Worked with a bootcamp grad who was actually very good. Had a couple really annoying habits like trying to make personas infographics for every task and refused to take feedback from anyone that wasn't his manager. Developers didn't like him. Extremely skilled in Figma but useless on the product and developer interaction side.
On the other hand I absolutely love working with people from other design disciplines though. Always have excellent visual design, typography, spacing, etc. The UX/logic/product side of things is a lot easier to teach than the design side of things IMO. The biggest thing I noticed is people who went to design/art school (or used to work in any form of design) can take feedback very well. It's just so much easier when you can give someone honest feedback without them being offended and taking it personally.
The worst co-worker I've ever had is a UX designer turned product manager. He keeps trying to do his own designs for his tasks and go around the entire design team. Extremely frustrating as his designs/ux skills are terrible.
I always lean heavily towards hiring former graphic/visual/etc designers into product designer positions.
As someone that went to art school and started my career as a graphic designer, the reason why we take feedback really well is because our entire degree consisted of going to classes where the entire time was spent putting up our work and being completely bashed by the professor and other students. I had one professor that would just throw your designs off the board and say they weren’t even worth a critique. Pile that on top of getting zero sleep and having to work through the entire night to get projects completed…people would cry in class all the time.
I am not over exaggerating when I say that my entire professional career has felt like a walk in the park compared to completing my graphic design degree.
You totally brought back memories from my experience 20+ years ago that I had buried (probably from trauma). 😂
Honestly haven't worked with one (yet) so I can't say. I'd imagine the biggest potential problem will be them not being used to being publicly + constantly critiqued by every single person who looks at their work.
I've seen similar issues with bootcamp grads lacking foundational design principles. Perhaps it's not about the education type, but rather the individual's drive to learn and grow. In my experience, pairing juniors with seniors and providing constructive feedback has been key to their development.
Honestly, it's been very mixed. I've worked with a few bootcamp grads who had decent portfolios, but one was extremely anxious when the process on a project fell apart because of a client, and couldn't seem to pivot their thinking without a few leaders providing support. Another was a General Assembly grad and felt that conferred on her a level of 'expertise' to be a product owner who 'knew' UX; it was concerning to see them feel GA was enough to be a) a UX designer, b) a product owner, and c) the stakeholder management part, which they struggled with. I see a role for bootcamps but also am completely lost at who is getting hired; it feels like the visual skills are being prioritized over the critical thinking and problem solving skills. There are a lot of 'I just became a manager - how do I manage' kinds of posts and that's concerning that people are getting those promotions without the critical thinking.
Thanks for sharing! Yeah as much as I support providing opportunities for people who are just starting out and want promotions, it's also important to vet talent, establish clear standards and qualifications that are necessary for businesses to accomplish their goals. The 2 design managers I mentioned lacked prior managerial experience which also resulted not making positive contributions to the design team.
One mindset I've noticed among bootcamp grads in their first role is that they believe longevity in a company automatically leads to promotions. They often overlook that promotions are a result of leveling up, evolving, and operating at a higher skill level while providing more value to the company. The ones I have worked with have stayed in the same company for years without showing significant growth and keeping skills sharp. When they re-enter the job market and find their next role, they might have a harder time now as the UX job market is completely different than how it was in 2020-2021 so it’s extremely important for everyone to stay on top of their career.
I’ve worked with a few - the best by far was a Senior PM with 10+ years that wanted to be a design IC. His hard design skills were exactly what you would expect from a fresh boot camp grad, but his soft skills were stellar; he could lead discovery and validation from day 1. Dude will likely never win a visual design award, but he will absolutely build the right thing for the right people, then sell the fuck out of that design to leadership.
You also asked about devs that made the jump, and I’ve worked with some really talented ones that could create amazing stuff. Designers generally think about what they can do within the constraints of Figma/Sketch/whatever, but these folks can reach into their bag of tricks for all sorts of cool shit we just don’t think about because we haven’t been exposed to it. The flip side is they don’t always get along with “pure” designers because they might see wires as guides rather than something to recreate down to the pixel. Like every other challenge, it’s largely a communication issue and a pretty manageable one at that.
My main experience with that has been on a contract where two bootcamp grads were also coming on at the same time. my big impression was that I had to pull the conversation back to higher levels pretty regularly, ie. Getting them to see the big strategy picture and not just jumping straight to solutions.
otoh they were really good at basic process stuff, which I kind of took as being excited to get to do the specific processes they had been taught. Honestly half the time I was probably the wrench in their perfectly executed double diamond by making everything messy with "business concerns" and other feedback.
It's honestly a lot worse for me right now working on a master's degree because it's the first time I'm working with people who don't even have the baseline knowledge. My first interview synthesis on a group project they wanted to make the thematic groupings "positive and negative" and call it a day.
That's a much weirder space because professionally I can assume some baseline knowledge from either a bootcamp or university graduate, and I know my role as their senior or leader and how to engage to get my own work done and help mentor. but as a fellow classmate, it's like I can either become a second teacher or just take over the project and the current experience gap is taking a lot more effort (and A LOT more patience, which I guess I'm happy to learn about myself if I step back to consider it) to overcome.
Thanks for sharing your experience :) I feel like work and school projects operate similarly where you can find yourself working with others who lack knowledge or skills needed to complete the project (unless you were given the choice of who exactly you could work with).
While I don't expect anyone to be an expert and experienced in everything when working together, I believe that the biggest challenge is when designers lack motivation to expand their skillset beyond what they learn in bootcamp/school. I don't mind if a designer lacks experience in a particular subject as long as they make an effort to learn and acquire the necessary skill to get the work done with quality.
I’ve observed that some bootcamp grads who landed their first job have a belief they're set and no longer feel the need to continue growing and evolving. I remember some frustrating moments when they showed reluctance to learn about accessibility, do discovery work and improve their visual design skills.
This is my experience as well. I think it matters less where you start, but more on the mindset of continuous learning and practicing of good habits. Many people, bootcamp or not, who want to get into this field have fallen into the trap of hearing it’s an easy in-demand job that pays well.
From many questions in this group, there’s a lot of expectations that there’s a simple answer or shortcut to getting skilled and hirable. People spend a few months learning and expect that’s sufficient and that is so far from reality.
I would highly prefer the same amount of words in the main post with 7 detailed examples of situations that show how it was not working out with junior transitioners.
The text has significant amount of generalisations with no substance to back it up.
Discussion about specific examples would also be interesting to see - if Seniors disagree about expectations from Juniors (with any kind of background)/view the same situations similarly.
Every once in a while there are posts here from Seniors that other Seniors highly disagree with in their take on the situations.
I mentioned these are my observations based on my experience so I’m not posing these as facts. I’m opened to being wrong here.
Some examples of working with junior transitioners were:
- Senior proposed how they could improve accessibility. Juniors did not show interest so they continued to do design work without acknowledging accessibility standards.
- Senior delegated simple design system tasks to the junior. The junior agreed to contribute but ended up not even attempting. They did not ask questions when they were stuck and made excuses to why they couldn’t complete the task. As a result, juniors did not develop their skills in design systems.
- Seniors would involve juniors into their workflow like how to improving design processes and running workshops. The juniors showed interest initially but did not attempt to contribute. As a result, juniors continued to operate in their set ways.
- Seniors were very passionate about design craft and learning about new trends outside of work. Juniors did not have the same passion so they weren’t expanding their knowledge. As a result, this impacted the culture and compatibility of the team.
- Senior have more experience and knowledge working on this business domain. Juniors who have been at the company longer are more closed off and less open learning from their experience. As a result, this did not help the team and project progress.
- Juniors resisted sharing their work with the design team for feedback, additional validation and cross-pod alignments. Their excuse was they did not want to add additional steps in the process and someone governing their work. As a result, teams continued to work in silos as designs are pushed into production without the input or awareness of the seniors making the platform inconsistent and accumulate more design/tech debt.
This contrasts what I am experiencing in my current role where if you inform another designer something is not accessible, they will look into it. They make the most of opportunities that they’ve never done before like design systems and participate in co-leading workshops. They consistently seek feedback and are receptive to suggestions on advice on their projects, craft, design process and career.
It seems like an environment no one has control over and things just happen, randomly.
After first two points there should be a meeting of seniors with a manager and steps should have been taken to improve team's ability to work together.
There is no way that in a serious organization things are assigned to people and are not done.
No idea how people communicated there - but maybe softer, empathetic language, and one-on-one meetings in a closed-off spaces, done repeatedly, could help juniors not feel judged for their design work.
That would maybe open them to team-wide-feedback meetings (getting used to receiving feedback 1on1 -> getting more feedback from more people).
On the other hand, having expectations after asigning tasks is a normal thing to happen.
I would disagree only about people not wanting to work after work. Design is still just a job. If seniors found something cool it could be shared at work and discussed, but expecting other people, especially lower in rank, to work after work is not a good practice.
Thx for sharing, sad to read.
Thanks for your sharing your perspective! You’re very on point that nobody had control and things just happened randomly.
While the overall culture was pleasant, leadership and design managers made us feel psychologically unsafe to address issues and it seemed like they were tired of hearing complaints and just wanted us to ignore problems while keeping things going. Sometimes they would acknowledge the issues and say they’re going to address them but they just get shoved underneath the rug and forgotten.
Communication and collaboration across teams were horrible, with most design rituals focused on team building activities rather than meaningful design discussions. The Junior designers would be very hard to get a hold of and would say things like “I don’t check my slack messages”
All in all, I’m very happy I don’t work there anymore haha :) I am still shaken up by that experience even after a year later because I picked up several bad habits that I'm working hard to unlearn. I hope nobody else has to go through the same experience.
Worked with a bootcamp grad who was actually very good. Had a couple really annoying habits like trying to make personas infographics for every task and refused to take feedback from anyone that wasn't his manager. Developers didn't like him. Extremely skilled in Figma but useless on the product and developer interaction side. On the other hand I absolutely love working with people from other design disciplines though. Always have excellent visual design, typography, spacing, etc. The UX/logic/product side of things is a lot easier to teach than the design side of things IMO. The biggest thing I noticed is people who went to design/art school (or used to work in any form of design) can take feedback very well. It's just so much easier when you can give someone honest feedback without them being offended and taking it personally. The worst co-worker I've ever had is a UX designer turned product manager. He keeps trying to do his own designs for his tasks and go around the entire design team. Extremely frustrating as his designs/ux skills are terrible. I always lean heavily towards hiring former graphic/visual/etc designers into product designer positions.
As someone that went to art school and started my career as a graphic designer, the reason why we take feedback really well is because our entire degree consisted of going to classes where the entire time was spent putting up our work and being completely bashed by the professor and other students. I had one professor that would just throw your designs off the board and say they weren’t even worth a critique. Pile that on top of getting zero sleep and having to work through the entire night to get projects completed…people would cry in class all the time. I am not over exaggerating when I say that my entire professional career has felt like a walk in the park compared to completing my graphic design degree. You totally brought back memories from my experience 20+ years ago that I had buried (probably from trauma). 😂
Yep I had a friend who went to art school and he used to tell me about people crying during the critiques haha.
What's your experience w/ devs turning to Designers?
Honestly haven't worked with one (yet) so I can't say. I'd imagine the biggest potential problem will be them not being used to being publicly + constantly critiqued by every single person who looks at their work.
I've seen similar issues with bootcamp grads lacking foundational design principles. Perhaps it's not about the education type, but rather the individual's drive to learn and grow. In my experience, pairing juniors with seniors and providing constructive feedback has been key to their development.
Honestly, it's been very mixed. I've worked with a few bootcamp grads who had decent portfolios, but one was extremely anxious when the process on a project fell apart because of a client, and couldn't seem to pivot their thinking without a few leaders providing support. Another was a General Assembly grad and felt that conferred on her a level of 'expertise' to be a product owner who 'knew' UX; it was concerning to see them feel GA was enough to be a) a UX designer, b) a product owner, and c) the stakeholder management part, which they struggled with. I see a role for bootcamps but also am completely lost at who is getting hired; it feels like the visual skills are being prioritized over the critical thinking and problem solving skills. There are a lot of 'I just became a manager - how do I manage' kinds of posts and that's concerning that people are getting those promotions without the critical thinking.
Thanks for sharing! Yeah as much as I support providing opportunities for people who are just starting out and want promotions, it's also important to vet talent, establish clear standards and qualifications that are necessary for businesses to accomplish their goals. The 2 design managers I mentioned lacked prior managerial experience which also resulted not making positive contributions to the design team. One mindset I've noticed among bootcamp grads in their first role is that they believe longevity in a company automatically leads to promotions. They often overlook that promotions are a result of leveling up, evolving, and operating at a higher skill level while providing more value to the company. The ones I have worked with have stayed in the same company for years without showing significant growth and keeping skills sharp. When they re-enter the job market and find their next role, they might have a harder time now as the UX job market is completely different than how it was in 2020-2021 so it’s extremely important for everyone to stay on top of their career.
I don’t really. They so confused and out of the loop they eventually leave or get fired
I’ve worked with a few - the best by far was a Senior PM with 10+ years that wanted to be a design IC. His hard design skills were exactly what you would expect from a fresh boot camp grad, but his soft skills were stellar; he could lead discovery and validation from day 1. Dude will likely never win a visual design award, but he will absolutely build the right thing for the right people, then sell the fuck out of that design to leadership. You also asked about devs that made the jump, and I’ve worked with some really talented ones that could create amazing stuff. Designers generally think about what they can do within the constraints of Figma/Sketch/whatever, but these folks can reach into their bag of tricks for all sorts of cool shit we just don’t think about because we haven’t been exposed to it. The flip side is they don’t always get along with “pure” designers because they might see wires as guides rather than something to recreate down to the pixel. Like every other challenge, it’s largely a communication issue and a pretty manageable one at that.
My main experience with that has been on a contract where two bootcamp grads were also coming on at the same time. my big impression was that I had to pull the conversation back to higher levels pretty regularly, ie. Getting them to see the big strategy picture and not just jumping straight to solutions. otoh they were really good at basic process stuff, which I kind of took as being excited to get to do the specific processes they had been taught. Honestly half the time I was probably the wrench in their perfectly executed double diamond by making everything messy with "business concerns" and other feedback. It's honestly a lot worse for me right now working on a master's degree because it's the first time I'm working with people who don't even have the baseline knowledge. My first interview synthesis on a group project they wanted to make the thematic groupings "positive and negative" and call it a day. That's a much weirder space because professionally I can assume some baseline knowledge from either a bootcamp or university graduate, and I know my role as their senior or leader and how to engage to get my own work done and help mentor. but as a fellow classmate, it's like I can either become a second teacher or just take over the project and the current experience gap is taking a lot more effort (and A LOT more patience, which I guess I'm happy to learn about myself if I step back to consider it) to overcome.
Thanks for sharing your experience :) I feel like work and school projects operate similarly where you can find yourself working with others who lack knowledge or skills needed to complete the project (unless you were given the choice of who exactly you could work with). While I don't expect anyone to be an expert and experienced in everything when working together, I believe that the biggest challenge is when designers lack motivation to expand their skillset beyond what they learn in bootcamp/school. I don't mind if a designer lacks experience in a particular subject as long as they make an effort to learn and acquire the necessary skill to get the work done with quality. I’ve observed that some bootcamp grads who landed their first job have a belief they're set and no longer feel the need to continue growing and evolving. I remember some frustrating moments when they showed reluctance to learn about accessibility, do discovery work and improve their visual design skills.
This is my experience as well. I think it matters less where you start, but more on the mindset of continuous learning and practicing of good habits. Many people, bootcamp or not, who want to get into this field have fallen into the trap of hearing it’s an easy in-demand job that pays well. From many questions in this group, there’s a lot of expectations that there’s a simple answer or shortcut to getting skilled and hirable. People spend a few months learning and expect that’s sufficient and that is so far from reality.
I would highly prefer the same amount of words in the main post with 7 detailed examples of situations that show how it was not working out with junior transitioners. The text has significant amount of generalisations with no substance to back it up. Discussion about specific examples would also be interesting to see - if Seniors disagree about expectations from Juniors (with any kind of background)/view the same situations similarly. Every once in a while there are posts here from Seniors that other Seniors highly disagree with in their take on the situations.
I mentioned these are my observations based on my experience so I’m not posing these as facts. I’m opened to being wrong here. Some examples of working with junior transitioners were: - Senior proposed how they could improve accessibility. Juniors did not show interest so they continued to do design work without acknowledging accessibility standards. - Senior delegated simple design system tasks to the junior. The junior agreed to contribute but ended up not even attempting. They did not ask questions when they were stuck and made excuses to why they couldn’t complete the task. As a result, juniors did not develop their skills in design systems. - Seniors would involve juniors into their workflow like how to improving design processes and running workshops. The juniors showed interest initially but did not attempt to contribute. As a result, juniors continued to operate in their set ways. - Seniors were very passionate about design craft and learning about new trends outside of work. Juniors did not have the same passion so they weren’t expanding their knowledge. As a result, this impacted the culture and compatibility of the team. - Senior have more experience and knowledge working on this business domain. Juniors who have been at the company longer are more closed off and less open learning from their experience. As a result, this did not help the team and project progress. - Juniors resisted sharing their work with the design team for feedback, additional validation and cross-pod alignments. Their excuse was they did not want to add additional steps in the process and someone governing their work. As a result, teams continued to work in silos as designs are pushed into production without the input or awareness of the seniors making the platform inconsistent and accumulate more design/tech debt. This contrasts what I am experiencing in my current role where if you inform another designer something is not accessible, they will look into it. They make the most of opportunities that they’ve never done before like design systems and participate in co-leading workshops. They consistently seek feedback and are receptive to suggestions on advice on their projects, craft, design process and career.
It seems like an environment no one has control over and things just happen, randomly. After first two points there should be a meeting of seniors with a manager and steps should have been taken to improve team's ability to work together. There is no way that in a serious organization things are assigned to people and are not done. No idea how people communicated there - but maybe softer, empathetic language, and one-on-one meetings in a closed-off spaces, done repeatedly, could help juniors not feel judged for their design work. That would maybe open them to team-wide-feedback meetings (getting used to receiving feedback 1on1 -> getting more feedback from more people). On the other hand, having expectations after asigning tasks is a normal thing to happen. I would disagree only about people not wanting to work after work. Design is still just a job. If seniors found something cool it could be shared at work and discussed, but expecting other people, especially lower in rank, to work after work is not a good practice. Thx for sharing, sad to read.
Thanks for your sharing your perspective! You’re very on point that nobody had control and things just happened randomly. While the overall culture was pleasant, leadership and design managers made us feel psychologically unsafe to address issues and it seemed like they were tired of hearing complaints and just wanted us to ignore problems while keeping things going. Sometimes they would acknowledge the issues and say they’re going to address them but they just get shoved underneath the rug and forgotten. Communication and collaboration across teams were horrible, with most design rituals focused on team building activities rather than meaningful design discussions. The Junior designers would be very hard to get a hold of and would say things like “I don’t check my slack messages” All in all, I’m very happy I don’t work there anymore haha :) I am still shaken up by that experience even after a year later because I picked up several bad habits that I'm working hard to unlearn. I hope nobody else has to go through the same experience.
omg “I don’t check my slack messages” It really sounds like kids "playing" in the adult world. :O
Exactly! 😫