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10 sobering realities every brand-new UX designer needs to accept
User experience design (or UX design, for short) is a field that is being touted left and right as one of the hot new fields to break into, and it will probably attract a surge of more people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether you are in an unrelated field and are tired of your job and career prospects, or you are in college and aiming for a job in UX design upon graduation, you have probably read a ton of very rosy opportunities about this field.
Before we dive into the meat of the article (which I will forewarn you, is very blunt and honest), let’s talk about the positive side of things. I will admit that as someone who both survived a UX bootcamp and has been working in this field for a few years, that it was the single best career choice I have made up to this point. I genuinely enjoy the abundance of jobs in locations I would like to live, the decent salary, and the challenging, creative problem-solving. I also love the flexibility that working in tech usually comes with, such as the ability to work from home (as COVID has forced many tech companies to do, thus revealing the increase in productivity and overall satisfaction employees have).
However, there are a ton of hard truths that anyone even thinking about this field needs to accept…