 All right, sorry, two buttons. Okay, I think we're there. Okay, one second, let me just mute that. And this, so if I see a water, yes, get into it. All right, welcome to Snacks to supercharge your career. Ask me anything with me, Chris, and Jeremy. How you doing, Jeremy, you all right? Yo, what's up, Chris? How's it going, man? Happy to be here with you. I think this is the first time I've ever done a LinkedIn live thing like this before. Like I was here last time helping out you, just like moderating with you and Phillip, but this is the first time I've actually done one with me as the subject. I'm soaked, man. Thanks for having me, dude. Thanks for asking. No worries. And I brought some snacks. I know I can't give them to you, but I brought snacks for everybody, all the snacks we want. Okay, I'll talk about why it's called. You know what I have? The only snack I have is an acid here. Maybe I need some after this, like all this like UX knowledge we're gonna be serving up. I might need some an acid after this. I don't even think it's a snack, man. Yeah, so thank you everyone for joining whenever you are, wherever you are. So this session, as I said, is called Snacks to supercharge your career. And as Jeremy alluded to, snacks, as we're serving up some career advice, we are giving you bite-sized nuggets that you can take home and consume. And hopefully these snacks are actually healthy. Okay, so let's just do an introduction so people just know who we are. So I'm Chris. I'm a product designer. I quit my head of design job in 2020 and started a UX education company called UX Playbook for those who know. And it's to help designers of all levels, either building a portfolio, fundamental UX frameworks, growing in your career, one of the subjects we're talking about today or managing your first design team. So the idea is to take you from zero to a unicorn designer and then we have Jeremy here today. I love you guys. What's up? How's it going guys? Yeah, good to be here. My name's Jeremy. As Chris said, I am a UX architect, experience designer, whatever you want to call me. I help solve problems for people. I've also got a podcast beyond UX design, which I hope you're checking out, content creator on LinkedIn and stuff like that. That's me, man. I've been doing this for a long time and I am excited to share all these goodies. And Jeremy's gonna bless us with a special announcement today, but we can wait for that whenever you want. You just drop it on us because it's so exciting. So stick around. Yeah, stick around. Yeah, stick around with that. Okay, so let's dive into our topic all about UX career growth. So the problem with career growth is sometimes it's really hard to measure. Things like boosting office morale or being a team player, problem solving, critical thinking, EQ, the list goes on. So let's just take a quick example of how we could actually measure your growth. And the most simplest one, and I think one that everybody would understand is your salary. So here's the example. Designer A, super chilled, enjoys amazing work-life balance, but is a little bit passive, earns 100K, which is an average UX designer salary in the US, stays at the same level, maybe gets a salary bump every year because he's at the same level, about 5% just above inflation. And after 10 years, they would earn 160K. Okay, that's not a bad salary at all for a designer. But then you have designer B, the hustler, super hungry to learn, proactively shows up all the time, earns the same 100K at the start of their career as a UX designer, but gets promoted or moves company. And you can, the range of moving companies is a bit varied, but we can say, okay, 15% increase in salary. Over 10 years, instead of that 160K salary they would have earned, they would be up to $400,000. So when we measure growth like this, it's kind of easier to comprehend the difference between 160 versus 400, which is $240,000, designer A is leaving on the table. And of course, salary isn't the end goal, but it's one of the outcomes and results to growing in your career. So growing your career could make a vast difference in also your personal life as well. So that brings us to the question today, how to supercharge your career with snacks, hashtag not sponsored. Okay. Who makes time for all these up? Yeah, exactly. Let's get. Ooh, I'm rather worried. Yeah, man, so good. So by the end of this live session, you should have actual takeaways to start growing in your UX career and hopefully increase the odds of getting promoted and getting that 15% salary bump, okay? And the first topic I want to dive into, actually before that, I do want to encourage folks to drop a comment of your questions when things come up because we're gonna do an open Q&A and we'll ask some questions in the comments section. I see a few folks there. So yeah, just drop any questions or thoughts or anything to just keep this chat interactive. Okay. The first topic is psychology versus design tools. And I want to ask Jeremy a question about why junior designers put so much emphasis on design tools or why does the industry, yeah. That's a really good question. Before we jump into that, I want to clarify one thing about the salary though. That's a lot. That's a lot of money, 400K. I personally don't know anybody that makes that much. I don't even, I barely made, I don't even make 160 to be perfectly honest. So like all of that stuff, I just want to say like, you can measure your career growth with salary, but what I think, Chris, you're with me on this. That isn't the only way to measure. And if you're not making 160 or 400K, it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. If you live in Silicon Valley, you might be making that, if you work for Facebook, MetaFang, some of these big companies, but there's a lot of opportunity to do really awesome, really great work that I think is really rewarding that isn't gonna pay anywhere close to that salary. So that is a really great example though. You can measure and you can talk about career growth in terms of salary, position, title, things like that. But yeah, that's just, I just want to call it. I was like, that's a lot, that's a lot of money. I wish I made 160 to be perfectly honest. Save it, save it. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I'm not trying to contradict you. Obviously, I mean, like, I think it's a good point to make out, like to point out that like, that's the way we tend to just default to are we being successful? That's right. But anyway, so you answer your question, why do people jump to the tools? I think it's because it's the easiest thing, right? Like, I can see the tool, I can manipulate the tool, I can see the features and I can understand in my head what I know or don't know about a tool. Psychology on the other hand, it's like in the ether, it's not a physical thing, it's a concept in your head. And I think when we think about, our job as UX designers, I think when you start out as a junior designer, it is a very tactical job. It's a very pixel pushing, it's moving things around, taking orders a lot of times. But as you move in your career, you tend to do less and less of that and you tend to do more of the things that relate to influence and trying to get people to change their mind. And I think people focus on those things, one, because I think there's just so much content out there. I mean, if you go online and look at YouTube, you can find probably countless tutorials on how to do variables or this or that or whatever, right? Auto layout, whatever, you name it. I don't know of a lot of people who are really talking about cognitive biases or psychology or influence as it relates specifically to UX design. Obviously there's a lot of content out there related to cognitive biases, psychology, dealing with teamwork, team dynamics, things like that. But I don't think there's a lot of people that are doing it specifically around UX design, which is probably why people don't focus on it because you don't hear it, right? So it's not something you see a lot on social media. So I mean, there are people talking about it. I don't wanna say they aren't. I don't know, does that answer your question? I think that's probably, for me, it's just the easiest thing to grasp because it's physical and it's right in front of you. You know what I mean? So do you think, so folks who speak about it, do they produce that are really advanced or is it more for like, are they catering to maybe a younger audience or a more junior audience? Or do you think just that the level of complexity demands you to be in the industry for a while? Well, I think it's just the position of authority. Are you asking, I guess, when you say junior versus senior, are you talking about the people who are writing the content for either juniors, seniors, or are you talking about as a designer when I go to influence a team? I tend to have less influence as a junior than I would as a senior. Is that what you mean? No, I think I'm in the first one. Are they catering to a wider audience versus just speaking to a senior manager or person? Yeah, that's a good question. Everybody's probably different, I would assume, but I think like, you know, most of the time when I've seen stuff about influence or psychology or things like that, you know, it's generally written by doctors, people, PhDs, it generally comes from research studies that have been done because a lot of research studies have been done on psychology, obviously, but even psychology as it relates to team dynamics, you know, tons of research papers have been done and a lot of them even around software, like how to influence software teams, but very rarely is it about UX, you know? And so as a junior designer, when they look for content online, right, they're not finding UX-specific stuff, but as you progress in your career, I think you can look and see and be like, oh, I could apply that here, I could apply that there, I could apply that in my stakeholder meetings or my critiques or whatever it is, you know? And I think that's probably, you know, I don't know, maybe it's an opportunity, maybe we're missing out, maybe we should be doing more of that. But yeah, I don't know, it's just something I feel like it's a lot of stuff, like, you know, again, not to say no one's doing it because I know there are people that are talking about it, but I think it's just like sort of one of those things like sexy cells, you know, like, I can make really pretty visuals with Figma prototypes and all this stuff. How do you, you know, people aren't really doing that with like cognitive biases and stuff, you know what I mean? So I don't know, man, it's just kind of interesting. I'm not really sure. They're not doing that yet. They're not doing that yet. I'm leaving working on it. CognitionCatalog.com, check it out. But yeah, it's one of those things, even there, you know, Chris has alluded to some, I'm a project I'm working on, Cognition Catalog. That is even geared towards the whole team though. Like it's not UX design specific. I mean, it's about software, building software. And this is sort of like one of the things that my personal philosophy is, you know, you cannot build great software without great relationships and, you know, a really great user experience is a team sport, I think. And I'm not saying design's a team sport. I'm saying a user, a good user experience, a good experience for the user is a team sport. And there's just a million things that could go wrong that are completely outside of the control of a UX designer, especially a junior UX designer who's just moving images around in pixels, right? So I think like for me, that's sort of, you know, one of those things that's important for the entire team to think about that, you know, even how we make decisions can ultimately impact the experience the user has in these cognitive biases and psychology play into meetings and who listens and who doesn't and who shows up, who talks, who does it, you know? So it's just kind of one of those things like I think like junior designers, they're being tasked with a very specific thing, which is I have this user story. I need you to go take this JIRA ticket or user story and rally and make something for my developers to go build, you know? And that's the job of a junior designer quite often. Very rarely is a junior designer, you know, trying to influence strategy and things like that, depending on the team, some teams, you know? But anyway, does that answer your question? I hope, I think. No, no, no, that was good. You touched on a lot of interesting things there. Like I would, I wonder, even though there's nothing catering or there's not as many things as we wish to cater for folks to get a solid foundation, where would you start as a junior? Like let's just say you're super passionate or interested about this topic and you're like, oh, the design tool stuff, I'm over it. I've mastered, you know, as many as I can. Where would you, I guess, start? Yeah, where would you start? That's a really good question. I love like psychology today. That's a, I mean, completely unrelated to UX. Harvard Business Review has a newsletter called Ascend, which I really like and I share a lot of their content quite a bit, but I think like it's one of those things like, you know, when you're a junior designer, you have to master the skills, I think, because that's your job. Your job is to do the work, right? But once you've mastered that, you know, that's only gonna take you so far because you can design the most amazing thing in the world. But if you can't influence your team, you can't tell a story, if you can't convince the stakeholders that it's the right approach, people aren't gonna just listen to you because your title is UX designer and quite often they're gonna ignore it because they're gonna take orders from the product managers, they're gonna take orders from the stakeholders, the executives and things like that. And if you can't work to influence the rest of those people, it doesn't matter how nice your design is, you're never gonna get it built. And so I think like, you know, to answer your question like those things kind of only go so far. So once you learn those hard skills, for me at least, like I think like as you progress in your career, beyond two years, three years, even four years, like I'm not talking 10, 15 years, I'm talking a year or two. It doesn't take that long to master Figma, right? I mean, like any of these tools, Sketch, Figma, Illustrator, XD, they're all basically the same, you know? The key commands are different, the features might be different here or there. But at the end of the day, you've got an idea in your head and you got to get it on a screen so that you can share it with somebody. But beyond that, like you've got to convince them that that thing you designed was the right approach, right? And like people like Jeff White have a storytelling course, check that out, like amazing stuff on how to do that. That's another really great resource too is Jeff White, his storytelling course. I love it, I recommend it to everybody. You know, those are the kind of things that will help you, not even just in your role. It doesn't matter what role you have, you could be a product manager, UX designer, program manager, software engineer, doesn't matter. I mean, it helps with just like you could join a board as a volunteer and you need to tell a story about why you want the board to pay for something, you know? So like all that stuff is useful beyond your role in general and these soft skills transfer over. And something else I want to call out too is this is an advantage that career shifters often have. People especially who have been professionals that have worked in a role outside of UX for five, 10, 15 years and they move to UX design, they have to learn the hard skills because they don't know those things. But often they've built up all these soft skills because these are not unique to UX in any way, you know? So if you can master, if you've already mastered those soft skills and you come to UX design, I've actually seen many people who have come over and the third year, they're already at the senior level not because they're better designers but because they can talk better, they can influence, they have, they're more, I don't want to say professional, they're not more professional but they can navigate those office politics, you know? Like that kind of stuff, like they know how to do it because they've been doing it in other careers and they've just applied it. So they tend to level up a little bit faster. So, you know, that's kind of like, I don't know, I'm kind of going off topic, you asked about resources. But yeah, Harvard, HBR ascent, I think is a great one, psychology today. There's just like, I think honestly, UX designers should read more research papers. Like Google Scholar, there are so many research papers that you don't have to pay for, totally free that you look at some of this stuff, like it's funny because I used to play music, right? And something my drum teacher would always tell me was you can go and like listen to your favorite bands and take inspiration from them, right? Or you could, what if you went and listened to the people that inspired them, you know? You really like, I don't know, Metallica or something. Metallica wasn't inspired by Metallica. Metallica was inspired by all these other bands, you know? And the Ramones were inspired by like other bands. So, you know, if you go listen to the things that influenced them, right? You might have a completely different perspective on things. And I think the same is true when it comes to UX design but even just being a professional, you know? All of these people that we read books, a lot of them didn't come up with these concepts. They were research papers that they like read that influenced their books. So like you can, some of them are very dry, but some of them are not. And there's a ton of like research around software and team dynamics and stuff like that that are absolutely relevant with tons of key takeaways that I think UX designers could probably do, you know, benefit themselves quite a bit by going and reading some of those research papers. Yeah. And Google scholars are free. I mean, it's great. Not always free, but a lot of papers are. Right. And another one that comes to mind as you're speaking is Laws of UX. I think they've done a really good job with the book and also just the nice visuals that kind of lure you in but simplified kind of interface, just a really pleasurable browse, right? And I think that's also key for juniors. Where if it, oh, awesome. Yeah, yeah. I was just on it and I was like, oh, this is, I think they updated it. And I was like, wow, this is absolutely amazing. Yeah. So it's really to make it also more approachable because sometimes people do, they look at a big block of text like every search paper and be like, don't know if I can get it's hard. Like, right. You know, like one of the, something that you could do, I mean, I honestly haven't done this. I'm just thinking about it aloud, but I'd be willing to bet there's a chat GPT plugin that you can read through, like that, you know, some of them, though the problem is, especially the older ones, they're scanned. So you can't actually copy and paste. So that's really hard to do, but some of the newer ones are actually, you know, it's live tech, so you could go copy and paste and put in a chat GPT and like, can you summarize this for me in like 1000 words or something? Cause a lot of them are very dry, you know, and some of them are really, but actually every paper has an abstract and a summary. Yeah. And you could probably read those for the most part and get quite a bit out of it. And most of the papers are talking about the experiments and the methods and the science behind like why they think they're right. But, you know, there's also a lot of people who have written articles about a paper. So you might be able to find an article that summarizes that paper, you know, it's a little different from reading the paper itself, but cause everybody's got their own biases that they kind of put into when they summarize and describe. But yeah, anyway, that was just some of my thought of. Great. That's awesome. So before moving on, I just want to remind folks to leave a question in the comment as we talk. If something pops up in your mind, then just ping us in the chat. And today we're talking about how to supercharge your career with or without snacks. We're talking about, I could bring in the snacks later. No worries guys. So we just spoke about design tools, psychology. Next up is some of the things to watch out in your career or career tips, if you will. And I want to start this off, Jeremy, with just some core variables, things that can drive your growth, and then some anti-skills, things that I think you should avoid. Okay, so let's first start with the core variables that could drive a designer's career forward. So you've got to think about a few different categories. The first one's location, then it's people, work and mindset. So let's dive into location. Basically, where are you? Where are the opportunities? Are there jobs in that place? What type of companies are there? Startups, corporates, et cetera. Basically move where the jobs are. We're a lot better because we're in the world of remote, but the opportunities could be somewhere like Silicon Valley, Bangalore, Shenzhen, wherever the hub is. And I'm lucky that I'm in Vietnam, so I have to go remote, so that's perfect. Then the second variable is people. Do you have a mentor? Are you working with talented individuals? Do they offer help? What kind of talent and people are you surrounded by? And do you want to be surrounded by, right? Silicon Valley, very different from, let's just say Ho Chi Minh City, for example. Then there's the actually work that you do. Do they allow you to fail? What is the potential of the company? Is it a disruptive product or technology? How impactful can the work be? So it's the actual work that you're doing. Then the last one is mindset. How do you approach work? How do they operate in uncertainty? How do you get things done? Are you hungry? So it's really the how you approach what you're doing. So if the conditions are right, any designer I believe can thrive. So for an example here, for me, I believe that I started my career at the right place at the right time because I got hired at a HR tech solution back in 2015 and they were one of the market leaders. And while I was there, I got to hire designers. I got to build a full suite of products. And then my second job, I was basically brought into the UX leadership team. I believe it like 100X by creator. It's still kind of where I cut my teeth as a designer and it really changed my mindset of how I approached work. And that was amazing. And I moved to Mexico for it as well. So I had a lot of great experiences, just kind of seeing that part of the world. So location people work and mindset really, really matter. Then the last thing I wanna talk about Jeremy and feel free to add, jump whenever you want. And a lot of people want to. You know, I wanted to add something too about like location people and work. Like what I hear when you talk about that too, I agree, I think it's really important. To me, it's about like networking and building relationships, right? Because like, you know, if you lived in the middle of a farm town in Iowa, you're gonna meet a lot different people. It probably won't be the type of people that would help you in a tech career, right? You know, where you live and where you can go to meet people, the networking events, the meetups, things like that, that changes quite a bit. Like it could change the trajectory of your career. You know, all it takes is like one conversation and then just boom in a different direction, right? It's sometimes like our lives are really just that. It just takes that one little thing, that one little change to just like go off. I'm not saying everybody has to move to like San Francisco or New York. Being remote now, you have the opportunity. I wanna point out, you and I met on LinkedIn. We've never met in real life. We've never met in person, but we talk all the time on Slack and everywhere else, right? So like, you know, living in a place is huge. I think there's probably a lot more opportunities for someone living in New York City than there is for someone living in, you know, Peoria, Illinois. But that doesn't mean the person living in Peoria has no opportunities. So, you know, I think that's also just something worth calling out. If you're young and you can afford it, you know, and you wanna live in a big city, I say go for it. It's certainly don't do it. Don't wait until you've got like three kids and a mortgage and bills to pay and all that crap, because, you know, you're gonna have a lot harder time surviving in a place like San Francisco when you can just live on a couch for six months or something, right, if you're younger. So, you know, take that into account. I think that's like really important. And obviously the work that you do, you know, that influences where your next career is gonna be. If you end up getting a job in a fan company or like working at Apple or Facebook, that's gonna change the trajectory of your career. I can almost guarantee you. If you get a job in an internal IT department and nothing wrong with that, that's where I work, you know, there's totally nothing wrong with that, but that's gonna influence like where you go. Maybe your next job is gonna be like maybe a different company. And not to say it's any worse career, there's nothing better or worse about Facebook or internal IT, but it's gonna change that trajectory of your career just by the people that you meet, the network that you've built up, the experience that you have, the domain knowledge and domain expertise that you've built up. So anyway, I just wanna kinda throw that on there. I think that's like maybe just like my perspective on the exact same thing you're talking about. I think those things are huge. Yeah, yeah. No, good, good ads, good ads. Yeah, so the next, I wanna talk about some anti-skills that potentially can hinder a person's growth. And I'm also speaking from my own experience because I've definitely made some of these mistakes myself. So the first one is not having initiative, like waiting around for your manager to assign you work or to guide you in trying something new. So when I used to work in a restaurant, that's exactly what I did. I just hid in a corner and if someone didn't poke me, I would not do anything. That was just, I didn't enjoy it. So that's kind of, I played a natural tortoise, if you will. And the other one is not being a effective communicator. So yeah, like I don't know if you had this experience where instead, like you're asking a direct question and the person that you're speaking to, the peer or whoever is just giving you this super lengthy story. And yeah, just not getting to the point that that is one of my pet peeves, I believe. Yeah, one thing, I'm gonna call out one thing too real quick. This, I'm thinking about resources. This book, this is an amazing book. Cues by Vanessa Van Edwards. This is, she's got tons of YouTube content so you can actually watch the videos if you want. She's post on LinkedIn, she posts on, I think, like Instagram, Twitter and stuff. But anyway, this is all about like how to deliver a message so that like people want to hear it and it's master the secret language of charismatic communication. And she talks all, like amazing book. If you wanna, like all the stuff you're talking about, exactly, like, you know, when you're in a meeting, how do you talk in a dynamic way so that people get engaged and you don't sound monotone and everything else? You know, there's this concept in here called a, what is it? Oh God, what did she call it? I can't remember, but it's like, oh, a power pause. So like you start talking in the middle of the sentence and then you, you know, and so you, anyway. So there's like really, this is a really awesome book to help do exactly the things that you're talking about. This is another resource I highly recommend. Awesome. I gotta check that out, but I definitely have heard of the power pause. Anyway. Yeah, and the third thing I just wanted to say, and this is obviously based on my opinion as well, tying your worth to your design. In my opinion, art is a form of expression, like song, dance, painting, but design is actually some design for someone else, right? So it has to be used and it really benefits other people versus yourself, unless you're designing for yourself, right? And majority of the time at work, we don't do that, right? So tying your worth to your design, I think for me, the difference between a junior and senior is that they learn how to take feedback, right? A junior might get upset, defeated, a bit demoralized. We've all been there, but a senior might get excited, go back to the drawing board, embrace that process of iteration. So you wanna be a bit eagolous here when you're taking that feedback and not tying your worth to your design because remember, it's not for you, it's for a bunch of other people out there. Exactly, yeah. And one other thing too is like tying your worth to your job, your title. So like taking it one step further and beyond just that one critique, but layoffs, man, there's so many people are getting laid off right now, it's like insane. You are not your job and you are not your title. And I don't know, like a year ago, I took my title off of LinkedIn because like who knows, when I suddenly don't have it anymore and I don't want that to define me. And I've stopped kind of introducing myself as, Jeremy, the guy who works for GE Aerospace and Jeremy the guy who does this, that and the other stuff because it's not me, it's a thing I do to get paid. And at any minute, that paycheck can go away which is incredibly unfortunate and it's the world we live in. I would take it a step further, like don't tie yourself to your job because again, like thinking about career growth, you get laid off, like that doesn't mean you're failing. It does not mean that you're doing a bad job. People don't like your designs in this case. They don't like your wireframes. It doesn't mean you're failing. It doesn't mean you're doing a bad job. It means that you didn't communicate something well or some other external pressure happened and whatever. Somebody didn't like it because the business changed their mind and suddenly that thing you designed is no longer useful. So it doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. So I just, I love that one a lot. I think that one's really important. And we should, we could probably all use a reminder about that every once in a while. So I love that you're calling that one out. Yeah, I think it's also hard for like folks who are trying to make it on their own as well where like you put so much blood, sweat and tears into a project and you're like, yes, this is going to be the best. I'm going to be able to pay my rent and then the launch is a flop. And I've been there before many times and I'm like, why did I spend so much time or like at least put so much behind the result, right? Of a certain projects or something. So, yeah, always need to remind myself that it's, I need to enjoy the journey a little bit more than potentially the outcomes. But yeah, that's a good thing that you just reminded me of. Oh yeah. Okay, before I do another monologue, if you were to give someone a couple of years in or even someone like me some sort of career tips, like extending longevity, like I think we discussed so much but anyone's that really stand out to you that you kind of want to talk about Jeremy? Yeah, well, I think like networking is just incredibly important. And when I say networking, I don't mean just like LinkedIn messages. I mean like actually meeting people and building relationships not with just the people outside of your company but I'm talking about the people in your company as well. And as you grow in your career, it becomes more ambiguous, right? The things you're supposed to do become more ambiguous. Someone's not gonna come to you and say, Chris, I need you to design this thing exactly like this by Friday. That's something you're gonna give an intern. But like as you move in your career, the instructions are gonna become more and more ambiguous and you're gonna have to figure out what it is you actually need to do to be successful. You're not always gonna get OKRs. You're not always gonna get clear objectives. You're not always gonna get clear requirements. And so networking is just as important internally as it is externally to figure out what you need to do to get your job done. And this is certainly true for someone who works in house. If you're an entrepreneur, it's a little bit different. You're gonna be networking probably to get work and things like that. But networking goes beyond just like having a conversation. It's understanding people. It's understanding relationships. It's understanding influence. It's understanding like all those things. And for me, like networking is sort of like an all-encompassing thing that involves communication and all this influence and everything else. And so I think like for me, like the big one is just like that networking piece. Internal networking is really important not only for figuring out your current feature you've got to build a current task, but if you work at a big giant company, internal networking is great for finding other roles in your company. A lot of times if you work for a big giant corporation, they're gonna post internal roles that you never would find on Indeed or LinkedIn or something. And if you don't know the right people you'd never know that job was even open for you. And so you might be able to hop back and forth, stay with the same company and still get a raise in a promotion. And so anyway, I think that's like a huge advantage of working at a big company versus a small startup. But I don't know, I think for me that like networking is just like so important and it's not just DMing people on LinkedIn. That is not like when I say networking that is not what I'm talking about. And I'm not even talking about like in person like events where I just go and like, happy hour at some professional association, here's my free drink ticket and wander around and talk to five people and go home. I mean, just like building real relationships with people in and outside of work. And then beyond getting your job done that's a safety net. People in your work, outside your work even if you get laid off or something, those are the people that are gonna help. And so don't wait until you get laid off to need that network because it's too late. It's already too late. And I guarantee you, everybody listening is gonna be laid off at some point in their career. Like no one is working for a company for 40 years and then retiring anymore. That's just, I just don't see that happening. Maybe if you work for the post office that might be a federal government maybe something like that. But for the most part, I think it's something we're gonna have to all get better at and it can only help you. I can't imagine that hurting you at all. Why does it get such a bad rep? Why is there a stereotype on this networking phrase? Cause when you said, hey, it's just going to- Yeah, well, I think it's cause we've branded like networking events as networking, like, oh, we're only networking for an hour at this networking event. But networking is going to lunch. Networking is getting coffee. Networking is emails. Networking is just like small talk before a meeting starts. You know, like all of that is networking. But I think to your point, like we've branded the networking happy hour. You know, these professional associations have like, here's your name tag, go find someone, you know, bullshit, talk, you know, something for like five minutes, 10 minutes and then go move on. And that is miserable. I hate those things. Like those are not fun for me at all. I introverts, extroverts. I can't imagine anybody really enjoys those. And when I say networking, those are like not the kind of things I'm talking about. Networking could be like partnering with people, building something, you know, meeting people, obviously like meetups are kind of networking. But at the same time, you're hopefully there to learn something too. And I think like if you take, you take the approach of like, I'm networking with you to one, help you do something, but also learn something from you. And you might learn something from me. It's a mutually beneficial thing. You shouldn't be networking with people who just like get nothing from you. You know, I think a networking relationship, well, I don't know what you want. Networking relationship sounds weird, but like any relationship you build should be mutually beneficial, you know? It shouldn't be one sided, one way or the other. So, you know, if you end up, if you find that like when you're networking and it tends to be, you know, people who you might not be able to help in some way, you know, try networking with a different set of people, a different persona, if you will, or archetype or something and see if that maybe helps a little bit. Yeah, maybe we should brand it as just building relationships. That's it, man. That's really all it is, yeah. Yeah. And instead of like, because obviously the wider world has said networking sucks and you shouldn't do it, or at least given you that fake facade of like, this is it. But I think building relationships is tried and true, right? Everybody knows it's important. There was a really long Harvard study about the longevity of life and happiness and meaningful relationships. That's the key to living a good, long, healthy, happy life. This is sort of morbid, but like imagine, like how many of us have had grandparents in this, both of my grandmothers have been this way, that like when they got older, they only had each other. They only went to, they did things together. And when one of them died, the other one died almost immediately, right? Like they didn't live that much longer without that relationship because it was just like their life was suddenly meaningless. And just to your point, I mean like, yeah, if you can like join a freaking club, like go do stuff that's like not UX related too, like that's still networking, you know? Like those people might not be able to help you get a UX job, but they might, you never know who they know, you know? You never know what opportunities they might have. They might have freelance opportunities. They might have like something else that you can help them with. And that just grows and, you know, it blossoms. Who knows? You know, so yeah, I agree. I should change it to like relationships, just build relationships, make friends with people, make friends actually. And then, you know, you'd be surprised. Like I think where those things can ultimately lead to, yeah. Mm-hmm. I think it needs a rebrand. I think you're right. Yeah, let's do that. Let's have a make friends event. I don't know. Yeah, like a friend matching? Yeah, so yeah, people would just use it as another dating thing. And yeah, that's weird, yeah. People always ruin it. People are humans. God damn it. Human's gonna human, baby. That's why it's like, oh, you're so important. OK, let me chuck one at you. And let me, yeah, and let's see how you think about it. One of my ones is on the same of making friends. Others that inspire you. I think that me personally has helped me a lot. So having those one push you in the ways doesn't have to always be about work. But I know previously my work with people, they just demanded a certain level of a standard, how we operated or how we communicated. It was just really refreshing. And I didn't know how to level up. So the only thing that I could do was be like, OK, I'll just follow you, right? And if you can't find those people within your network and you can find them online, right? You could read, listen, watch. There's so many designers out there. One that really spoke to me was Chris Doe in the start of my career, a Vietnamese immigrant crushing it 20 years in business and teaching a billion people online. That's a crazy vision. And I love that. And he's so good. So I think he's around trying to find your own inspiration through, like, vicariously living through others, right? You agree with that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's funny because I just think about when you're a kid and your parents are telling you, like, don't hang out with that crowd. They're bad news. You're only going to get into trouble. I think it's one of those things. Like, surround yourself with those people. You're going to end up more like those people, right? So if they're doing really great things, you're probably going to end up doing really great things. There's that the end up with the right crew and you find that tribe and they're doing really great things. Or if they go and just do a bunch of drugs and break into cars, you're not going to suddenly be successful, right? I mean, it's the same thing when you're in high school and your parents are telling you not to hang out with that crowd. I think it's the same life lesson at the time. Like, yeah, they're my friends, mom. It's so true. It's like, find the people that you want to be like and emulate them, learn from them, engage with them. It's not just watching them. It's all that kind of thing. Here's a good example. I started posting on LinkedIn almost a year ago. Actually, I think November 30th or December 2nd would have been my first post that I had actually with intention I'm going to post daily. And within that time, just in the past year, I think like six months ago, I can't remember, I found you online. I just started spending your stuff not just because I wanted to make friends with you, because I found it valuable. And started engaged, started commenting. Never sent you a DM, I don't think. And then like, I don't know, months in, I think one of us was like, hey, we should hop on a chat and talk. And now we have a Slack group where you and me and a few other people, we just like bullshit and pass ideas around and give feedback on our stuff. And it's like, that makes us better. If I were doing this announcement I got in a little bit, like all those people helped me get to where I am today. And I guarantee you, I wouldn't be doing that thing if I didn't find those people, right? And so you, you know, TV, Phillip, like all these people, I'm the Jeff White, Trevor, like all these people, like I have learned so much from these people. And I guarantee you, if I hadn't made those relationships, I wouldn't be on this LinkedIn live right now. I wouldn't be making this announcement I'm going to make later. So I mean, all that size just, anyway, that's a long, long story about like agreeing with you basically, but yeah. No, it's important. Yeah, definitely, definitely important. Oh, can the audience wait for this announcement? It's coming up pretty soon. I promise. Okay. The, I guess one other one I would like to talk about is I found myself not really doing this. Sometimes I get really complacent. I've had lots of different jobs in the past like worked in a restaurant. I've worked at a probation office. I, Really? Yeah. What did you do there? Hold on, what did you do with the probation office? I was actually just the receptionist, but I was behind like bulletproof glass. And I had to like let people in in one series of doors and one open and locked others like, yeah. It was, it was just one of these random type jobs. So I've had like, yeah, I've done like plastering. Anyway, I've just had a bunch of jobs, right? And just trying to hustle, but fundamentally I didn't take ownership of what I was doing, right? I wasn't like, oh, I'm going to grab it by the balls. So the last point or the lesson from me here is taking full ownership of career development, right? It was really up to me. I couldn't really blame anybody else. These are the jobs I got and that was it. So there's a lot of people being like really passive and I was one of them. And you're waiting for something to happen and you shouldn't be, right? You shouldn't just let time go by. That's your most valuable resource. So if you're not happy, that's kind of on you. If you're not growing, I believe it's your fault. So stop playing the victim, right? Long-term career development is not following a path except for you or any career ladder. It's making it your own and everybody's career path is different. So as an example, when I was younger, I wanted to draw cartoons for a living. Then I wanted to be a pro skateboarder because who didn't? Pro skateboarder, do you still skateboard? I can, I can still land a kickflip. Yeah, I can still land a kickflip. No shit, no, that's awesome. I've never tried, dude. I was always like so nervous that I was gonna break my neck and my parents were like, you're gonna break your neck. So like, well, that's probably why I was so nervous about breaking my neck. I have a buddy that I work with actually who has a skateboard shop and he still skateboards all the time and he's got his kid skateboarding. I was like, ah, so badass. I know, I wanted to be one of them. Like I thought I was gonna do it for ages. I always saw like, you know, 30 year old skating, I was like, I'm gonna be that guy, like definitely. Yeah, so from there, I went, you know, a designer and now I'm trying to do my own thing, right? So I like how Naval speaks about one's career. He gives a great analogy. And for folks who don't know, he says, ancient Greeks have a different approach to one's life and one's career, which is first, you're a boy, right? You're a student, you go to school, then you're a soldier. So you go to war, you come back, then you're a businessman, right? Trading, then you're a philosopher. Oh, then you're in the Senate, a politician and then you become a philosopher. So that's really his arc of life. And he says, or I believe that one should treat it like their career. Just having these different phases of different things you do and everything adds on top of each other. Everything is like skill stacking. So you wanna also be purposeful about crafting that, right? Like you might not be a designer forever and that's okay, right? You might do something, maybe you're not a designer now and you want a career switch, that's also okay, right? But knowing that means that it gives you solace in saying, okay, well, if I'm in this crappy place, like a probation office, how the hell do I get out of it, right? And that's kind of my message with taking ownership of your career. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, one of the things that you actually just made me think about this, and I didn't come up with this by the way other people have, but I think like if you treat your career just like a UX project, like any other UX project and it always starts with outcomes. And going back to the very first thing that we talked about, which was how do you measure success? You can't measure success if you don't know what the outcome is supposed to be, right? That's why OKRs and all those things are really important because how do you measure success if you never determined what success is before you started? So in your example, not you, the proverbial you, everybody out there, if you haven't figured out what you want yet, it's going to be very hard to determine if you're successful and you're just floating around just like Chris was saying. So what do you want that, what does that outcome look like for you? Is it to make X amount of dollars, to have some title? Is it to have some impact? Is it to work in some industry? What is it? And so you got to think about that and then work your way backwards from there. If I want to be there 10 years from now, what do I need to do? Where do I need to be five years from now? If I want to be there five years from now, where do I need to be two years from now? If I want to be there two years from now, where do I need to be next year? Where do I need to be next quarter? What do I have to do today? And I think if you treat your career, just like you would any other project, do your research network. That's the other thing too is like with networking, it's like user research for your career essentially, right? Where do I want to go? Talking to all these other people, figuring out what they do, how do they do it? Is that what I want to do? I want to do that or not? Would they be able to help me? Can they help me get to where I want to be? And then that helps determine what networking events to go to. I was like, you're not going to go network with doctors if you want to be a plumber. You're not going to go network with plumbers if you want to be a doctor. So it's really important, I think, to understand where you want to be and work your way backwards there, treat it just like any other thing. So you got to figure out that outcome first. Otherwise you are just sort of drifting and you're just kind of going from one job, meaningless job to another without any real intention. And I think that's really important. Exactly, exactly. So we should probably take some questions, but for some reason, my account is temporary restricted on LinkedIn. So I can't see any of the comments, yeah. So hopefully I'm still... I can do it, man. Let's see, I'll work our way back over to the side. We don't have a ton of comments it doesn't look like. Okay. A lot of comments, but not a lot of questions. So Phillip, actually, Phillip Wallach, is that pronounced that right? Phillip Wallach, he's Dutch, he's got that crazy name. Phillip, I hope I don't touch your name. He actually had a really good... So we were talking about location and he said location, location, location, is it actually important? And I think he's got a great point. Like it isn't the end all be all, but I would say like there are some jobs that are not remote or they're hybrid and you've got to be there. So if you want to work for Google, I don't know that Google is hiring remote as much as they were, right? They might still be. So I think it all depends on like, what job you want, where they're hiring, and there are scenarios where some jobs that you're going to want, you have to be there. You have to be in an office. And if you're not willing to move there, then I think that's just, you're just not going to get that job. And if that's what you want, okay. But the networking piece, you can still network with those people that work at Google. You can still talk to them and meet them and everything else. You just might not be able to make that fat $400,000 salary and get the free lunch and the laundry service and whatever else they give you to keep you in the office all day long. Yeah, I don't want to add to that exactly. This piece of surrounding yourself with people that inspire you. I think like folks who move to Silicon Valley, that's exactly what they do. They don't have a plan. Like what if actors move to LA, right? Because they want to be surrounded and there's a vibe of a certain location. I mean, it is important to an extent. It's not the end or be all because of remote work, but there is still something about specific places that kind of draw people in and that's kind of how Silicon Valley was built. And if you want to bump into an investor at Starbucks, what a better place than Silicon Valley. You're not going to do in Ho Chi Minh City. I mean, what's going on here? So there is lots of pros and cons of location, but that's just one of the variables that you could think about if you were lucky enough to be like, okay, I'm moving to New York City, right? But then there's all these other variables that kind of puts you in the right position. Remember like we're talking about intention and ownership. So do what you can given the resources you have. And if you can do a summer internship in a different state or a different country, that might be beneficial just because of that environment. You might learn to make champagne or make wine and there's only a few places in the world that does that. You can't do it in the Arctic for example. So yeah. Yeah, I think that's really important. I think surrounding yourself with that, that's the thing like be where you want to be, you know? And if you don't want to move to New York, don't move to New York, you know? So like, I think that's like really important. And if you're young and you can do it and you want to move to New York, for the love of God, take my advice, move to New York, move to San Francisco, when you still have no, it feels like, I know it feels like you've got responsibilities now. I know it feels like that. But trust me, you don't. I think it's from someone with two kids and like a $3,000 mortgage and a $600 car note and like education and tuition and fucking snacks I got to buy for my kids. Like trust me, when you don't have kids, you don't have that stuff tying you down. That's the time to do it. Just do it if you feel like you want to do it because I promise. And not to say I regret not doing it because I don't, but you may, I want to say you may, you may regret it later. Hopefully you don't regret anything because everything happens for a reason I think. But you know, you're not going to be like one of those things where you like wish that you had done it because you're just, at some point, you're just not going to be able to do it anymore, man. So, you know, take advantage of that while you can. We have a question from Renee. Renee, sorry, I hope I'm not like mispronouncing your name, Pacha Paka. Can you be upfront about looking for a career upgrade advocate when asking around in a big company environment? Where is the line in tapping into the Rolodex? Can it all be covered, framed as just, I'm interested in doing more here because I like that industry, et cetera. What are your thoughts? Okay, that was a long question. So, okay, I'll break it down in my head just from what I understood from it. Yeah, I think the first person to approach is probably your line manager or the one that has a little bit more authority in the organization, just, or a better vantage point, let's call it that, right? And you could express interest, right? Maybe you don't know. So, here comes Jeremy's advice, which is, hey, speak to other people, you know, on the side of your orgs. Find out what they're doing, how they're doing, you know, all the information that you need until you're like, okay, I need to jump. But having a frank conversation with your manager is always really, really important for me just so they know where you stand, not saying they're gonna let you off, like fingers crossed, but hopefully they give you that, you know, benefit of the doubt saying, okay, well, we're gonna try and get you there by providing you with these skills so you can move, you know, internally, right? I think that would be what I understood from the question. Did I get that right? Yeah, I think that's, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, I was gonna say nearly the exact same thing, like one-on-ones of your manager, your manager's job is not to tell you what to do. Your manager's job, really, well, your leader's job, I'll say, maybe not manager, your leader's job is to help you develop your career. That is part of the job of a manager, I think it should be at least. And if you're having a frank conversation with your boss and you're saying, look, like I would love to do these other things, there's an opportunity, if they try to keep you from moving off their team because they're selfish and want you to stay, that to me is even more reason to leave, you know? So I would highly recommend one, like making sure you're talking with your manager about these things. And I personally think I would be upfront, and honestly, in my experience, you have to let your manager know before you apply another job. And if you apply to a job internally, they're gonna find out anyway. So the last thing you wanna do is have them find out that you're looking to leave their team by them getting an email, letting them know that you've applied. So, you know, that's only gonna kill, you know, we talk about relationships, like that's a relationship you're gonna keep because you never know, I mean, especially working in big companies, you might move and navigate around and then end up together again someday. So, you know, I think, yeah, exactly. I was gonna say the same thing. I think it's really important to have that conversation with your boss. And if they aren't supportive of it, it says a lot about your team and maybe that you should move on. Yeah, and one thing I add, there's this book called Design Your Life and they basically apply design thinking in what you wanna do in your career and life. But let's just take it from the career perspective, which is what Jeremy said about, treat it like a UX project. You wanna figure out if you actually wanna be there. Maybe it's just this grass is green on the other side, but like what does an architect do? I don't know, right? So you have to do that homework first and then try and navigate how you get there because speaking to those folks who do it and breathe it will help you a lot and can potentially give you some great advice and not only that help you maybe navigate internal politics, right? And if they like you, they might even be on your side when the application comes in and you're like, oh yeah, we should, yeah, she's awesome. She's super proactive, really nice. Like all this good stuff, right? So that making friends element is just so important, I think. I 100% agree, absolutely. Hell yeah, all right. Do we have another question? I don't see any more. Yeah, that was it. Oh, okay. No worries. We just did such a good job at explaining everything, Chris, that like there's no questions. God damn it, God damn it. Okay, all right. Well, I think it's time for the announcement. I think. All right, okay. I have been working on something for a while now actually and recent things have come to light, man. That's my big Lebowski impression that I just sort of like lit a fire in my ass to get this done sooner. So I have been working on a book, Beyond UX Design. If you're familiar with my podcast, it's a lot of the same themes stuff from the podcast. So I think the branding carries over really well. But the books that we call Beyond UX Design, master your craft beyond pixels and prototypes. And it's all about a lot of the soft skills and stuff that I talk about on my show that we've talked about here today that I talk about on LinkedIn and all that stuff, combining all that into book form. And so I'm really excited. I got somebody, I'm really excited about who I think may write the forward for the book. So that's really badass. But check out beyonduxdesign.com slash book. Sign up to get notified. I'm hoping to release this thing in the next couple of weeks. I'll probably do a soft launch. Talk about it on LinkedIn and stuff. And you can do a pre-order. There's gonna be a free preview where you can get the first couple of chapters for free. It's gonna be an e-book, e-pub. And at some point I'm gonna work on on print physical copies of the book, but that's probably more longer term because I'm trying to self publish and the shit ain't cheap. So yeah, check out beyonduxdesign.com slash book. Sign up to get notified and you'll get a little goodie in your email later this week with a coupon code once I figure out how I'm gonna sell this thing online. I gotta find the right e-commerce platform. So anyway, I'm still not 100% ready. So this is sort of, imagine this is sort of like the pre-soft launch. You're the first to find out about this. So I'm really excited about the book beyonduxdesign.com slash book. It's a, it'll make a great Christmas gift. Definitely. I had a look at the outline and I think that, yeah, it covers everything. Like I wrote, I think I sent something in to you and I said, it would be my career companion for many years to come because you touch on so many different topics within a designer's career and for folks who are juniors, it's like lots of new things that they could take away from it. But for folks like me that have been in the industry, it's like, oh, but you still need lots of refresher because you're not maybe doing that stuff like day in, day out. So it's, yeah, I went through it briefly, the outline and it just looks absolutely amazing. So, thanks man. Yeah, no worries man. I think guys should jump on the wait list. We'll send a link in the comments so you guys can sign up and get notified and free previews as well. Just if you like it, yeah. Yeah, and just to kind of talk a little bit about like what the book will cover, we're gonna talk a lot about like networking is a big thing for me, building relationships. I did a series recently on working in low maturity environments. I did a deep dive four part series on my podcast talking about low maturity. We hear a lot about UX design maturity, but there's software maturity, there's engineering maturity, there's even stakeholders, the way that our teams work with stakeholders, there's a level of maturity there. And so there's a lot of ways that I think that's not a death sentence either. I mean, I think we hear a lot about like low maturity is bad, it's not great, but it doesn't mean you can't do great work. So, I think that's really important. You have to know how to navigate it. So there's stuff like that, building a portfolio, job hunting, stuff like that, it's a lot of tips there. And I think it's cool because like the reason why I like the book, it's sort of like to me, we talk about like Figma trends, you know, something like that, five years from now, Figma could go away. But I think these concepts are universal and timeless a lot of times unless, you know, culture completely changes. But I think it's gonna be something that hopefully it'll resonate for a long time. And I'm really excited about it. So check it out. I can't wait to get my print copy, man. Yeah, I think it's gonna be great on the wall. I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna frame it. I'm gonna put it up on the wall, put it right there, yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, so if we don't have any more questions, let's just end it with this. So I wanna end it with this quote that I really like. And yeah, I'll explain it in a minute. Okay, every man has two lives. The second one starts when he realized he has only one. So let's break down the meaning and why do I like this quote? What about you? The first part, every man has two lives or every person has two lives. Means there's two distinctive phases of a person's perspective of life, right? The second one starts when he realizes he only has one. Being aware of your time on earth is limited and finite. Thinking of awakening, let's just say, or self-realization that you recognize the important of making the most of your time remaining. So simply it means the mind shift of becoming aware of the fleeting nature of life, or in this case, one's work or one's career, it encourages you to seize the present moment. So it's like, yeah, so that's it. So seize the day, take full ownership and build relationships, get on the book's wait list and thank you for being here. Any last words, Jeremy? Oh yeah, no, I think it's just all about, I think at the end of the day, Philip said it in there in the comments, it's about making friends. I mean, it's not like a frivolous thing. I really do believe that. And if you can just find people that you enjoy being around, that you learn something from, you find value in those relationships and they get something out of the relationship with you as well, you know, you might not get anything out of it immediately, but I promise you, it'll help you in the long term. You never know when those relationships are gonna come in handy and you're gonna need that help and they might need your help. And, you know, it's a give and take thing for sure. But I think like for me, that is just like so key. Just be nice, be a good person. Don't be an asshole. And I think you'd be surprised like how far you can go in life when you're willing to just help out the people around you. I guess that's all I got. All right, mic drop there. All right guys, see you later. All right, thanks Chris. Yeah, thanks for putting this together too, man. This was fun. All good.