Helping people land tech jobs. Follow for product design, tech, and interview advice.
🌟 Hello from San Francisco 🌟 I’m Lily, a product designer (apps and UX) who went to arts school. I packed my life into two suitcases and moved to the heart of Silicon Valley. With no connections, I hustled and broke into tech. My story has been featured in Apple News and Business Insider. Subscribe for tech, interviewing, and personal development advice.
👉🏻 Grab my FREE product design goodies ↠ productdesignclub.com/goodies
👩🏻💻 Connect with me Newsletter community (workshops announced here first) ↠ productdesignclub.com/join Instagram ↠ instagram.com/designalily Blog (coming soon)
✉️ Professional Inquiries Book 1:1 time with me ↠ calendly.com/designalily Contact ↠ productdesignclub.com/contact
If you flip the shoes as an employer, how you present yourself is much less important than how you design. If your design is 100% on point, you'll still land the job even with a crappy presentation. so I'd focus more on improving my design skills than my presentation skills, unless they hire you for public speaking.
@@Designalily plenty, almost all of my clients are either in SF or NY. 12 years of experience, had over 600 interviews and landed 103 gigs. so pretty much 1/6 close rate. 300~400k revenue annually. always enjoy your content tho :)
Congrats on landing your job! I've been running the interview gauntlet and getting to final rounds with the whiteboard challenge. The majority of the feedback i recieve is positive, they like my process, structure and planning but say i'm not trusting my instincts and being more intentional with my recommedations. I'm a PD with over 10 years expereince and now I'm being rejected at this stage. Appreciate your videos and your transparency. Wondering where I should really double down on providing recommendations in my exercise?
Cleansing oil, Face Wash, Toner, Vit C serum - 🇯🇵 Retinol & Cream - 🇰🇷 - What I'm currently using right now. Japanese people rarely use retinols & they're rare in Japanese beauty stores so that's why I'm using Korean. As someone who tried both, I prefer the Japanese skincare. It's practical and the routine is kinda shorter compared to Korean skincare routine. Also Japanese skincare tend to have less ingredients. The lesser the better. Japanese skincare companies have been doing research for a long time so which is why I trust them more.
I know this video's a little older than your current cotent, but I was so satisfied to watch it! I've been thinking this for years, so I'm glad someone else said it. I often get frustrated when I hear students say, "UX was perfect/meant for me because I couldn't design between art and psychology". personally, I think the misconception has led to the oversaturated market, but... /shrug I loved your video though, and plan on sending it to a) future students who approach me with that art line, lol b) engineers who say "I thought your work was [Behance mocks of mobile apps that will likely never exist in real life]" or worse "You're just a pixel pusher. I can do your job too, we don't need you!" c) my non tech-savvy parents so they can understand my world a little better Keep up the excellent work, Lily!
Having been in combat and having seen the worst of humanity, I've reached the understanding that there are very few things in our first world lives that are really worth getting nervous (or angry, scared, discouraged, etc...) about. So for better or worse, I've never been nervous in any job interview. I barely even prepare for job interviews. Of course, I would never recommend my experience to anyone, as there are certainly side effects to achieving this mentality of "chuck it in the phuck-it bucket"
depends, if you're firm and willing to walk away, you'll get what you asked for. recently landed a contract at Pinterest at the max point they offered.
Ugh, been feeling all this so hard. Thought I was going crazy, and I have 1 or 2 other friends who are even more senior than me struggling. I was like "if [Friend A] can't get a job, the world is in a crisis and we need help". Glad to know it's not just in my head. And definitely seconding the "mid to senior roles outsourced overseas" part... despite the appeal of me moving back for those roles, the pay offered for many is 40% or more lower (than what it might pay in the U.S.). Granted, the pay is generally lower in my home country, but it was not such a steep difference in e.g. 2022 or 2023 (as I have been checking).
Side note: I actually do not like using Figma. I prefer Sketch. I only started using Figma because it's what everyone else was using. However, after a year of using it I still miss Sketch and will probably go back.
Ugh this literally happened to me this morning. Asked for more time to think about Senior Prod Designer offer - like three days - since I'm still interviewing with companies, and the offer was pulled immediately. The recruiters really made me feel like I was replaceable, so I'm kind of thankful for your insightful video that it's not 'just me as the problem'. Have been super burnt out for the last couple years, and am contemplating moving back to my home country if I don't get another offer in the next month. UX has stopped feeling worth it for me (or at least, questionable). Still, thank you for the video - gives a good idea of what to expect, even in other countries. Appreciate you!
@@Designalily Thank you so much, Lily! That's incredibly rough, 1.5 years, but if you are saying that, it gives me a realistic idea of what to expect. Really appreciate you and your honest, unfiltered wisdom!
Super helpful and insightful - thanks for breaking down the whiteboard challenge in an easy to understand way. It was really intimidating for me as someone who doesn't have a formal UX background, so I'm grateful for your walkthrough! Appreciate all your time, effort, and edits to make it an enjoyable and relevant watch :)
nah, AI is not capable of producing high quality code, it's a very useful assistant and teacher, but it doesn't produce good software.. i think AI is massively overhyped by the tech industry and the stock market, because everyone wants hyper growth that is not really possible.. same for good design.. maybe it can generate some crappy mockups but a good prototype that does exactly what you need is very hard to generate with AI , it's often very clunky .. the results you get aren't as good as something made with Protopie or similar tools.. i think a combination of AI . soft and tech skills is the way to go, for instance recently I created a prototype using D3 , and i had chatgpt help me figure out the API and it helped me with the code to get what i want, then I presented my idea to stakeholders. I think that's what the future going too look like because things that are just automatically generated like generative images, code, UI designs, videos.. are very random , poor quality.. they are useful for certain scenarios but I think this vision of , generating anything you want and it automatically pops out, I think it's a lot of BS from tech companies who want to hype up their shares
korean products and heck now western products have jumped on to Japanese products that have included ingredients that focus on moisture(hyaluronic acid), fermentation ( pitera by sk-ii) double cleansing ( oil cleansers like dhc or shu uemura) softening and absorption (Edumune by shiseido that came out in the 1800's & is still on the market) and antioxidants (matcha/ tsubaki or camellia). Flooding the market with flashy marketing or making it cheaper doesn't eqate to better
honestly, love your videos ! straightforward, to the point, precise AND you are not trying to sell any course to anyone for 99.99$ just for the next 30 seconds :) Keep it up
I predicted something like this 10 years ago when everything and all services started moving on the cloud. I wasn't thinking about AI, but I could see the room for tirany ir was creating. And it makes sense now "You'll own nothing and be happy."
This is happening across all industries especially the creative fields. Creatives have been encouraged to share their work online for years and without realising it, our work has been used to train AI. I've seen a lot of tech bros gleeful at graphic designers, artists etc being 'replaced' by AI which I found sad and disappointing, why anyone would want artists and creatives replaced by technology I have no idea. AI should be used to replace menial jobs, not creative jobs. I'm not sure what the future will look like at this rate but there are some serious ethical issues with people's work being fed into AI without their knowledge or consent, I would like to see this changed. AI should be a tool for people not something to replace us.
If you're good at what you do. AI won't replace you. Clients will always need a person and if they don't, you don't want them as your clients anyway. Don't be afraid of AI in design, a lot of it is shit anyway and to be honest, it's only good as a launchpad for a project. Just do your best and learn to utilize AI but don't rely on it because at the end of the day, your skills will carry you.
Thank you for these honest and insightful videos! But I must say the 20s and 30s comment hit me in the gut and gave me a pang of anxiety :'( I'm in my late 30s and about to do a ux bootcamp and switch careers but this makes me think that the journey will be even harder than I initially thought. Would you say tech/ux an ageist sector?
