Collaboration Is a Team Sport, Not a Solo Act

Working with other people is genuinely difficult, despite the endless articles defining the perfect design process or the ideal hand-off workflow. The structure of most organizations means there’s always a hierarchy, and when revenue is at stake, truly novel ideas often lose out to safer bets. That’s why it’s crucial to seize whatever chances you get and run with them.

There’s also the problem that most companies have no clear path for designer career growth. Creativity is nearly impossible to document and benchmark, and there’s no universal standard defining:

  • What a designer actually is;
  • What our job titles should be;
  • What skills you need.

Web designer, mobile designer, product designer, UI designer, UX designer — the responsibilities blur across all of these roles. Because of that, you can be evaluated differently for similar positions at different companies in different cities. Designers misunderstand their own growth potential, but so do their employers. If no one knows who’s strongest at which part of the design process, teams default to just getting the work done rather than waiting for “the process” to dictate how or when things happen.

Design remains an underrated and misunderstood function in many organizations. Sales and engineering have tangible metrics — dollars sold, code shipped — but design timelines are hard to predict, which can frustrate executives who view employees as line items on a balance sheet. The situation has improved thanks to design leadership at major companies like Airbnb and Spotify, but most of us don’t work at those places. The best you can do is stay current with industry trends, keep an eye on what peers at other companies are doing, and benchmark yourself constantly.

The key takeaway: you can’t please everyone. The most productive path is to push the business forward, keep egos in check, and prioritize the team. Being a reliable collaborator will do more for your career than trying to do everything solo — many of us have learned that the hard way. Early on, the “loudest idea” usually wins, but as you build confidence and internal credibility, your moment to shine will come.

If you want a more equitable way to map out skill progression on your team, there’s a useful template that can help you visualize the strengths within your group. That visibility can guide both growth conversations and hiring decisions.

Stop Comparing Your Grass

The lack of industry-wide definitions for junior, mid, and senior designer roles cuts both ways. It’s a free-for-all, which benefits people with strong networks who job-hop for maximum compensation. But every winner has a loser: someone earning $200k at a large corporation is probably doing the same work as someone making $50k at a startup, simply with better opportunities. This compounds over time — lucky breaks lead to more lucky breaks.

Privilege is woven into the tech world. Referrals matter more than you’d think at the upper levels of companies. Big organizations actively encourage employees to refer people they already know, keeping networks closed. Strong internal validation streamlines recruitment, but outsiders often struggle to even get considered when trying to break in.

The uncomfortable fact is that whatever your situation — your salary, your pixel-perfect output, your speaking invitations — you’re still better off than most people employed today. It’s tempting to measure yourself against some “designfluencer” at a big tech company, but they simply got lucky and took every chance on their plate. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell explains far better than I could why some people outperform others.

The design industry gives us an incredibly balanced, manageable life compared to most careers. Work with the cards you’ve been dealt, make the most of your own situation, and keep pushing to improve.

Work Isn’t Family — Even When It Feels Like It

Designers are passionate creatures. Many would gladly describe their ideal Friday night as firing up Figma and mocking up a new idea. That enthusiasm is a gift, but it can sabotage our personal lives when work starts bleeding past its boundaries.

Have you ever caught yourself realizing you spend more waking hours with colleagues than with your own family? That’s not unique to design, but this industry has a rare advantage: digital and remote-friendly work. The shift toward flexible work arrangements genuinely gives us more time with the people who matter. That opportunity is ours to seize.

Still, we spend enormous time with our coworkers and absorb company values of mission and togetherness. But in reality, we’re replaceable. The design industry is in a strange hiring slump where companies can’t fill roles while designers struggle to find work. Employers know they have a ready supply of eager candidates, which keeps us chained to our desks out of fear of losing what we have.

The work vocabulary doesn’t help either. Think about the language you hear daily:

  • “You’re killing it!” — No one is actually killing anything.
  • “Deadlines” — No lives are at risk when you’re pushing pixels.
  • “Squad” or “Tribe” — Questionable on multiple levels.

That battle-ready framing pushes us to prioritize what’s on our screens over what’s outside the window. It’s fine to be passionate — that’s what we’re paid for. But you’re not paid to skip birthday parties, work past your contracted hours, or let genuine connections fade. Prioritize those relationships. They’re hard enough to build without competition from your laptop.

Be the Person the Business Turns To

Strong craft alone won't make you indispensable. To earn trust and respect across the organization, you need to step outside the boundaries of your design role. Spend time with marketers, salespeople, product managers, and developers to understand how they work and what pressures they face.

An abstract illustration of Become irreplaceable.
Become irreplaceable. (Large preview)

In a smaller company, this means finding opportunities to sit with founders and learn how they think about business goals. In a larger one, it might mean joining engineering planning sessions to hear why your mock-ups are unrealistic, or helping a salesperson build a proper presentation deck. Each of those interactions builds internal capital.

Success comes from blending excellence in your craft with being someone others can trust to get the job done or provide the right answer. Over time, those relationships become testimonials and references that carry your career forward. Being the go-to person at a micro level is achievable even in a big company, and it makes your position much more secure.

This is not about chasing perfection in every pixel. As Jeffrey Zeldman often reminds us:

“Avoid chasing perfection.”
— Jeffrey Zeldman: Ten Commandments of Modern Web Design

Consumers are trying to accomplish a task, not admire your typographic hierarchy. Finding the balance between “just enough polish” and “too much” is what separates strong designers from the rest.

Design Never Really Ends

Accepting that you will ship work you don't consider "ready" is one of the hardest mental hurdles for a working designer. In school or self-teaching, you could tweak endlessly. In a business that needs to sell products, the deadline is often yesterday, and speed takes priority over completion.

That reality means your spacing may be off, your designs might not be fully user-tested, and you may end up creating one-off components instead of reusing your design system. This is how design debt accumulates. The industry's obsession with minimal viable products also means many of your best ideas will wait on a backlog, sometimes forever—while the products you love are precisely the ones where people obsessed over those extra flourishes.

If you contribute to a design system or UI kit, you will see firsthand that it is an evolving entity requiring patience, dedication, and commitment. Whether your team follows Waterfall or Agile processes, you will constantly be moving. After each product or feature ships, there is always a next version, which makes juggling short- and long-term goals difficult—especially when the last couple of years have proven how little we can plan ahead.

This constant state of flux also hurts portfolio-building. Designers typically work on small, stripped-down pieces rather than polished, complete projects, and the industry expectation to show fully-fledged case studies can be paralyzing. But there are practical ways to present your work even when you feel you have nothing finished to show, so don't lose hope.

Stay Connected

Despite the obstacles, being a designer is a rare opportunity to produce tangible products used by real people around the world. You can collaborate remotely across continents and languages, all with the shared goal of improving what you do.

Keep that in mind whenever you face a trial that tempts you to give up or a situation where you feel undervalued. You get paid well, you do meaningful work, and you create things that make lives easier. That is not a bad deal.

If you take nothing else from this article, take this: go out and connect with other people in your industry. Attend events, offer to present if you are brave enough, make friends, ask for advice, and give it in return. A second pair of eyes on your pitch—or just a conversation with a fellow designer—can be invaluable. Reach out via the comments below or through the links provided in the original piece, and we will gladly help.

Further Reading

Smashing Editorial