I’m on about, this article is either not for you, or you’re part of the problem.

Disclaimer: This is a significantly abridged version for better readability. I intentionally missed writing several other considerations to measure good design leadership, because I want to focus on the BAD.

More than just ideology-pushers

I think something that really disturbed me the last few years and with the most recent interviews I’ve had with design managers and leaders alike, is how self-absorbed they are when it comes to their ideologies.

I don’t know, I’m probably not talking to the right people, but in a desperate search for employment, I rarely have a choice.

Every design manager I’ve talked to were all unimpressive conversationalists. They talk in predictable methodologies: Double-diamond, hypothesis-driven design, sprints… My Z-illennial designer heart is screaming boomer at these outdated rituals.

The deeper they are in tech, the more they try to hide in lingo they don’t understand to not look stupid. Here’s an abridged transcript of an interview that happened during my job-hunt:

“How would you design for AI?”

“I’m personally really big on interaction design and I like to start from hi-fi mockups and prototypes! I think for me the biggest impact in AI comes from reducing cognitive load meaningfully for the user.”

“How would you measure cognitive load and determine that’s the right way to design?”

I obviously had to pause, because this was a red flag waving in the air. “I mean, through observation and user testing you can tell reduced cognitive loads by measuring [specific metrics]. I personally wouldn’t do advanced measurements prior to design and would rather follow intuition to save time.”

Silence. Disagreement. The rest of the conversation that followed was me forcing a smile at someone who wasn’t interested nor curious about methods and ideologies different from their own.

I got a rejection promptly after, stating that I lacked clear strategic thinking and was unable to be hypothesis-driven. The irony.

Those who have worked with me laughed when they read the transcript, assuring me that I was fine, the hiring manager was not.

How Design Leaders we endorse affect our career

This is the most I’ve loathed interviewing in my entire career. So much so that, if I were to be unemployed again, I will take up the offer at the supermarket / bubble tea shop in a heartbeat.

I really reflected for a long while about this topic, whether if it was me who’s the problem (very often, it is admittedly so), or if the industry has shifted to cater to a different subset of people.

I think it’s the latter. Because many peers and like-minded allies, veterans of the formal golden ages of design, agree.

The unfortunate reality is that weak leadership is holding back a whole generation of designers, stagnating their growth, and ultimately affecting the entire field’s evolution.

Clout Culture Over Substance

There’s an overwhelming trend in design leadership where “clout” has become a primary currency. Whether it’s flashy conference talks, LinkedIn followers, or impressive job titles, many design leaders today seem more focused on building their personal brand rather than actually mentoring and developing their teams.

Too often, these leaders are chosen for their visibility, NOT their ability to effectively lead, guide, or nurture talent.

This has a dangerous ripple effect: as designers, we look to these figures for guidance, inspiration, and growth, only to find ourselves faced with shallow advice that doesn’t address the complexities of real-world design challenges and design careers.

Sound familiar? You already get this vibe from mentorship platforms.

Design careers have become a maze, designed for stagnation

Career growth in design has always been about more than just the work itself — it’s about mentorship, feedback, and learning from those who have come before us. But when leadership lacks substance, or when their direction is vague or uninspiring, the path forward becomes unclear.

You don’t want to be who you aren’t sure about, right?

Instead of having experienced and respected leaders helping to pave the path forward, we often find ourselves running in circles, unsure of which direction to go next because we keep hitting the same roadblocks of fundamentally poor leadership.

Many designers today get stuck in the same maturity for years, unable to break into new areas of responsibility or expand their skill sets.

Junior designers (if they’re even hired) struggle to see a clear career map ahead of them, and all gun for title promotions instead of meaningful growth.

Mid-level designers are boxed into roles where they’re expected to “figure it out” without any meaningful guidance.

Senior designers are trapped with the same title and salary for years, while having management and lead scopes added into their day-to-day.

Most leadership of struggling designers are usually too busy managing the optics of their own personal success, rather than focusing on the development of the next generation.

Are you really a leader if all you care about is yourself?

Many designers I’ve spoken to feel like they’re in limbo, unsure of what’s expected from them or how to advance to the next level. Many a time, their leaders are in the exact same position. Clueless, afraid to be made redundant, and thus, decided to focus on growing their influence to act as a shield.

Unfortunately, without strong guidance, design teams suffer as any professionals of all levels becomes disillusioned, underutilized, and burned out.

The high burn-out rate and shorter turnover of designers at most companies is a reflection of that.

The emptiest vessels makes the loudest noise

I don’t want to over-generalise — but leaders who are more concerned with maintaining their influence in the community usually neglect fostering meaningful growth for their teams. This is true even outside of design, and I rarely trust hiring managers who are also ‘influencers’ on LinkedIn because of this.

Of course, some people can do it all and have it all; but after more than a dozen design teams and design leaders I worked with personally, I can tell you for a fact, it’s a dwindling minority and not commonplace.

I’ve had my conversations with Design’s biggest influencers, and my opinion is that the larger their follower numbers and the more often they post, the less they are doing to actually drive design in the correct direction.

Real design leaders speak when needed, and focus on the work that’s important.

Can AI replace design leaders?

Off-tangent thought. When struggling with job interviews or career growth, most younger designers seek out AI for answers.

While it’s pretty great for job hunting, it’s still horrible for career planning because AI just doesn’t have the predictive optics of what a real design leader would embody.

The funny part? It’s still better than going to a mentorship platform for cheap validation.

The directional change away from careers

One really interesting thing utilising AI is the fact that when I had doubts over my career and which direction to take, I am guided to see the whole picture instead of my role in a singular profession.

I am not a designer, but a human with a limited career lifespan that should build an identity outside of my job.

While super valid and very helpful as a life coach, it paints an overall detrimental image of design careers, because if there was really nothing else to develop, being a designer is a short-lived stepping stone to another life.

At the frayed end of capitalism, it seems like design truly is just a limited-edition space for consumers who can pay for it.

So after all that fight to make design accessible, the bottom line remains the same after all these years: Design is luxury.

What does it mean to be in a luxurious career

I’ve done a brief research on this topic, but basically luxurious careers are well-paid services where our employment is essentially dependent on the amount of consumers who are able to afford it.

What this means is that we are highly reliant on the state of the economy to determine our standard of living. And well, the economy right now isn’t exactly great.

Design has always been volatile as an industry. In my country, it had a reputation of being low-paid, with poor career advancement. Many designers, a generation before me, struggle with career development and stagnate after they’ve reached a certain amount of years in the industry — even if they held a high leadership position prior.

As I am mid-way into the current generation of designers, I see it for myself a bit clearer why pivoting is important for designers: Because Design is not a career you can rely on, especially not now in our weak-leadership era and unstable economy.

Even in the golden age of design, the difference of how a designer can grow can differ greatly from different leadership. I remember when I was first a junior designer, I was exposed to two different types of design leaders.

One was someone who was a bit more selfish as a leader, seeing their designers as additional arms for production.

Now there is no major negative per say in just learning how to do work precisely and specifically, but there is a de-humanising aspect in being used as a worker, being made a copy of the brains of design and unable to have your opinion on any matter.

I left the design team with sharp knowledge on how my design lead liked doing things, and also learned that this way of doing things is not applicable or adaptable enough to meet the needs of the ever-growing demands of design skills.

The next design leads that took me under their wings were phenomenal. And I say that because it was the most growth I’ve ever had in a short year I was with any leadership.

Autonomy to explore, the freedom to express, and the possibility to set a different direction; these were crucial ingredients for growth. I was allowed opportunities via strategic delegation, and the passion this design lead had for the craft inspired me to instill passion into my work as well.

I was encouraged to attend courses and conferences, I was warned to be careful of certain types of thinking, and very often, I had great conversations with these design leads about what it meant to be a designer for the company and for the world.

Practical leadership

Great leaders don’t make their employees stay in hopeless places. One key lesson I learned from great design leads is the active denial of compromise.

“I’m going to quit in a week or two.”

It wasn’t a bombshell announcement, but how often would your direct boss tell you of their plans to leave? Many times, the environments to form great design cultures simply doesn’t exist. There is only so much fight in a design leader before they have to call it quits.

It’s pick either your pride or your employment status. Many ‘leaders’ choose the latter.

My design lead stated their reasons. The entire debrief wasn’t to get me to quit also, but a lesson to figure out leadership red flags: observe understand what’s working and what’s not working, what it means for the work moving forward, how I can use the situation to my own advantage, and my choices moving when I can get to make them.

It was an important reflection on how nothing is, and shouldn’t be, permanent.

The reality is that great design teams are few and far inbetween

The happiest designers, if we’re all being honest, are usually working alone or in small teams because the creative environment is simply not a space where too many opinions can exist harmoniously.

Effective design is picking one direction and sticking to it, which is why design communities commonly tend to be echo-chambers compared to our other tech counterparts.

There simply just isn’t enough space for diversity of opinion — a result of our limited resources — which is the result of the macro-economics of our industry.

So it’s all a fight to see whose voice is the most correct, and oftentimes it’s the voice that’s the loudest.

But empty vessels makes the loudest noises, and we’re back to where we were, with no solution to the problem.

Closing thoughts

If you’ve been a long-time reader of my articles, you would know that many reflections serve no purpose other than the desire to inform. This is exactly one of those articles.

I really hate putting hierarchy into design teams, because I have seen how it has been terribly ineffective when it comes to productivity and driving professional growth among designers. Many a times, it has even driven toxic rivalries that is detrimental to building design culture at companies.

I was inspired to write this because a consultant friend of mine came and asked if there was a formula for managing highly effective design teams. I thought about this question long and hard.

The vulgar, but concise, answer I came up with was, “Yeah, separate us and leave us the fck alone.”.*

Don’t try to force us into titles. Don’t try to force rank us in hierarchies. Don’t try to be politically correct about our salaries.

The most effective design teams are one where designers are each given a unique purpose, and their growth and rewards come from how well they fulfill that purpose.

No junior/mid-level/senior product designer bullshit, no “hey please try to design together” horseshit. It just doesn’t work. You cannot manage creatives this way.

Great leaders give their designers autonomy and create environments where they can perform.

More closing thoughts

This is a really passionate topic of mine, and I just want to wrap up why I wrote the subtitle I did.

I legitimately would not work for a company where the design leadership is not one I can respect. I have quit jobs / fought people at interviews because of this.

And this has made employment a bit challenging for me in my entire career, on top of the already tough conditions today.

However, I am much happier working for a team that has freedom in design direction, than a shit design direction we all don’t agree with but have to follow, because boss designer said so.

Ultimately, I want designers (especially juniors today) to understand that no one can command you to follow a path you don’t believe in.

A warning though: there is far more risk being temperamental as I am, but after nearly a decade of winging things and following what I truly believe in, I still am employed, have a really interesting career, and have several opportunities to pivot.

Would I be richer if I just swallowed my pride? Yes. But I wouldn’t be the writer you’ll want to read from. And I wouldn’t have given myself the priceless opportunities I have access to today.

Some will question why I would shit on design leadership and not just “be the change” myself. There is some complexity to answer that, but I am simply not in a position where I can invest in the industry. There is a form of privilege and sacrifice required to truly influence and impact, and I have other more important things to focus on.

And so, after reading this article, I urge you to look at your own community of design leadership and really reflect if they were effective in nurturing you for your career.

Because if it’s just noise that they make, you don’t need them in your life. This is one way we can actively curb the rot festering in the design industry today.

Stop following clout. Good leadership isn’t a popularity contest.

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