Ladder jumping in UX
A practical guide to making the leap from UX designer to UX manager
By Sara Hubbard and Jon Sandler
We’ve all been there. You type a keyword in a job search, or maybe you open up your email to see a job board notification sitting in your inbox. As you scan the open roles, one word in particular catches your glance.
Manager.
It’s likely that reading that word evokes some kind of reaction. Perhaps you stare for a moment and ask yourself if you are qualified. Maybe you think “when can I start, I’m ready for this.”
The options you have in your career and the path you should take might not be what you expect.
The future of how we work is showing that both management and individual contributor roles have extensive opportunities for career growth, salary increases, and professional development. More and more, there are high-level roles at organizations for both of these career ladders, and both paths are valid and necessary for mature UX teams. The core difference between these two ladders is the focus of the roles. Picking a career path means thinking about which areas of focus you are most passionate about and what skills and abilities you most want to spend your time developing.
Ladder jumping
Many career ladders typically look something like this: people will start as a Junior or Associate Designer. As their experience grows, they will have titles like UX Designer or Product Designer. The next title that people typically move toward is Senior Designer or Lead Designer. After that comes Manager, Senior Manager, and Director, before climbing into the upper echelons of leadership with titles like VP, CDO (Chief Design Officer), or CXO (Chief Experience Officer).
The new norms of work, and recent trends are actually leading us away from this strict progression. The new reality is that being a manager is not — or at least should not — be the only way to advance your career. The new reality is that there is not just one ladder, but two (or more).
Ladder jumping is when you make a career move that takes you down a fundamentally different path, one that requires a different skill set. An example of this is a transition from a Senior UX Designer to a UX Manager.
There isn’t one perfect way to make the jump from one ladder to the next, and it’s not the only way to progress your design career. If you decide that ladder jumping is right for you and your career path, here are some tips on how to leverage your current role to position yourself for the leap.
Defining the ladders: jumping with your eyes open
Think you’re interested in management? Don’t jump with your eyes closed, not knowing what you are actually signing up for. It’s important to make sure you align to the values and skills required on a different ladder before you make the leap, lest you land unprepared or find yourself unhappy in a new role. As a manager, you will be most happy if your passions lie in helping people grow their careers, creating processes that clear the way for excellence in design execution, giving feedback, critique and guidance, and strong communication. Focusing on the people around you and in your org first and foremost is a must.
These areas of focus and activities might show up in your day-to-day as a manager:
- One-on-one career coaching and development
- Creating and documenting new processes
- Hiring new team members
- Prioritizing work across team members and projects
- Guiding product vision with other cross-functional team leads
- Design critiques
- Team budgeting and approvals
- Team dynamics
- Working with stakeholders and partners
What about developing as an individual contributor? Remaining on the individual contributor (IC) career ladder might make you happiest if you thrive on creating and innovating, collaborating with others to solve problems, and learning to continually refine your technical skills. As an IC designer, you can sometimes sidestep or extricate yourself from office politics in a way managers cannot. Honing your craft and skill, becoming a subject matter expert, and becoming known for your work is attainable by climbing the IC ladder.
Continuing a career path as a high-level IC would mean that day-to-day you might:
- Produce design deliverables
- Document and present design work
- Make large contributions and impact on the shape of products
- Facilitate workshops for new design innovation
- Lead projects and mentor junior designers
- Attend design courses or events on new technologies
- Speak or write in depth about specific specialties
- Become an invaluable go-to resource for design decisions and input
- Be the trusted source for expertise, critique and feedback
More to consider before taking the leap
Don’t let an outdated mental model be the deciding factor in why you choose a management role. If your interests and abilities align with the IC career ladder, changing to a management role might stall your career, present you with challenges you did not expect, or burn you out.
What is your mindset? Are you in a place where you can dedicate a lot of time and energy into learning new skill sets, and practicing a different job than you are used to?
Ladder jumping can have an adjustment period, so starting yourself off in the right mindset will have massive implications on how the career move pans out. You have to be ready to learn, and have the humility to understand you might not be an expert at your job immediately and even for some time after while you ramp up.
Where are you in your career? As we mentioned earlier, not every ladder starts in the same place. The most obvious is that it’s helpful for a manager to have a core competency in the skills they are managing. Having several years under your belt as a designer in the industry is invaluable when those processes and expectations are a key basis of the work you will be managing. Do you have the requisite experience, understanding, and core competencies that will inspire confidence as a people leader? If you become a manager, the team that you manage will need to be able to look at you as somebody with some level of expertise. Nobody wants to take direction from somebody who they think doesn’t know the job.
Leveraging your current work: jumping with your arms out
Sometimes you may find that there doesn’t seem to be another career ladder to jump to at your organization. Don’t worry though, there are some things you can do to make your own ladder. You can leverage your current role, and work you’re doing as part of that role, to start advocating new opportunities for yourself. These don’t have to happen all at once, but use these next tips to start building your case. You will find that by practicing management skills, there is often flexibility and room to grow in your career that never would have existed otherwise.
Use goals to guide and track yourself. Once you know you want to jump ladders, write stretch goals that dip into the world of management and design leadership. Update your goals on a regular cadence (like monthly) and document absolutely everything — what accomplishments you’ve had, the impact you’re making, and how it’s positively impacting the business. Make sure your own manager and leadership team are aware of this work, and don’t be quiet about the accomplishments you’re achieving.
Take the lead. Take a leadership role on all of your projects, and showcase your communication and collaboration skills by advocating for design and being an excellent partner to all cross functional teams in your organization. Start positioning yourself in others’ eyes as a go-to resource. Take any opportunities you can to showcase leadership.
Practice managing. Do you have an intern program, or contractors? Offer to manage these teams, do weekly one-on-ones, give feedback, and provide mentorship. Afterwards, be the one to help document their work, successes, and areas of improvement. If you have junior members on your team, offer to mentor them in areas of their choice and showcase your coaching capabilities.
Use professional development resources on hand. Does your company offer any kind of professional development budget? Use it for leadership or management training. Buy books, attend webinars, or workshops related to design leadership and follow up with your entire team about what you learned and how it can be applied to your own work/company.
Lead new processes and programs. Have you recognized an inefficient process or system your team uses? Lead an initiative to improve it. Document your own process for how you’re making improvements to the team, present your plan to your leadership team — then start running it. Make sure to keep track of the impact your changes made, any new benefits or efficiencies this process made, and document it as part of your accomplishments.
Write the job description. Does your company not have a clear-cut path to management? Write your own job description for the UX Manager role, and start taking on that work! Showcase how you’re already able to lead projects and teams successfully.
More ways to bridge the gap between ladders
In addition to things you may be doing in your role, there are a plethora of activities you can do outside of work to help make the career ladder jump. Doing as many of these things as possible will not only build leadership skills, but will also help demonstrate to employers that you can put your management skills to practice successfully.
Mentorship. The process of being a mentor is a great way to revisit some of the fundamentals, while learning how to pass that information on. Just as helpful is being a mentee yourself. Seek out mentors, both at your company and outside of it, who can talk about their experiences and share with you how they have laid out their career paths.
Teaching is another great way to demonstrate leadership. Find opportunities to teach at a local design school, bootcamp, meetup, or other space. Or use social media to spread your knowledge. If you are a subject matter expert, or have skills to share with the world, do it.
Learning is one of the most straightforward things you can do when building the skills to be a manager. There are plenty of free and paid classes, conferences, workshops, and courses; they can be completed in person or online, it doesn’t matter. Pick up a book, read an article, find thought leaders and influences in the space that you are interested in and learn about them.
Networking. By doing all of the above, you will be sure to meet other designers, managers, directors, and otherwise in the industry. By expanding your network, you might get the inside scoop or a referral from somebody you have mentored, taught, or learned with. Building relationships through shared activities and leveraging that towards a common goal is core to what being a people manager is all about.
Some parting thoughts as you look to leap
Remember, you don’t have to do everything at once. There are a lot of practical things you can do to be informed and ready to make the jump across career ladders. Choose one small task or area of improvement at a time and focus on nailing that.
At the end of the day, ladder jumping involves a jump. In most cases nobody is going to hold your hand and tell you when you are ready, you will have to make a judgement call. Ask yourself the hard questions to validate for yourself when you are ready.
When you’re ready, remember to jump with your eyes open and arms out. Believe in yourself as you land with the skills and knowledge you previously built.
