Coho

Passive career mindset: "I hope someone picks me." Active career mindset: "I'm creating conditions where the right people naturally find me."

Most people think AI is replacing designers. I think it’s making them more valuable and I've been saying this for some time now. I’ve been building more and more complex things, tools, prototypes, entire experiences, without writing a single line of code. And here’s what I’ve realised: AI will build you exactly what you ask for. And that’s the problem. If you tell it to make an onboarding flow with 25 steps because you’re a founder who’s never talked to a customer, it’s going to do it. If you tell it to generate a UI, it’ll give you something that looks decent but feels generic. AI doesn’t have taste. It doesn’t understand why something works. It’ll take an idea and execute it, good or bad, usable or completely broken. So at least for now, the role is shifting to be less about pushing pixels, more about judgment. More knowing when something is working and when it’s not. When to simplify. When to push back. When to recognise that just because AI can build it doesn’t mean it should exist. Every time I prototype something, I hit the same walls because AI doesn’t forget the fundamentals simply because it never knew them in the first place. The more powerful the tools get, the more critical it is to have people who can think beyond the output. The real value isn’t in making things. It’s in making things work.

A list of companies hiring design interns: 1. Roku - UX Product Design Intern (Cambridge, UK) 2. Hootsuite - UX/UI Design Summer 25 (London) 3. Zebra Technologies - UX Design Intern (London) 4. Vinted - Product Design Intern (Kaunas) 5. Condé Nast - Summer Intern, Content Design (London) 6. Ticketmaster - Product Design Internship 25 (London) 7. Qogita - Product Design Intern (London or Amsterdam) 8. Wise - Content + Product Design Internships (London) 9. Palantir Technologies - Product Design Internship (London and NYC) 10. Landor - Motion + Design Internships (London) 11. Softwire - Design Internship (London) 12. Tesla - Visual Design Internship (Berlin) 13. Relesys - Product Design Internship (Copenhagen) 14. frog - Experience Design Intern (Munich) 15. Wolt - Product Design Intern (Stockholm) 16. TeamViewer - UX Design Intern (Germany) 17. Lucid Motors - Design Management Intern (Amsterdam) 18. SoFi - Design Systems Intern (San Francisco) 19. Figma - Product Design Intern (SF/NYC) 20. Pendo.io - Product Design Intern (Raleigh, NC) 21. SongPush - UI/UX Intern (Berlin) 22. Gemini - Design Intern (Seattle/NYC) 23. Asana - Product Design Internship (Vancouver/NYC) 24. Back Market - Content Design Internship (Berlin) 25. Ace & Tate - UI/UX Design Intern (Amsterdam) 26. Kyriba - UX Software Engineer (Paris) 27. Launchmetrics - Digital Product Design Internship (Paris/Madrid) 28. Lyft - Product Design Intern (San Francisco) I've included links to the job postings in the comments. It's incredible to see companies investing in the next generation of designers. It's so tough to break into UX and Product Design at times, so I genuinely hope this helps someone to have a list in one place.

Learned all the AI tools. Next day, 20 new ones dropped. Back to 1995.

“I hope I’m not the only one dealing with this.” You’re not. We pulled data from hundreds of designers, from senior to director and VP level, on our waitlist. Here’s what you're navigating right now: → You're leading teams, but making decisions alone. ? 70% of solo designers don’t have peers in their company to turn to. → The career path isn’t clear anymore. ? 38% feel stuck. ? 25% deciding between IC, leadership, or starting something of their own. → AI is moving faster than the industry can process. ? 56% say AI is changing their workflow, but most are figuring it out in real-time, without guidance. → Design still isn’t taken seriously at the highest levels. ? A recurring theme: fighting to prove design’s impact without a playbook. If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. More here → https://lnkd.in/dymp5Kgw

"Balancing strategy and execution is hard. I need peers to help me level up." This is just one of the hundreds of designers who’ve signed up for the Coho waitlist. And they’re all navigating big decisions like stepping into leadership alone, figuring out career shifts, staying relevant as AI changes everything. I’m often asked, who’s signing up for Coho? And why? This is where AI tools like Lovable are incredibly powerful. I didn’t have time to make slides or spend hours synthesizing data, but in 30 minutes, I pulled insights from the waitlist and spun up a landing page that makes it all clear. It’s a snapshot of what designers are going through right now, professional isolation, career evolution, and leadership transitions. The kinds of things we know are happening but rarely get surfaced. If you’re curious who’s inside, and why they’re here, take a look: https://lnkd.in/dX5Xgfcu

yesterday i learned what masterminds are. as a design co-founder and early designer throughout my career, having a trusted group to bounce ideas & tough decisions would have been a lifesaver. Mindaugas Petrutis is onto something with Coho plus the branding is on point ??

Most designers think they’re competing on portfolios. They’re not. They’re competing on: - Who actually knows someone at the company - Who already has a referral in place - Who proves they can solve this company’s problem (not just “design” in general) And yet, 99% of cold DMs look like this: "Hey, I saw your company is hiring. Would love to connect!" Ignored. A better DM? "Saw you just raised $10M Series A, congrats. At this stage, pressure shifts from proving demand to scaling without leaks. Noticed your pricing page makes users book a demo, while competitors let them self-serve. I’ve helped teams solve this before by streamlining signups while keeping sales happy. If you’re building your design team, I’d love to chat." - You diagnose a real pain point. (Series A = must scale efficiently) - You hint at experience solving it. (Without overselling) - You make it about them, not you. (But with a soft CTA) Specific. Useful. Impossible to ignore. Everyone is playing the wrong game because no one tells them the real rules. Now you know.

You don't need to build an audience. Just start leaving some breadcrumbs. https://lnkd.in/dAJQj55h

"Here’s a fun fact: every single job I’ve had, I didn’t apply for. They found me. Meanwhile, every job I actually applied to? Rejected. That’s why I say the market is tough, but also… I made myself discoverable. If you’re not visible, nobody cares how good you are. You could be the best designer in the world, but if you’re not talking about your work, your thinking, or what you’re doing, you don’t exist. I get it, self-promotion is uncomfortable. But so is being unemployed. You decide which discomfort you’re willing to tolerate." https://lnkd.in/gAX5Zyqi