Why designers leave jobs

A lot of designers feel they are in “no-win” situations.

They are not listened to, have no impact on the product/service, they are overworked and not doing impactful work.

This is not a post getting the tiny violins out for designers because no company is perfect. If you just leave a company after challenges arise as mentioned below you’ll not stay long anywhere.

But there are core reasons why designers leave, and if you want to have a great design team, the best will not stick around if you do not set them up for success.

Let’s dig into it:

1. A lack of senior people to learn from

A lot of companies stopped developing seniors a while ago when Creative Directors started calling themselves UX leaders. Junior/Mid UX folk started learning UX/UI not proper UX methodologies, so with that there is a lack of proper senior people for more junior/mid designers to learn from when it comes to “proper” UX work.

Other common reasons is a form of ageism amongst some. Companies don’t want to hire “overqualified” people for fear they will not stick around or hiring in the bias of the hiring manager.

Resulting in not as many experienced designers inside design teams as maybe you once did.

2. CPO or CTO not interested in design

I know designers who’ve had great experiences reporting into CPOs, CTOs, etc.

The biggest factor seems to be the leadership ceiling being set.

How interested and willing to champion a given leader is for designers. Also how open to learning, delegating, promoting design contributions they are.

If they are none of the above and just merely want design to execute on what they say, that is one recipe to lose great talent.

The CPOs/CTOs which don’t do well leading design don’t have the creative capacity, don’t understand how to run design teams or how to integrate design effectively away from pixel-perfect UI.

I’ve seen for a good couple of years now the reducing of middle management and designers reporting to product leads at lower levels. I believe this is a worrying trend. I’m all for smaller/leaner teams but we still to ensure the reporting structure makes sense, in some orgs this could work.

I believe as we get smaller/leaner teams we will see more design teams being led by product, which is why I advocate for designers going into product role. It's time to bring innate creativity to product leadership. I believe whoever leads product should index heavily on creative thinking, with an understanding of business, strategy, market and commercial and connect the dots. The creative part can't be taught. Designers have that in their DNA. Creative people, who embrace failure, ideation, rather than indexing on operational product create better innovation in the market. Operational leaders focus more on shipping features, story points concluded, and revenue. They are all essential, but outcomes of the process.

3. No strategic input

Most companies I see push the "product-first" mindset, disrespecting designers, researchers and customers, use NPS, which has been disavowed by its own creator and many companies have gone bankrupt using NPS as an indicator rejecting any form of legitimate metrics for CX. There's a push for generalised skills, flat structures and product-first cultures.

Because someone read ‘Lean Startup’ and now thinks PMs and programmers should be doing qualitative research, everything done in a sprint, everything should ship as an MVP initially, and the only type of designer you need is a "do-er" or "player-coach".

Product have for a while been better at selling their value than design. A lot of designers in these companies are order-takers from non-creative reactionary minds.

4. Lack of UX maturity inside a company

People less senior often complain because they feel they do not have the support of experience to change it and therefore worry what their portfolio will look like and affect their chances of getting big roles.

5. Designers (and leaders) are underutilised

This leaders to well paid designers leaders who are capable of delivering more doing less impactful work. I see this happening because:

• companies want someone from a “big name” but not ready for them as they will challenge them
• Internal politics which reduces design impact thus the output.
• Lots of leaders took roles in 2023/2024 they’re overqualified for due to the economy, so naturally they get bored in roles a few levels below.

It often goes like this:

• Companies hire leaders, sell the dream and end up being middle-management inside the organisation.
• Resulting in more team admin, politics, ego handling vs true leadership work.

Companies either need to:

• Hire less senior people who can grow into the role.
• Hire experienced leaders for 2-3 days a week.

Designers and leaders in these scenarios are bored, frustrated, disillusioned and ready to leave.

I spoke to a designer who has been working on a button for 2 years inside a large tech company. I know companies make a lot money constantly optimising, but surely, this is underutilising design capacity? Maybe I am wrong. Please tell me if I am. The amount of design leaders not operating to their limits and their edge is staggering. The happiest leaders I know are the ones where they are pushing boundaries, making C-suite uncomfortable (in a healthy way) with their vision, not order takers.

6. Design is removed from doing strategic work to screens etc.

Great design teams have multiple discplines they recognise CX, Service, Product is interconnected they understand the need for specialist designers. Content Design, Research, UX, Motion. Designers aren’t expected to do it all.

Designers want to be part of organisations which value design away from pure pixel-perfect UI. Companies who recognise products, services and customer experience are all interconnected and take an integrated view of their customer journey to create end to end experience for them otherwise designers will feel they are not adding as much day-to-day value to the product/service as they could be.

7. Poor quality work shipped

I’ve found the best design teams I’ve worked with don’t just outsource engineering they invest in design and eng sitting close together, having engineers who value and understand design and vice versa. I can’t tell you frustrating it is for some designers.

Designers want to see great work shipped 1) for career satisfaction 2) meaning in their work 3) their portfolios.

8. Unaligned expectations

There is nothing worse when you’re 1 month into a new role and you’re starting to see red flags. Companies who invest in the hiring process will less likely have this problem.

They know what they are getting into.

Also on the candidate side:

• Be transparent with your aspirations
• Be humble but ambitious
• Ensure you don’t feel you’re comprising too much

Don’t rush into a role if it will not work long term.

9. They hate what they are working on

You could have the best design team in the world but if you fundamentally

Some of the above are not in and of themselves, bad decisions. They are not the root of the problem, but I believe they are symptoms of organisations not enabling design to be successful.

I believe 99% of designers want to work on products make a tangible difference to people’s lives, and is not harmful to people or the planet.

10. Being underpaid

Money talks, let’s be real.

If you're a "Senior Product Designer" and you're on less than 65k GBP in the UK, you're underpaid. By senior, I mean a "proper" senior. I can’t stand seeing companies advertising senior roles for 45-50k. They don't get what design can bring to the table and take advantage of the current market. If you underpay someone now, you will lose that person when something better comes along. Money talks. Can we start talking more openly about this, please?

Summary:

I see it’s this simple (in writing not in action):

• Companies need design literacy just as designers need business literacy. Design can benefit every single department within an organisation.

• Designers need to be able to articulate value and understand how businesses operate to understand how they are viewed and how to work within the parameters set out. Design is a business function first and foremost.

Instead of speaking between ourselves, let’s be speaking and targeting content for businesses to understand the power of design.

The problem some designers have is they cannot articulate what exactly their value is. When challenged to provide strategic guidance, they fall back on the comfortable tactical aspects of design or process vagueness.

Most design leaders can hardly justify the existence of a proper design practice beyond the idea that engineering needs design support to build the right products.