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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, and it’s not nearly as rosy as it is made out to be.
Bootcamps (and many UX graduate programs) market the hell out of this field, making arguably misleading suggestions and statements such as:
- “In twelve weeks of our program, you can go from that low-paying job you hate to making six figures at Google.”
- “Top tech companies are clamoring to hire our students”.
- “This is a gratifying, amazingly fun job to be in, and job prospects are skyrocketing.”
- “Tech companies will be scrambling over each other to throw money at you and bring you on their team.”
- “Anyone can do extremely well in this field.”
I am not going to say that these statements are entirely inaccurate. However, it over exaggerates the “demand” for brand-new UX designers (as well as implying a low bar to…
