Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Vivienne Kay

Ever wonder what everyone does in a tech company? So did I! When I first started at Shopify, it took me ages to learn what everyone actually does (we have over 2K people around the world, so I’m still learning about the nuances of certain roles).

Over time, and after many 1:1 chats, I built a high-level understanding of the different roles and teams across the company. This helped me get a better idea of how how they all connect—and specifically, how my impact as a designer fits into a larger system.

But wait! There’s more! Learning more about the talents and goals of folks in other roles made it easier to build empathy. This paved the way for more productive collaboration.

Having an understanding of my teammates’ specializations (aka superpowers) helps me leverage their insights to increase my individual impact.

This article’s especially for those who are curious about tech, or new to the industry. But there are many roles in here that transfer to other organizations too. I’m hoping that regardless of where you work, you’ll be able to get something valuable out of this overview.

You might wonder about what inspired the illustrations. I recently wrote about the struggles of being a beginner, where I used a metaphor of designers as growing horses. This made me wonder — if designers are horses, what animals would my coworkers from other disciplines be?

And so, I invite you to join me on a safari through the different roles in a tech company…

Designer — Horse

Designers (horse)
Product or UX (user experience) designers are like horses because they can gallop ahead of the pack, to glimpse new possibilities for how people will use certain products or features. This often materializes as mock-ups, interactive prototypes and presentations. They can carry riders (eg. teammates and stakeholders) with them too. Yee-haw!

In Julie Zhou’s words “Being a designer is like having a superpower that allows you to show other people the future.”

Product Manager — Gryphon

Product & project managers (gryphon)
Product managers have the wings and eyesight of an eagle that helps them fly above distractions — team politics, technical limitations etc . This birds-eye view helps them navigate teams towards a long-term product vision. When they get back on the ground, they use their lion’s heart and body to both share their vision (roar!) and fight for it.

Researchers — Moles

Researchers (mole)
UX researchers need to dig deep, deep, deeeeeep into user problems. They use their inquisitive and empathetic feelers to guide them during interviews, and when sifting through piles of data. The best researchers discover gems of insight that are buried deep beneath the surface. These gems can inspire new feature changes, or change the course of an entire product direction.

Content strategists — Canines

Content strategists (canine)
Content strategists are the voice of a company as they guide users through a product or feature. They greet users with information and help them navigate between screens. They can be serious or playful, retrieving helpful information when people need it most.

Back-end developer — Beaver

Back-end developers (beaver)
Back-end developers are master architects and builders of complex systems. The spend most days engineering palaces of code that can house heavy technical loads. Different family groups speak different languages (eg. Ruby, Python, PHP, C). Younger beavers are often nocturnal creatures that draw sustenance from caffeinated beverages. Tee-hee-hee. Devs love their coffee. 😆

Front-end developer — (Beaver + Horse) = “Borse”

Front-end developers (beaver-horse, or borse)
Front-end developers are a combination of back-end developers (beaver) and a designers (horse). Like the back-end developers, they are also master builders of code systems. And like designers, they create screens or spaces that users see and interact with. They create experiences that are functional, engaging, and usable.

Support advocate — Dolphin

Support advocate (dolphin)
Support dolphins are heroes in a sea of customer calls. They are social creatures and great communicators — leveraging the team’s knowledge to help even the most distressed users navigate an ocean of emotions. They know the product inside-out, and swim in squads that cover different time-zones, so that no customer is left stranded.

Growth — Mountain goat

Growth (mountain goat)
Product growth team-members come in all shapes and sizes, but are united by their love for scaling new peaks. Like mountain goats, their flexibility, daredevil attitude, and curiosity allows them to explore places most others cannot reach. They’re constantly climbing ahead to scope out and test new opportunities for the company, for the product, and for our customers.

Sales & Marketing—Finch

Sales & marketing (finch)
Sales and marketing finches glide through the skies, spreading the message of the amazing products that are newly released. Like a group of finches, they are sometimes called a “charm”. 😆 Their efforts make it possible for the hard work of multiple teams to get appropriate recognition and use. As they’re gliding through the skies, they also help reach new audiences that might benefit from our products. Thanks finches ❤️.

Front of house—Gazelle

Front of house (gazelle)
Front of house folks are fast, responsive, and graceful even when under pressure. They man the front-lines, coordinate culinary delights, and ensure all facilities are working. They are the wind beneath the wings of almost all the other teams.

HR, TA, Culture—Meerkat

HR, talent acquisition, culture (meerkat)
Human Resources (HR), Talent Acquisition (TA) and culture are like meerkats because they are social creatures. They often pop up on their hind legs to get a good view of how everyone’s working together — keeping an eye on how teams are interacting, and looking out for new recruits. They are playful and thoughtful, often finding new ways to delight the company clan with comp packages, perks, team activities, and on-boarding programs.

Lawyers—Lion

Lawyers (lion)
The legal team are the noble protectors of intellectual property, and fearless defenders of their pack. They have keen instincts, and are perceptive advisors that offer counsel to many different teams. They can work ferociously hard but also enjoy relaxing in the sun with the greater family/pride.

Accountant—Bumblebee

Accountants (bumblebee)
Often working diligently behind the scenes, the network of finance specialists ensure that the system stays together with a steady flow of golden money-honey coming in and out of the hive. They can even turn pollen-seeds into flowing streams of nectar. And they build structures that ensure all staff, and the company, are taken care of.

Data & IT—Arachnids

Data & IT (arachnids)
Usually data engineers, IT and AV specialists aren’t lumped together like this, but they have a common thread (See what I did there?) They both create and manage networks — of hardware and/or information. Like spiders’ webs, their network strands vibrate when they catch juicy or important information. They are incredibly versatile, and an increasingly valuable piece of the company puzzle—information is power, after all.

Support dolphin lead (add wings!)

Managers / Leads (add wings)
Managers, or leads as we call them at Shopify, evolve from a specific discipline. They start with their base animal, and acquire wings to be able to fly ahead of their teams. This gives them the ability to get a broader perspective of company goals, gauge the overall effectiveness of their team, and guide individual team members with practical advice.

Directors—Giraffes

Director (giraffe)
Directors are often experts in one area that grow into giraffes. They probably already have a set of wings (see Managers above), but their long necks grow high so that they can have an overview of their surrounding environments at all times (surveying multiple teams, competitive landscapes, and looking ahead to future possibilities). They work incredibly long hours, and like giraffes, they sometimes sleep standing up. 😆 Just kidding

Executives—Elephants

Elephants (executives)
Execs are like elephants for a few reasons. They have highly intelligent minds with deep memories — especially if they were co-founders of a company who still remember life on day 1 (shout out to our CEO Tobi Lütke). They also do a lot of listening; using their large ears to hear other executives, expert advisors, board-members or investors, and employees. They have their foot on the pulse of their industry, using their feet to feel the ground for vibrations that signal changes or opportunities. They are also strong, with incredibly thick skins—executives carry heavy burdens of responsibility, and are often public-facing figures that represent companies in times good and bad. They also often carry the most weight in meetings. 😂

Hybrids and teamwork
Learning how to work with people from other backgrounds is the fastest way for anyone to increase their individual impact. This close collaboration has the additional side-effect of cross-pollinating of skillsets; the more we work together, the more we learn about other disciplines.

As individual contributors, we all have our own superpowers. But the real power comes from working together and leveraging skills across disciplines.

Some people start in one role and specialize, but it’s also common to build a breadth of multidisciplinary abilities over time. For example, one of our UX researchers came from our support team and is also a lead. So he would be a magical mole that can dig deep, swim and fly. ❤️ You know who you are (Dylan Blanchard).

For more on building depth and breadth to your skillset, check out this article from IDEO on becoming a T-Shaped person.

“…they tend to get very enthusiastic about other people’s disciplines, to the point that they may actually start to practice them. T shaped people have both depth and breadth in their skills.”

Enjoyed this post? Let me know by tapping the green heart 💚 below!

🦉 Interested in joining the Shopikingdom? We’re always looking for talented folks of all sorts. Check out our opportunities page or feel free to email me if you have questions!

Inside a tech company: a guided safari was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Inside a tech company: a guided safari

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