Trapped in a job: a confession and a rant
After spending 18 months in the role of a UX designer, I switched back to what I feel I do best: writing. (I talk about switching from technical writing to UX in this post) There was a moment when I stopped being afraid and admitted to myself and the people around me: “I am not a designer, I am a writer.” The ironic thing is it happened when I asked for a raise.
Sometimes it takes a bit of psychoanalysis
My new manager sat down with me to discuss my raise, and he decided to dig and ask why I decided to do UX design in the first place. After I told him that I wanted to influence how the product worked and what it did, he took a pen and sketched a computer screen with a button. “As a UX designer, your job is to focus on this one screen and on the position of this button. You make the first version and you show it to the product owner. If he doesn’t like it, you iterate until he does.” With that example, he told me that product design was too low level for me.
At that time I agreed with him. Now, I think that the ability to focus on those small things is predicated on one’s love for what they are doing, not the type of person they are. There are small things in everything. You just need to find something that you love to the smallest details.
When you love something…
I did not love design enough to put in the work and to be fearless about making mistakes.
When you really love something, you work your ass off to make the final product good enough according to your standards and, while you can get exhausted from the process, you are still happy. And that’s the difference with doing something that you hate: it exhausts you and makes you miserable and unfulfilled at the same time.
When I write, I spend time choosing the right words and getting feedback on the tone, message, and structure from the right people. Then I will work that feedback in to produce a better piece. Because I want to produce the best work possible.
When you really love something, you don’t care what anyone thinks, you are not afraid of criticism, and you don’t feel vulnerable to show your work. You don’t care. Because there is no shame in love. You know this is what you are supposed to do.
There is money in everything
My manager dug deeper and asked if I moved to UX because of money. I admitted that it was part of the equation.
When you are motivated by money in career decisions, it fucks you up.
He told me that I could be making more money as, say, documentation manager than a UX designer. I knew that. If you are good at something and you love doing it, you will be able to earn good money. There are two conditions though: be patient and work hard (don’t get lazy). People around you are not blind. If you are putting in great work, you will get promoted, you will be given — or at least — offered more responsibility. If not, you can find it elsewhere. You should not rest on your laurels and keep playing, not for the sake of winning, but for the love of the game. Then you’ll have a chance to be truly great at something and earn more and more money from it.
When you are chasing just the money, it’s a lose-lose: most likely you will not get it and you will be miserable, too.
A cycle of fear
What had actually been happening to me was that I got stuck in a cycle of fear. Here is how it went.
<cycle> From time to time I saw signs telling me that I somehow did not fit into design: I couldn’t come up with good ideas, I didn’t feel competitive, I didn’t feel motivated enough… Nevertheless, I thought that there was no way back. I thought I had to plow forward, grind, learn, try harder. I longed for writing, but I was fighting those thoughts, trying to convince myself that I had not given UX a chance yet. </cycle>
All this time I had been fettered by fear of what people would think about me quitting design. My fear was that I had been lying for at least the past 12 months, that this lie would surface, and people would judge me. I was also afraid I could get fired because there would be no position for me. At the same time, I could not imagine switching to marketing writing (that’s what I had been thinking about for some times) all of a sudden. I mean, who would hire me with my technical writing background and a failed UX career? I just could not approach my manager and say “I don’t think this is working.”
No one gives a fuck
In reality, no one gives a fuck. No one has the time to think about you. If anything, when people see your honesty, they will respect you. You might even inspire them to not get stuck, too. However, even if the whole world judged you, it doesn’t matter because when you start doing what are supposed to do, it’s the best moral support you can get — you don’t need anyone else’s approval and cheering for you. As Gary Vaynerchuk would say, “It becomes tunnel vision.” You grind and you love it.
Sometimes it takes another person
It took one person trying to understand me and one evening of me thinking to decide that I was done with product design. The next day, we started talking about what I could be doing instead, and I was able to articulate what I thought was the next step (because I knew it all along).
It’s sad, but it took another human telling me “I understand you, and there is a way out” for me to actually do I wanted to do.
Managers, check on your subordinates (all the time)
The implication behind this story is twofold: one for employees and the other one for their managers.
As an employee, if you are unhappy at your current job, look for ways out, either at the current employer or elsewhere; otherwise, you are wasting precious time that you could spend getting better at what your true calling is.
As a manager, you must check on your employees’ happiness and create a safe environment for them to talk to you about anything. Remember, you are working for them, not the other way around.
