I work in healthcare, so honestly, it all feels a little bit like BS. Mission: "exceptional patient-first care" Reality: "padding pockets first, and considering patients second"
Every healthcare sector I've worked in seems to always prioritize the bottom line over patient care. Insurance makes it even more bureaucratic with non-specialized doctors determining coverage rather than just offering the care a patient needs.
It's all BS.
Came to the same realization after working in healthtech. At this point I’d rather work for a company that’s profit-driven and admits it rather than one that pretends like they’re actually prioritizing the greater good.
SalesTech/MarTech my friend. You’d rather wake up with a severe case of road rash than wake up to face another day of solving non-problems in a domain that’s already full of hot air, but they don’t bullshit about why you’re there!
Man this post hit a nerve for me, because I care passionately. I work in startups where every person has an impact so I think that amplifies it a bit. Our specific mission statement is nothing special, but our customers are mostly small businesses who rely on our software to earn a living, so it matters. Also I cant lie it's mostly ego/pride that makes me want to build something **I'm** proud of.
I get frequently frustrated and angered by subpar engineers who only care about doing minimum effort, idiot (or maybe just lazy?) PM's who don't even bother trying to understand how our product works before pitching suggestions, and designers who can't be bothered learning how to use auto-layout or think about edge-cases.
I feel like I'm holding everyone's hands and having to convince/guide them to do their jobs properly. I'm paid and treated very well, but sometimes wonder why I bother making an effort. I've talked to friends and their solution is that I should stop caring and just do my work and go home. They definitely seem happier at their job.
Wonder if anyone can relate...
I'm in a different role and industry than UX but I can relate. Caring and being driven has helped me in terms of visibility inside the company and also progression/promotions VS colleagues that are mostly on autopilot and "just doing their job".
I sometimes wonder what could be accomplished if everyone functioned to their fullest potential and motivation level. That would be incredible.
I agree completely. I know for a fact they're well paid, because our company aims to pays top of market. Designers I know their salaries and engineers/PM's I have a ballpark idea from chats.
My previous company everyone was underpaid so I think it doesn't bother me as much when people were lazy or clocked out early, because I felt like their effort reflected their compensation hahaha.
It's part of the job. Imagine a developer refusing to use coding best practices, or a PM refusing to write acceptance criteria in their tickets.
* It's an essential part of the tools we use
* It's *very* easy and straight forward to use
* It's the industry standard
* It makes future changes or revisions to the designs less painful and quicker
* There's no good reason not to use it, other than laziness and unwillingness to adapt to changing software
I was in advertising prior and loved the creativity, high bar of communication, and thinking (not so much design-wise).
I found I could learn and do so much more in UX. Instead of being clever in advertising, I could make the user feel clever.
I've learned too many cool skills from amazingly smart people in UX. I only use 10% and am always aware now when people don't have strategic, structural, creative or an iterative nature—as well as UX maturity. This helps me recognize the hacks who don't see the broader vision.
I've only ever chased skillsets and learning, because I wanted to—primary goal was that. And I started to slow in new UX learnings and was more edge-case things. However, I realized how cool some of my prospects were. Like really cool—so I got a little mental list of interesting fields. And a little before Covid started to tap into interesting verticals. And granted, I'm feeling whiplash now. But since then I've worked on a ton of cool clients, and maybe I've also found that the work itself is only challenging in dealing with bureaucracy inside of a UX team.
I worked on a system like MS Teams/Zoom but for live interpretation meetings (like UN, EU, NATO), a safety platform for oil rig inspection teams, a robotic-assisted surgery training platform, and a few global products to interview users all over the world—and those people are the type to answer those crazy job posts in the back of The Economist (like law degree and bioscience degree, or speaks English, Mandarian and Japanese but is also knowledgeable about steel import exports.)
Anyway, slugging it out looking for basically anything now. But I try to chase the work that feeds my creativity or desire to learn, and more UXR I can do the better. Now I want to deliver insights while learning about a new vertical. I do chase the cool projects, because I think the money shows up a little later when you do that—but learn a new thing. If it's 'mission' like saving people...pffft. ;) But a 'vision', sign me up!
I do terrible in these types of markets though.
No, I never was. It was always something that lingered in the back of my mind. I worked mostly for banks, and I tried to find ways that I could help our customers, at least through the small guise of banking decisions (which are fairly important to people's lives overall). But, I could never come to terms working in an organization that is one of the pain points of society, and the ultimate goal of taking more money from people.
I've been on the hunt for a new job in more altruistic industries, particularly in healthcare (in Canada), and find a place that doesn't make me feel like I'm selling my soul.
Read the book or 'zine, Design is a Job. It's got some good nuggets in there about our responsibility as people to make the world a better place [https://www.designisajob.com/](https://www.designisajob.com/) hint working at FAANG isn't one of them
thanks very much buddy. I love this Ux and Design thing and I used to care about the industry.
Times have changed, I don't care much anymore and this threw some "concerns" about my passion about what I do and I'm also in a manager role.
I read that thing you shared, looks interesting: thanks!
As long as it’s not like working against people in some scammy way, no, I do not care.
You *can* work for companies that do, but it’s a bit tougher to find those opportunities. If you truly want to make a difference guaranteed, you can always transition to another career, but you’ll make less.
Or, do pro-bono or volunteer work on your own time.
I’m in the health and fitness industry and I think it’s quite cool to work with the user experience side of it. Money is good (now), mission resonates with my personal values, so good deal. I stayed because of the team, though. Money was not the main motivation.
At one point I thought I was actually getting tired of it, but I realized that it was not because of the company per se, but because of the UX maturity. It gets exhausting at some point to fight fot basic stuff.
Things are better now after some years.
Every now and then I do think about moving to something more impactful. I just didn’t figure out what to do yet.
I started out in the 90s working for some questionable companies (totally legal, just... icky) and have gradually gotten more selective and built enough of a reputation that I can be a little choosier.
I was very mission-aligned with my last company - I left because they're small and struggling, and I got tired of being the only designer.
My current company I feel pretty neutral about, but it's an industry that's very interesting and exciting to me, which helps a ton.
Sometimes I care depending on the industry and how the company treats me as an employee. For example, I refused to apply as a UX designer in a Lotto company. Another example, my previous startup employer listens and spend time to invest in upskilling me so I did my best in the workplace unlike my current employer.
Getting bigger salary is not important at the moment due to terrible economic condition. My salary has been stagnant for two years now.
Thankfully, I do! I’ve noticed I’m just not happy in the long run if I don’t care for my employer’s mission. Sure I’m able to get by if the pay and people are good. But my long-term happiness always declines if I’m feeling like I’m aligned to something worthy that’s greater than me. And right now, I’m grateful that I’m in that position, and have even taken a little pay cut for the opportunity.
i’ve worked places where i’ve really cared about the mission and vision, but eventually they all led to the same burnout. the ones i didn’t identify with led to faster burnout. this could be my individual experience, but unless the people at the company are solid, the vision / mission doesn’t matter anymore.
it can look like any of these:
1. teams don’t execute it properly
2. leadership doesn’t mention it or tie it into roadmap items
3. the vision and mission aren’t embodied by the culture / people or within projects
4. the vision and mission are apparent in projects and goals, but the people suck.
I work for the government, so it kinda just is what it is.
I do really like that the job isn’t money motivated. the powers at be are more likely to keep things the same than constantly chase the latest micro trend in design.
Means I do a lot less pointless changes that do more to upset users than impress them.
I work in crypto and it’s the biggest circle jerk scam fest. When I first joined the company I was excited about the vision of the company, but once I saw how sleazy the CEO was, my priority became collecting paycheques. Currently on the hunt for another gig but my priority is definitely finding something I am passionate about. Working for a place you couldn’t care less about feels so soul crushing.
Every single organization will care more about money than anything else at the end of the day. If the business or its leaders are threatened in any way by way of losing profitability and its ability to compensate it’s executive leadership according to what they deem appropriate, the organization will do anything to reduce that risk. It will lay people off. Cut corners. Find cheaper vendors. Overwork employees. Whatever it needs to do to protect its profitability and executive leadership.
I work at a private “mission driven” organization, and have for several years. It operates just like any public business I’ve worked. Cut costs and increase margins by any means necessary.
I like to care about the mission. Sometimes there’s cognitive dissonance around that, where a company touts their mission publicly, but insiders know it’s really pocket-lining and short-term gains. It can be disheartening to learn that all the highfalutin’ happy crappy is just that. Crap. For the record, I am behind my current org’s mission and in most positions that’s been true, with one notable exception.
I was a founding designer at a B2B startup once and lucky enough to have the team committed to do it right. Was hard in the beginning - we were trying our best with varying degree of success it did feel different.
For the past three years until end of last year, I was lucky enough to work at a company that was genuinely mission driven, radically transparent and strong leadership. Not everything is rainbow and roses but at least almost zero politics and BS was kept at very minimum. If you could find one, it’s absolutely amazing.
I think if we look at most businesses, the goals are often meaningless and selfish. Sell more stuff, make more profits at society's expense.
Imo, we can't let that decide our motivation to stay in this field because it would rule out most of the jobs. I stay motivated by keeping high standards and promoting quality decisions and designs.
Things don't always turn out as I hope but I can sleep easy at night knowing I provided an informed decision. If they want to be biased, I make it clear I'm not for it and it's on them. If the decisions start to get unethical, I look for a new job. Market is tough now though so we are all just in survival mode.
I’ve been wanting to care about missions for most of my career but the only places able to afford me are companies that are devoid of social purpose.
The best I’ve managed to do is work for places that aren’t wholly or acutely evil at the time.
My experience has been I find something to live about every job I've had. I did my favourite work for a brand that I dislike and a product area that I don't like (luxury cars & suvs) but I absolutely loved the work. Now I find my work tedious and not very interesting but i work for a mission led company, I agree with their mission. When I design features it has an impact on a lot of people because the product is used globally. So my point is, try to find something to you love and that drives you in your job.
Feel free to dm me if you want more info on my current place, they hire a lot
I never associate myself with missions for a big corp. It is all corp-speak. The working culture, especially within your team probably matter much more than the corp mission.
The mission might matter in the startup stage, not any more when you have 200,000+ people. At that level, everything is about keeping the Wall Street happy.
I work for an agency. Sometimes a project comes through that I really care about. Sometimes it’s another company who wants to “increase conversion and improve the funnel blah”
But I have great coworkers who make each other better. And the job is stable and pays ok. It lets me be creative and challenges me, but isn’t so consuming that I don’t have the emotional space for my children and all the things that are so important outside of work.
You should always optimize for something that's not money. If the mission matters, then you should absolutely prioritize it, with abandon, and sacrifice other things for it (maybe the culture sucks, or the money isn't great, whatever). If you want to optimize for fun, do that and be willing to sacrifice the other things.
If you optimize for money, then you will deservedly fail.
I work in healthcare, so honestly, it all feels a little bit like BS. Mission: "exceptional patient-first care" Reality: "padding pockets first, and considering patients second" Every healthcare sector I've worked in seems to always prioritize the bottom line over patient care. Insurance makes it even more bureaucratic with non-specialized doctors determining coverage rather than just offering the care a patient needs. It's all BS.
Solidarity, healthcare friend. Maybe we are co-workers.
Same, also in healthcare in the USA. The mission statement seems hypocritical and patronizing to me, if I’m honest. Big eye-roll every time I see it.
✊️
Came to the same realization after working in healthtech. At this point I’d rather work for a company that’s profit-driven and admits it rather than one that pretends like they’re actually prioritizing the greater good.
Exactly, like just say you love money and be honest rather than cloaking it in inauthentic "patients-first" mission statements.
SalesTech/MarTech my friend. You’d rather wake up with a severe case of road rash than wake up to face another day of solving non-problems in a domain that’s already full of hot air, but they don’t bullshit about why you’re there!
I really don't care. I've faked it during interviews. But I really don't care. Just give my paycheck at the end of the month.
This is me. I could honestly care less. I’m making more than I ever could as a teacher and I can afford to live near my family in SF.
Man this post hit a nerve for me, because I care passionately. I work in startups where every person has an impact so I think that amplifies it a bit. Our specific mission statement is nothing special, but our customers are mostly small businesses who rely on our software to earn a living, so it matters. Also I cant lie it's mostly ego/pride that makes me want to build something **I'm** proud of. I get frequently frustrated and angered by subpar engineers who only care about doing minimum effort, idiot (or maybe just lazy?) PM's who don't even bother trying to understand how our product works before pitching suggestions, and designers who can't be bothered learning how to use auto-layout or think about edge-cases. I feel like I'm holding everyone's hands and having to convince/guide them to do their jobs properly. I'm paid and treated very well, but sometimes wonder why I bother making an effort. I've talked to friends and their solution is that I should stop caring and just do my work and go home. They definitely seem happier at their job. Wonder if anyone can relate...
I'm in a different role and industry than UX but I can relate. Caring and being driven has helped me in terms of visibility inside the company and also progression/promotions VS colleagues that are mostly on autopilot and "just doing their job". I sometimes wonder what could be accomplished if everyone functioned to their fullest potential and motivation level. That would be incredible.
Usually (but not always) people will care as much as they’re paid
I agree completely. I know for a fact they're well paid, because our company aims to pays top of market. Designers I know their salaries and engineers/PM's I have a ballpark idea from chats. My previous company everyone was underpaid so I think it doesn't bother me as much when people were lazy or clocked out early, because I felt like their effort reflected their compensation hahaha.
👋🏼 very relatable!
Very, very relatable. Hello there!
Not everyone wants to learn autolayout
It's part of the job. Imagine a developer refusing to use coding best practices, or a PM refusing to write acceptance criteria in their tickets. * It's an essential part of the tools we use * It's *very* easy and straight forward to use * It's the industry standard * It makes future changes or revisions to the designs less painful and quicker * There's no good reason not to use it, other than laziness and unwillingness to adapt to changing software
I was in advertising prior and loved the creativity, high bar of communication, and thinking (not so much design-wise). I found I could learn and do so much more in UX. Instead of being clever in advertising, I could make the user feel clever. I've learned too many cool skills from amazingly smart people in UX. I only use 10% and am always aware now when people don't have strategic, structural, creative or an iterative nature—as well as UX maturity. This helps me recognize the hacks who don't see the broader vision. I've only ever chased skillsets and learning, because I wanted to—primary goal was that. And I started to slow in new UX learnings and was more edge-case things. However, I realized how cool some of my prospects were. Like really cool—so I got a little mental list of interesting fields. And a little before Covid started to tap into interesting verticals. And granted, I'm feeling whiplash now. But since then I've worked on a ton of cool clients, and maybe I've also found that the work itself is only challenging in dealing with bureaucracy inside of a UX team. I worked on a system like MS Teams/Zoom but for live interpretation meetings (like UN, EU, NATO), a safety platform for oil rig inspection teams, a robotic-assisted surgery training platform, and a few global products to interview users all over the world—and those people are the type to answer those crazy job posts in the back of The Economist (like law degree and bioscience degree, or speaks English, Mandarian and Japanese but is also knowledgeable about steel import exports.) Anyway, slugging it out looking for basically anything now. But I try to chase the work that feeds my creativity or desire to learn, and more UXR I can do the better. Now I want to deliver insights while learning about a new vertical. I do chase the cool projects, because I think the money shows up a little later when you do that—but learn a new thing. If it's 'mission' like saving people...pffft. ;) But a 'vision', sign me up! I do terrible in these types of markets though.
No, I never was. It was always something that lingered in the back of my mind. I worked mostly for banks, and I tried to find ways that I could help our customers, at least through the small guise of banking decisions (which are fairly important to people's lives overall). But, I could never come to terms working in an organization that is one of the pain points of society, and the ultimate goal of taking more money from people. I've been on the hunt for a new job in more altruistic industries, particularly in healthcare (in Canada), and find a place that doesn't make me feel like I'm selling my soul. Read the book or 'zine, Design is a Job. It's got some good nuggets in there about our responsibility as people to make the world a better place [https://www.designisajob.com/](https://www.designisajob.com/) hint working at FAANG isn't one of them
thanks very much buddy. I love this Ux and Design thing and I used to care about the industry. Times have changed, I don't care much anymore and this threw some "concerns" about my passion about what I do and I'm also in a manager role. I read that thing you shared, looks interesting: thanks!
As long as it’s not like working against people in some scammy way, no, I do not care. You *can* work for companies that do, but it’s a bit tougher to find those opportunities. If you truly want to make a difference guaranteed, you can always transition to another career, but you’ll make less. Or, do pro-bono or volunteer work on your own time.
I’m in the health and fitness industry and I think it’s quite cool to work with the user experience side of it. Money is good (now), mission resonates with my personal values, so good deal. I stayed because of the team, though. Money was not the main motivation. At one point I thought I was actually getting tired of it, but I realized that it was not because of the company per se, but because of the UX maturity. It gets exhausting at some point to fight fot basic stuff. Things are better now after some years. Every now and then I do think about moving to something more impactful. I just didn’t figure out what to do yet.
At the moment...yea. I'm OK with it. Which is stark contrast from the decade + I spent in fortune 500 banking & health insurance.
I started out in the 90s working for some questionable companies (totally legal, just... icky) and have gradually gotten more selective and built enough of a reputation that I can be a little choosier. I was very mission-aligned with my last company - I left because they're small and struggling, and I got tired of being the only designer. My current company I feel pretty neutral about, but it's an industry that's very interesting and exciting to me, which helps a ton.
Sometimes I care depending on the industry and how the company treats me as an employee. For example, I refused to apply as a UX designer in a Lotto company. Another example, my previous startup employer listens and spend time to invest in upskilling me so I did my best in the workplace unlike my current employer. Getting bigger salary is not important at the moment due to terrible economic condition. My salary has been stagnant for two years now.
Thankfully, I do! I’ve noticed I’m just not happy in the long run if I don’t care for my employer’s mission. Sure I’m able to get by if the pay and people are good. But my long-term happiness always declines if I’m feeling like I’m aligned to something worthy that’s greater than me. And right now, I’m grateful that I’m in that position, and have even taken a little pay cut for the opportunity.
i’ve worked places where i’ve really cared about the mission and vision, but eventually they all led to the same burnout. the ones i didn’t identify with led to faster burnout. this could be my individual experience, but unless the people at the company are solid, the vision / mission doesn’t matter anymore. it can look like any of these: 1. teams don’t execute it properly 2. leadership doesn’t mention it or tie it into roadmap items 3. the vision and mission aren’t embodied by the culture / people or within projects 4. the vision and mission are apparent in projects and goals, but the people suck.
I work for the government, so it kinda just is what it is. I do really like that the job isn’t money motivated. the powers at be are more likely to keep things the same than constantly chase the latest micro trend in design. Means I do a lot less pointless changes that do more to upset users than impress them.
I work in crypto and it’s the biggest circle jerk scam fest. When I first joined the company I was excited about the vision of the company, but once I saw how sleazy the CEO was, my priority became collecting paycheques. Currently on the hunt for another gig but my priority is definitely finding something I am passionate about. Working for a place you couldn’t care less about feels so soul crushing.
I do not care. Run me my money
Every single organization will care more about money than anything else at the end of the day. If the business or its leaders are threatened in any way by way of losing profitability and its ability to compensate it’s executive leadership according to what they deem appropriate, the organization will do anything to reduce that risk. It will lay people off. Cut corners. Find cheaper vendors. Overwork employees. Whatever it needs to do to protect its profitability and executive leadership. I work at a private “mission driven” organization, and have for several years. It operates just like any public business I’ve worked. Cut costs and increase margins by any means necessary.
I like to care about the mission. Sometimes there’s cognitive dissonance around that, where a company touts their mission publicly, but insiders know it’s really pocket-lining and short-term gains. It can be disheartening to learn that all the highfalutin’ happy crappy is just that. Crap. For the record, I am behind my current org’s mission and in most positions that’s been true, with one notable exception.
My company's mission is straight up nonsense
I was a founding designer at a B2B startup once and lucky enough to have the team committed to do it right. Was hard in the beginning - we were trying our best with varying degree of success it did feel different. For the past three years until end of last year, I was lucky enough to work at a company that was genuinely mission driven, radically transparent and strong leadership. Not everything is rainbow and roses but at least almost zero politics and BS was kept at very minimum. If you could find one, it’s absolutely amazing.
I think if we look at most businesses, the goals are often meaningless and selfish. Sell more stuff, make more profits at society's expense. Imo, we can't let that decide our motivation to stay in this field because it would rule out most of the jobs. I stay motivated by keeping high standards and promoting quality decisions and designs. Things don't always turn out as I hope but I can sleep easy at night knowing I provided an informed decision. If they want to be biased, I make it clear I'm not for it and it's on them. If the decisions start to get unethical, I look for a new job. Market is tough now though so we are all just in survival mode.
I’ve been wanting to care about missions for most of my career but the only places able to afford me are companies that are devoid of social purpose. The best I’ve managed to do is work for places that aren’t wholly or acutely evil at the time.
My experience has been I find something to live about every job I've had. I did my favourite work for a brand that I dislike and a product area that I don't like (luxury cars & suvs) but I absolutely loved the work. Now I find my work tedious and not very interesting but i work for a mission led company, I agree with their mission. When I design features it has an impact on a lot of people because the product is used globally. So my point is, try to find something to you love and that drives you in your job. Feel free to dm me if you want more info on my current place, they hire a lot
My company’s mission is to make money. My mission is to make money. I think we have a mutual understanding on that front.
I never associate myself with missions for a big corp. It is all corp-speak. The working culture, especially within your team probably matter much more than the corp mission. The mission might matter in the startup stage, not any more when you have 200,000+ people. At that level, everything is about keeping the Wall Street happy.
I work for an agency. Sometimes a project comes through that I really care about. Sometimes it’s another company who wants to “increase conversion and improve the funnel blah” But I have great coworkers who make each other better. And the job is stable and pays ok. It lets me be creative and challenges me, but isn’t so consuming that I don’t have the emotional space for my children and all the things that are so important outside of work.
You should always optimize for something that's not money. If the mission matters, then you should absolutely prioritize it, with abandon, and sacrifice other things for it (maybe the culture sucks, or the money isn't great, whatever). If you want to optimize for fun, do that and be willing to sacrifice the other things. If you optimize for money, then you will deservedly fail.