One thing we have to praise the design managers for is trusting their designers and not micro-managing them. 71% of designers are happy with the trust their managers have in them, and interestingly, 74% of them feel they don’t need guidance from their managers and can work independently (Fig 10). I can’t help but think about the hands-on designer vs design leader spectrum mentioned above. Does this prove additionally that many (if not most) design managers are basically hands-on designers with additional responsibilities (and bonuses)?
Lastly, I wanted to look at the hardest parts of being a good manager: being a good manager of people and recognising good work. 57% of designers who participated in the survey thought that their managers were good managers of people (Fig 11). That means they’re professional, empathetic, accountable, and good listeners. The number is relatively high, but if design managers truly were design leaders (instead of hands-on designers with extra responsibilities) shouldn’t they do better?
Being a design manager entails that you manage strategic design work and people. Looking at the top-level responsibilities, that’s it. So why are there still more than 36% of managers who are bad managers of people? The tech industry’s view of who’s a top performer is primitive — they reward with promotions those designers who are good designers and those who know how to humbly brag about their achievements. The former are unlikely to be good managers and the latter are highly likely to be bad managers.
Here’s another interesting finding — 60% of designers who answered the survey thought that their managers recognised their good work and gave them credit for it (Fig 12). On the other hand, only 24% of design managers discuss career progression opportunities with their designers regularly (at least once per month).
How do we explain this paradox? Why are designers publicly recognised for good work but have no career progression opportunities? Does it stem from the design immaturity of the companies? Is it because design is unequal to engineering and product departments? Only 1 in 3 companies have a design leader at the top, 32% to be exact (Left side of fig 13). This is even worse in design-immature companies where only 22% of them have a design leader (Right side of fig 13). This finding hints at an imbalance in the product, engineering, and design trifecta.
A quote from a survey participant captures clearly what a lot of designers have to deal with when it comes to design leadership — many companies don’t have any of it but even when they do it’s simply lacking. Strategic decisions, even design ones, are taken by product or engineering leaders.
Just wanted to say that I’m currently a Product Designer II and we have a team of 2 including me. We both have same experience. A design manager would help me guide certain decisions which today is taken by product or engineering specific seniors.
I had anticipated this would be among the most pressing problems because it keeps coming up in Why Designers Quit reports.
Returning to Pandya’s suggestions on what good design managers should do, the last item on his list was Create a personalised growth path for every member in the team.
He’s not alone in this suggestion. Cap Watkins suggests that design managers should manage every person’s career and check in on their professional goals every week (Source). Every week! When I worked at relatively design-mature companies we were supposed to discuss my career plan every month but we always ran out of time. The situation is dire for designers and their careers.
We already learned that only 24% of managers discuss career progression with their designers. It’s no surprise to see that only 22% of designers think that they have future and career progression opportunities at their current company (Fig 14). Putting it bluntly, 4 out of 5 designers don’t have a future with their employers. If they want to progress in their careers they’ll need to switch jobs.
Can you imagine an established tech company without a CTO? Or without a CPO? No, right? So why does only 1 in 3 companies have an equal design leader at the top?
Inequality of design, compared to other departments manifests itself in the fact that 59% of designers work with more than one project/product manager (Fig 15). The ratio of designers and product managers should be 1:1 to have at least minimal chances of being equal partners (I’ve seen many cases of designers and PMs being 1:1 but designers still not being equal partners in that duo). Instead, only 1 in 3 designers works with a single product manager.
Ken Norton, formerly a partner at Google Ventures and head of product management at Google and Yahoo! looked into this and concluded that the ideal UX:PM:Developer ratio is 1:1:5–9. He elaborates on why the UX:PM ratio should be 1:1
When it comes to designers, I’ve preferred a ratio of 1:1 with PMs for user-facing product surfaces. Product teams work best when the dedicated triad of PM, designer, and tech lead form the core.
But most designers work with more than one product manager and 36% of them (the majority) work with three product managers or more. How do we expect designers to perform like that? How do we expect them to be equal partners to their product managers and prove their value at the same time? There’s no surprise that only 43% of designers feel equal to product managers and other peers (Fig 16). Considering in what circumstances designers have to work they’re doing ok. But with a lack of equality, these designers don’t feel confident to speak up when it’s time to discuss prioritisation, road map, etc.
If designers were equal to other roles, that percentage should be way higher. But it gets worse. Only 37% of designers have the privilege to work in dedicated design departments which helps conclude that design is an unequal partner in the tech industry (Fig 17).
On top of that, only 40% of designers have design leaders (or at least creatives) as their managers (Fig 18). 21% report to a project or product manager, and 6% to an engineering manager. Can you imagine engineers reporting to a design manager? This helps explain why so many designers don’t have good design mentors or managers of strategic design work.
Designers need to fend for themselves. When they have a design manager, they can’t rely on them for strategic guidance or mentorship. Most don’t have managers with a design background. It all looks bleak when we also consider the inequality of design and how so many designers are stuck in their careers. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
Considering all the negative findings of this report, designers are doing ok. They feel respected and valued by other team members and adequately challenged by their work (Fig 19).
Even more uplifting is the finding that 61% of them feel that their work positively impacts business success and UX maturity (56%).
We’re not there yet as an industry. We stumbled in the last few years but we need to keep going. Designers need to ask for more from their leadership and themselves. If we want more we also need to show that we’re capable of more. Not more of the same, but more responsibility, ownership, and leadership from every designer, not just the leaders by title.
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