Designer News
Where the design community meets.
↵
1 week into my new job and I'm thinking about quitting.
over 4 years ago from Steven Lamar, CDO of Apple
Thomas Michael Semmler, over 4 years ago
But 1 Month is extremely short, don't you think? I'd give my company a year. Just making sure that my work is able to be picked up by a successor would take me a few months to prepare.
James Young, over 4 years ago If it takes a year to hand over your work, something is very very wrong with how you're operating.
Lucian .es, over 4 years ago
A few months to share your designs? Your company is fucked..
Design is more than just files.
what a foolish answer. If you are the one person that is responsible for 400k lines of CSS alone, including Markup, Frontend Tools and Frontend Architecture and you are dealing with 13 year old legacy codebase that has never been touched by a frontend person, and you are educating 30 people about the value of design and what the difference between a brand and corporate identity and design, and you find 125 slightly varying differences of the same color and completely varying print versions of that color and if that company's CI consists of literally three colors, the rest is only implied, and if you are supposed to be the person responsible for all this but these responsibilities are still distributed across 3 teams and 5 people, then yes - these things can indeed take a while.
Not every result comes down to sketch files. Some of us are Designers that work in a variety of domains including programming, content strategy, branding and UI/UX Design. I'd say the majority of designers does not have a one-dimensional with defined edges. Many of us do many of those things at the same time. Facilitating growth and understanding in an already existing culture that is growing takes time and needs to be navigated with empathy. It's as simple as that.
Try making a pattern library as an implementation of a design system that is organically growing, as an interpretation of a brand that is barely defined and growing at a slow pace, in a context where kind of everyone but kind of only one person is responsible for facilitating said growth. It's like trying to sew the leaves on a maple tree in autumn when it's storming.
Jim Silverman, over 4 years ago
guy has only been there a week. i doubt there's much to transition.
Mike Wilson, over 4 years ago James is spot on here.
If a company of that size (30+ employees) stands to lose so much from you leaving it...it's a poorly run company.
People leave. People get sick. People die. It might hurt our egos to understand this, but a stable well-run business is one where the processes & decisions are well defined and documented so that employees can all be easily replaced.
Adam Fisher-Cox, over 4 years ago
This sounds like stuff that you should have been consistently doing DURING your employment so that such a hand-off would be easy. Any well-organized team should be able to withstand a sudden loss of someone because things should be documented as they are built.
Kyle Conrad, over 4 years ago
whoa this is some real psycho level stuff, you don't owe them anything - give them 2 weeks, write up a little handoff doc, and get on your way
I'm in a very privileged position, because I really like what I am doing and I find great satisfaction in facilitating organic growth in such an environment. Processes are not yet defined and there is great value in taking things slow.
Andrew Michael Todd, over 4 years ago
"Hey... so.. uhhh.... it's only been a week... but I don't feel like it's working out... not really a great fit... so... uhhh... I'd like to give you a year's notice."
How would that year go?
"This is Steven, one of our designers. He's been with the company 8 months now, but he also quit a week after he arrived."
"What? Why's he still here then?"
"Oh, he was just really thoughtful and gave us a year notice."
I maybe should have taken his short time at the company into account lol. I completely overlooked his context by mistake. Now that this has blown up it doesn't make a difference anymore. :D
If you do quit - and it sounds like you will - give that company one-month's notice. I say 1 month because, presumably, they will have to start their search over again. Giving more time is also a good way to say 'it wasn't a good fit' and move on without burning any bridges.