Design leaders play an important part in our careers; they are our holy grail when it comes to thought leadership, and they keep our LinkedIn feed entertaining and educational with tidbits regarding design and UX.

“These people have the credentials, we can trust their words.” And with that, we spend hours scrolling through the content of these glorified professionals, reading their words over and over as if it’s a bible.

The more you read about design, though, the more you’ll realise that there’s a ton of different opinions and voices despite being a single industry.

Some designers think portfolios are important, while others think they’re not.

Some mentors say bootcamps are the way to go, while others encourage a formal education.

Some design leaders live and die for design thinking, while others think it’s complete bullshit.

Who are you going to listen to? Which side are you going to choose?
The fact is that there is no single, right answer.

A junior I’ve been mentoring closely came to me pretty frustrated. He has been struggling in his job search and was asking a lot of senior design professionals and design leaders for advice regarding his application.

The list of improvements that he can make keeps getting longer and longer the more he consulted them, and the tipping point came when contrasting opinions flooded his inbox, burning the last inch of patience he had fumbling with his application files on Figma.

“Enough is enough.” He thought to himself, and decided to take a break and enjoy the rest of his day.

Too many cooks spoil the soup

With how available personal data is to people today, it doesn’t take much effort for a junior to look up senior designers online and ask them for advice.

And since most juniors are mostly unemployed, figuring things out, or generally have nothing better to do, they fill their time up by talking to any designer that would give them the time of the day.

The entire design industry is diverse, and there has never been a single definition of success or a correct answer to a design problem. So when juniors talk to multiple seniors trying to figure out a question, what usually happens is that they get a fuckload of different, but objective opinions.

Every advice given to you can be logical and sound. But not every advice is applicable to your situation. While I applaud the initiative to reach out and get an answer from different design leaders, I can’t help but to wonder if the value of doing so is diluted by the lack of background research and intent.

Be intentional with who you ask advice from, and try to get it from someone who has the closest background as you.

For example, if you are transitioning from a medical background into UX, it makes more sense to take advice from people who successfully managed to transition from that industry into UX or tech. If you are transitioning from graphic design into UX, the advice from transitioning designers will probably benefit you more than an engineer than went into design.

Overlapping experiences help bridge an understanding gap. Be strategic to who you reach out to in order to maximise the impact.

Your UX mentors and leaders aren’t perfect

Every individual lives in their own perspective of reality. Even if they have a rock solid track record of being a kick-ass awesome designer the last 2–3 companies they’ve been in, it doesn’t always mean they’ll be right about some things.

I remember asking this design leader at a local meet-up how to get into design leadership. In front of almost 100 other people, with a microphone, he said this to me:

“There’s no path to design leadership; you can’t choose to be a design leader. People choose you.”

While that made enough sense to get a lot of “Oohs” and “Aahs” from the audience, this advice definitely didn’t age well with me because I don’t agree.

Leadership should not be a choice that others’ give, or force, upon you. It is not reliable to wait to be chosen for a leadership role and then magically thrive at it. There are steps you can take to groom yourself for leadership and it’s just not that simple.

Point is, just because they’re some big shot, it doesn’t mean they are always right.

Too many juniors follow design leaders and use their words as the one source of truth about the industry. The truth is that there are multiple correct perspectives in the UX industry, so it’s better to follow a group of people to get a collective intelligence instead of one person and get one authoritarian perspective.

Some design leaders don’t fucking care about you

Here’s the thing about some people that label themselves a design leader or have thousands of followers on LinkedIn; your well-being is usually the least of their priorities.

They give advice that is easy to say. These people have a reputation to maintain, and what they preach can be held against them, so they need to be as politically correct and objective as possible in order to not face backlash and not be discredited.

It’s also important to note that no one will pay any attention to the junior designers they sabotaged, albeit intentionally or not.

Don’t paint someone as credible because they have the most followers or the most active voice on professional platforms. Be cynical about their motives and dive into their background and what they are currently doing to impact the industry. Look out for critical thinking and evidence that they are worth listening to. Be critical about the advice they give.

Filter who you follow. Crack them down.

The healthiest network you can build is one where your design leaders are critical thinkers and active advocates for sustainable design practices. The design leaders I personally follow have a healthy balance of criticism and hope.

Define your conditions and criteria to filter who you follow, and be more critical about the voices of the one who proclaim to be ‘successful’ or ‘veterans’.

The new joiners of the industry can learn a lot from industry veterans, and I encourage that, but you are also a fresh pair of eyes that can be easily influenced. Make sure your lenses aren’t clouded by one-sided perspectives and a perceived goodwill of others, because there is way more to people than what they seem.

Some design leaders today aren’t qualified to be leaders at all

In 2017, I started my first full-time job as a UX designer. Whenever I told people what I was doing, nobody knew what User Experience is or why it is important. At every project and every interaction in my first work environments, I had to sell the benefits like an insurance agent trying to get you to upgrade your plan.

Now circa 2023, everyone wants to be a UX designer. The industry is flooded with entry-level designers and aspirants thanks to bootcamps and other accessible online knowledge hubs. Anyone can be a UX designer and there’s little gatekeeping to the industry.

Do you ever wonder how some people become mentors and UX instructors straight out of their bootcamps? If you didn’t, you probably should.

What you’ll realise is this: Many of these UX leaders or mentors have a too rosy and inexperienced view of product design. Some of them have the experience, but haven’t had much success in their long-standing career. They are literally not fit to be preaching about anything because they didn’t practice in the industry enough.

Design schools won’t employ these mediocre newbies or unsuccessful professionals to teach because they literally have no proof of value.

I wouldn’t trust my design lecturers if they didn’t have the correct motivations, actual work experiences, and credentials. I apply the same standard to the design leaders I follow.

Be more critical about the design leaders you follow today, and try to diversify them by experience. People on different levels will give different perspectives and have different takes about some topics.

Look at their years of experience and look at the projects they do. Analyse their tone of voice and their initiatives for the industry. Don’t just follow people blindly.

I keep telling people this: Be careful who you listen to.

Look for guidance from people who’ve stayed ahead of this rapidly evolving industry, because these people are the ones with timeless nuggets of information that are not already-known themes from the era of Don Norman and Steve Jobs.

This industry doesn’t need more marketing, it needs more thought leadership from a range of actual experts with the right background. Don’t give your time listening to people who don’t deserve it.

You’re a consumer, and a passive income opportunity

Some design leaders out there, particularly in UX, are predatory. They post feel good opinions, give neutral advice if you ask, and at some point of time, they will monetise that influence.

When they do give you the time of the day, it’s usually emotional baiting that they will tap on later by either selling you courses, books or some other content to milk money off you.

Is it illegal to capitalise on altruism? No, not really. It’s just good business.
Is it something I encourage? It depends, because exploitation is a trending theme in this space.

It is a disturbing trend we see happening in the industry today: people claiming to be design leaders without credentials selling programs and books to people who don’t know better.

Getting paid for being a mentor has been an option offered to me on multiple occasions. And on all of those occasions, I reject it because I like to pay it forward.

I am not saying everyone that charges for their time is evil. I’m just saying you have to be really careful of who you follow and what products you buy into.

Not every UX bootcamp that is marketed to you is a good program. Not every book published by a design leader will be the right insights you need. Not every dollar you spend on a UX product will translate into success for you.

Don’t consume and spend money on things blindly.

If you do want to pay for the stuff people endorse, go ahead. But approach it like every other purchase in your life. Analyse the value of the product, think about whether you need it, and look for similar alternatives before opening your wallet.

*Full disclaimer: I now get paid on Medium to write because I choose to meter the articles I think are useful. (Which is most of them, I rather not write useless shit and put it behind paywall.)

I use this small source of income to determine the value of what I currently write, and use that as a data point to plan future content. If you want to read my articles but hit the paywall, I will have friend links on my LinkedIn to help you bypass that.

You don’t need to be a Medium member to read my thoughts and I don’t care if you use my referral link or some other writer’s to sign up as a premium user (yes, we get paid a referral fee).

Sorry for this long interruption, I just felt it was important to mention.

Real design leaders contribute to communities

One of the biggest reasons why professional conferences and meetups still thrive post-covid is because they are the one true medium for the voices of thought leaders today. Real design leaders spend most of their time contributing to their communities, guiding people and driving discussions about the industry professionally.

A lot of fake design leaders only maintain a social presence online, and spend a lot of time marketing themselves as the voice and authority to listen to. They also love to engage in needless dramatic, online discussions and try to discredit others without evidence. Be weary of these people, because ultimately a good leader encourages different perspectives and aren’t threatened by different opinions or not being the biggest voice.

That’s why social media is cheap, and social events are not.

I always encourage people, from juniors and seniors, to join communities and attend conferences.

Can’t afford a conference ticket? Go volunteer at one. Free entry in exchange of doing some tasks here and there. If you have money to bomb on a bootcamp, don’t tell me you can’t afford to attend a conference.

The point of being social is to listen to multiple perspectives vetted industry leaders have to say. This is what will help you outgrow the sea of preliminary knowledge that you’ll find online, and grow as a designer beyond your initial education.

Closing thoughts

If you want to grow as a designer or as any professional, critical thinking and objective reasoning are some of the core skills you’ll have to build up.

Don’t just follow the herd and accept the thoughts of those who are currently in a better position than you. More often than not, you will find that privilege and marketing is the real reason why some of them seem like they are up on that ivory tower, and not skill and expertise.

Leaders exist to guide you, and not to dictate what you should and shouldn’t do in certain situations. I think good leaders leave you with questions to think about, and lets you figure out the answers on your own.

There is never one right way to do something or get somewhere. And the best way is always something you figure out for yourself.

So be picky with who you follow online, because not everyone’s words are worth their weight in gold.

Some of you might say “吃不到葡萄，说葡萄酸。” in regards to me dissing some Design ‘leaders’.
(The fox that can’t eat the grapes on the tree calls them sour.)

To that, I would reply “看不到树上的蛇，谁是笨蛋我不晓得。”
(You can’t see the snake on the tree, who’s the real fool I wonder.)

It sounds better and has more meaning and rhyme in mandarin, but I’ve kindly done up the translations for non-mandarin literate readers. Enjoy.