Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium the startled UX Architect

I shared this tale in a forum recently and it was suggested that I share it here too, in case anyone reading finds themselves in a similar boat.

I discovered UX Design accidently, to tell you the truth. I was a graphic designer for about eight years, print mostly, and was starting to plateau in my interest and opportunity. “You need to start coding”, they said. “No”, I said. I had no interest in coding and development. In fact, whatever less than no interest is, that’s how much I had. So if I wasn’t going to start building amazing websites, what was there left to do?

A friend asked me to help her — what I know how was — wireframe a site for a friend’s company, since their site was terrible. I did, though I didn’t know at all what I was doing at the time. I liked doing it but figured it was a one-off. Shortly after, I accepted a job doing marketing and design for a small, private company. Their websites were dismal and outdated, and for some reason several months into my stint there, they sent me to an e-commerce convention (the company had nothing to do with e-commerce, to this day I credit the fates for my attendance). While at the convention center on my first day, I ducked into a keynote address during a break. The topic was UX and that, as they say, was it. I blew off every other session I scheduled and replaced them all with talks on usability and user research. I took that knowledge back to my company and begged them to let me implement it, which they did. It took some education and clarification of terms here and there, but ultimately I worked on two sites with a team of three and they both won industry awards. I was on the right track.

I made as many connections as I could and befriended those already doing UX full time. I applied for jobs, signed up with contract companies, went to every meet up and IXDA event that I could, but nothing was happening except generic encouragement. It seemed that I was missing all sorts of experiences which included working with a team, native app building, designing for e-commerce, I hadn’t done proper research, was missing some of the lingo (honestly, I still am), and on it went. Applying for UX positions resulted in far more frustration than encouragement and I was quickly losing hope. The more I learned and loved UX, the steeper and longer the climb seemed to become. I continued to educate myself, even going so far as to take an after-work CSS/HTML 101 class, just in case a lack of development knowledge was The Thing keeping me out of interviews. It wasn’t. The big city pond I was fishing in was too well stocked with much larger fish than I, there was no skirting that fact.

I fought small battles first which began with a change in my title. Officially, I was “Marketing Manager”, but trying to job seek with something that far off the mark was killing me, nor was the majority of my work considered marketing by most. It was the first topic I addressed on every recruiter or interview call, and the doubt that I had the hardest time removing from their minds. I asked my boss to give me an updated title that would suit the work I was doing (unaware I was job shopping, he didn’t know why I requested the change other than my own desire for propriety). We landed on “Lead Designer”. That helped.

After discovering that the rent was about to go up on the cracker box in which my husband and I lived, we decided to look at a smaller city to get more for our money. I didn’t know at the time that the city we’d choose was going through a massive tech boom and that UX jobs were practically being handed out on the corners (and to people with less than 10 years’ experience, even!). I set up a freelance agreement with my company and we moved at the end of May.

Within three months, that freelance work dried up so I signed with a recruitment company (that experience is here, it’s an important tale of woe to those new to that whole thing). They placed me at first in an agency for a short contract of wireframing a site already in progress, and then at a bank where for the first time, I worked with a dedicated UX team. I loved every second of it, it was the first time I didn’t heavy sigh on Sunday night or on the drive to the office. The director is 100% on the side of the team and is constantly evolving and building it, and I loved my coworkers. I hadn’t said that, maybe ever, about any office job I’d had in my entire working life.

For those keeping track, at that time I’d been doing UX design for exactly 18 months without formal education in what could be called, at best, “loose environments”.

The bank contract expired at the end of 2017. I was very sad they didn’t choose to hire me on but sometimes bigger things are in the works, as I learned. After the holidays and some time off to be sad, I applied for UX Design positions with two international retail brands through different contracting agencies, and went on interviews for both.

Company A interviewed me for a straight across the board UX Designer role on an established team, with processes in place and systems to follow. The interview went well and my recruiter thought I’d have an offer within 24 hours.

Company B interviewed me for what I thought was the same role but after speaking to the Sr., he passed me to his boss, the VP of Digital, and head data analyst. Suddenly, they were vetting me for a position that didn’t closely resemble what I thought I was there to discuss, and when I asked for clarification, they said there were actually two positions and wondered if I was interested in the other (an architect role with less hands-on design). I left confused since it was so far from what I thought I was there for; I called my recruiter as soon as I got into the car for more information. He was also confused.

It turned out that they felt so strongly about my personality, portfolio offerings, and demeanor, that they began to push hard that I be considered for the architect role instead, a role they hadn’t made public or informed the recruiters about. My portfolio is full of wireframes and user flows, which I’ve now come to find out are far less common than finished work featuring mostly UI (particularly user flows, which have always been a strong suit of mine). No one had ever even mentioned such a career track to me previously, I didn’t think it was worth considering given my lack of head down, team-based UX design time, thought surely company B was delusional and, frankly, wrong. In the back of my mind, one of the “yeah but”s that took up foot-tapping residence reminded me that I’d just been passed over for a UX job with the bank so why would these people want me for an even bigger role?

Company A’s offer hadn’t come yet 24 hours later so I reached out to Company B’s recruiter to ask if I could go back to Company B and further discuss the opportunity, since I truly didn’t feel at all qualified for it but felt maybe there was something to their interest. I met with the VP again, got a tour, met some of the team I’d be working with, and we got a chance to have a transparent, honest conversation about my misgivings as well as my feeling about the Company A interview I’d had. He was beyond encouraging, said that in speaking with me felt I was the exact person and personality match they were looking for, and felt they wouldn’t find another person that ticked all the boxes they had in mind for the job. I left that meeting with an unofficial offer, and the official offer came later that day. I initially let Company B’s recruiter know that I didn’t plan to make any decisions until I had both offers, but taking those full 24 hours to think it over, talk to the people closest to me (one who works in tech), and run the numbers, my choice was made.

My concern is warranted, I’m not blind. I am particularly worried that I’m skipping over potentially years of hands-on experience before walking into a company or two and helping them with their plans. Company B insists I will not be alone, I’ll have all of their support plus a Project Owner counterpart, and since it’s a created position, we can build it as we go and yes, there will be lots of heads down design time after all. I do worry that an elevated position such as this, a specialty-within-a-specialty, will make it harder to find something comparable when I leave it. But as my husband says, sometimes I “worry about worrying”, so I’m trying to let that go.

I accepted the role and let Company A’s recruiter know that if the positions had been equal, I’d have accepted theirs instead. There, it would have meant a shorter commute to a beautiful campus, lots of time to do the work on a team, solid and recognized experience, the safety of tested methods, and after a year or two I’d have likely moved onto another company to do mostly the same thing over again.

Ultimately, in spite of my misgivings, I took Company B’s extreme confidence in me into account and chose to take the risk of an unknown quantity (in terms of established processes) rather than go the safer route. An opportunity like this would have taken many more years and a dozen connections in my previous city, and I simply feel that I can’t let it pass. My first day is Monday 1/22. Wish me luck.

Feeling Totally Unqualified: The Story of a Job Offer was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Feeling Totally Unqualified: The Story of a Job Offer

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