#45 Salaries and payments in UX industry
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You can't really say that this is the standard salary for a UX designer because there's a lot of variety in the industry and it varies based on geography, the type of company, it varies on different criteria points. So there is no official answer that you might get. You might understand the range. That's what you will be doing on your own, taking into account your particular set of conditions.

Hello everybody and welcome on the next episode. My name is Anfisa and I'm joined today by my lovely co-host Ioana and we are here meeting together to talk about the design salaries. Pretty juicy topic, right? I think many people are kind of asking themselves what to expect, you know, especially when you're just getting started.

And maybe some bootcamp have promised you a beautiful bright future when you start earning 100K USD from your first role. And I mean, that's something we actually want to address today and kind of discuss what is the real expectation, what might actually happen with your salary in the very beginning of your career.

But before we jump right into the discussion, I also wanted to ask you, Ana, if you want to maybe introduce the sponsor of today's episode. Yes, definitely. I am very happy to announce everyone again, because I did it in a past episode as well, that Spline, the tool for 3D design is now the sponsor of Honest UX Talks, which is amazing because we've been doing this for a long time with no support. And now it's great to see nice companies and

nice design teams deciding to invest in these conversations and be a sponsor for us. So thank you, Spline. And for everyone who wants to try out the tool, just visit spline.design. And they just launched their beta. It's great. It has a collaboration, real-time collaboration as a new feature, which is amazing because you get to design complex scenes and do complex work and get better at 3D design by working with your clients.

friends or your team. This is a really cool feature. I tried it out myself this week and I remember how excited I was a couple of years ago when I discovered Figma because it's collaborative. So I feel that collaboration is the way of the future and Spline has that now. So if you want to learn 3D design and if you want to get started on this journey like I am because I'm no specialist yet, go check out spline.design and thank you Spline for sponsoring our conversations.

I can also see how Spline could help your portfolio stand out a little bit more and make, I guess, unique. Because obviously if there are many applicants for one particular role, it's very hard to grab an attention of the hiring manager, for example. And you can actually show that you're this creative person who loves to experiment, who has extra skills. And without saying in your portfolio, and this is actually a typical mistake I'm seeing in many portfolios, like I can do X, Y, Z, I'm good at this, design, mapping, empathy.

3D VR that you can actually show, not tell, right? So that's something that definitely I would use if I were trying to build a portfolio today.

But other than that, I wanted to ask you, Anna, how have you been? How was your last week? Well, it's been pretty good, at least compared to the last couple of weeks. So the past week, I'm starting to recover from the shock of the war and I'm starting to be more active in helping the refugees in Romania and in actually doing something. So acting on outrage that I feel in the face of wars. And I'm also getting better at coping with everything.

I don't want to like victimize because I know that I'm not the one who's suffering most by no means. So I know that Ukrainians and the friends and family of Ukrainians are the ones who are suffering most. It's not that my pain is so big, but my pain is there as well. So I think everybody has the right to experience that they're suffering in one way or another. So I've been getting involved with helping refugees, trying to hire Ukrainian designers that landed in Romania. This is what I've been trying to do to cope with the entire psychological shock. Then a part

from that, just business as usual. I'm working on Mento. We're launching a new bootcamp cohort starting April 1st. We're gathering a new group of wonderful people to join us and kickstart their career into UX design. I'm also working on a

course it's it's a surprise i can't say yet which platform it will be on and what it's about but i just want to tease everyone that i will be traveling in a couple of weeks to go shoot this course uh with with a very nice platform and i've also been doing my consultancy work and collaborating with different startups to help them kick off their product ideas uh this is my uh week in a nutshell how was yours

I can see you're doing so many things. I haven't been so busy to be completely honest. I basically was still trying to get into this new job. It's actually been pretty, pretty fun. I feel very, very lucky to start in this time because particularly in March, we have been having some sort of, they call it like

family time. The whole team was flying over from different locations. And the company I work with is called Muse. Basically, this is like a travel startup. It's kind of remote. People live in different countries, some in Australia, some in Dubai, some in London, some in Amsterdam, et cetera, et cetera. So people came to Prague and we had like three days full of activities. And so it was a great, great time.

like opportunity for me to meet everyone that I will be working with. We kind of had like a hackathon. We have a strategy sessions in the bar. I know it sounds crazy, but we were meeting 9:00 AM in the bar and we had the whole day of strategies. People were drinking beer. I was drinking coffee, but we had a lot of conversations brainstorming how to unlock some more opportunities for the product and stuff like that. And then again, hackathon. And then the third day we actually had like fun activities together with

I felt very blessed to be able to A, do it all on site, meeting the people because that's something some of us were missing. I was.

as well as just trying to understand who I'll be working with, kind of getting to know everybody. And in general, the product is very, very exciting. It's very different. I can already say, and I think we can actually have another conversation about practical differences working in a bigger companies and now startup, because I can share a lot of insights, how it changes my mindset and how it changes my perspective. But long story short, I can definitely see how much it's driven by numbers, by KPIs, by data, rather than

internal communication rather than, you know, politics and being able to talk politely to each other and stuff like that. So it's very, very different dynamics and big, big shift that I'm now still adjusting to. But obviously, other than that, I think I mentioned it in the beginning of the last week, I'm trying to adjust to live during the period of war. I'm still trying to, you know, before work, trying to bring some humanitarian help. After work, I'm helping my friends or even students or even my sister that came from Ukraine.

Ukraine to sort of find their local temporary residence here. So it's been a pretty big part of my life right now, especially the last few weeks. So other than that, unfortunately didn't have any progress on my design products or whatever things I wanted to build on, no book progress at all.

So it's definitely not the priority at the moment. Yeah, we will see how it goes. I'm actually trying to talk to myself rationally and explain myself that we still need to move on. We still need to support the economy. We still need to bring value. And we should help and we should definitely talk about what's going on and we should

still have the awareness, but at the same time, it's important to live a normal life and to distract ourselves and invest in the economy. Because at the end of the day, when this whole thing is over, we will all need to rebuild the economy. We'll all need to rebuild the cities. We will all need to reestablish normal lives. And without

now doing something in normal life and work it will be very hard to build we will be in this big depression I mean I'm kind of talking from my Ukrainian perspective but in general I'm talking about how I'm looking at the things at the moment hopefully hopefully it will be all soon over so yes we're being um sort of optimistic but uh now with this optimistic note let's maybe transition to the actual topic of this episode which is design salaries and let's bust some of the myths

some of the expectations from your design salary. I know that today in the market, especially for every new designer, there is this beautiful shiny promise that as you start working in design career, you'll be having a much better salary. You'll start living the prosperous life, just pushing pixels. It's going to be all butterflies and rainbows. Let's maybe start by talking about the factors that actually make up the design salary. First of all, why do we think

the design salary is high in the market why is it actually happening that's the first thing and then also what are the factors that make the salary high or not so high for your designers and then maybe we can talk about the you know differences between salaries for the junior middle and senior roles so I think definitely there's this uh conversation going on in the industry and

outside the industry as well as to how well paid UX designers are and that it's a job in high demand which is partly true and that it's also like you're gonna have this immense salary over 100k and it's also what bootcamps most of the times advertise there is this conversation or this

expectation or this, I wouldn't say myth because for some parts, for some exceptions or for like a percentage of the market, it's true. You can have a very high salary, especially if you're a senior designer. So I think the conversation should be split. Is it true for senior designers and is it true for junior designers?

And I think that it's one of the reasons for which the industry is very attractive. This idea that not only you will be doing fun stuff with post-its and generating ideas and sketching and having workshops. And so all the juicy things that attract people to the industry, but you will also have a high salary. Of course, both of these arguments are true.

partly true. So you won't just play around with post-its every day. That's going to be like probably from time to time, design work is much more than that. It goes deeper and it's, it's actually strenuous work and very difficult. And you have to like have a lot of patience and resilience and persistence, and you have to operate with high volumes of data, but we've had other episodes about what it actually means to be a UX designer. So I advise you to listen to those if you want to understand what it's all about and

Salaries are pretty similar in the sense that there's this sugar coat or there's this like very positive expectation as to how much you will earn once you become a UX designer in three weeks. And it's really true for junior designers. So I think that indeed the tech industry is privileged at this moment because developers make high salaries, product managers are in demand. They make high salaries, UX designers as well, and other types of designers, researchers,

or even UX writers and so on. But it's not necessarily the case for all geography. This is a conversation that typically limited to the US space where salaries are highest if you want. And so it's not applicable for all the world, obviously. And it's not applicable for any stage of your careers.

So these are the two disclaimers, which I think people should bear in mind while we progress with this conversation. So these are a couple of first thoughts that I have. What are your high thoughts about it? And maybe we can dive deeper into what are the differences or some data that

we might have, I'm no specialist in salaries, but I kind of have an understanding since I'm doing work with the bootcamp, trying to set the right expectations to the people who are applying. So what are your thoughts? - Yeah, you mentioned a couple of really great factors. What I think is important to also add here is that it's kind of partly true that the salaries will be probably higher than

some of the jobs and maybe most of the jobs due to the fact that it's still like the IT industry that the products we're building are actually massively used by many people and that the world is becoming very digitalized and then there is this demand and obviously there is still a lack of scars of talent if you I can't remember the exact number but I looked into statistics once and it was like

Less than 1% of the human population is doing IT and pretty much, you know, maybe not a hundred percent of people, but maybe like, I don't know, 70% of people are actually using IT products or products digitally. Right. So there is still lack of people who can work on IT industry and, and there is a big, big demand and many, many use of it. So the, the basically every time your product is used, it creates dollars and then dollars can be reinvest in people and, you know, education and.

I think that's where it's coming from. And that's true that there is a demand for design talent, but one important thing is that most of the times products, especially early stage products, the startups, they cannot afford hiring junior designers. Thus they can only hire senior designers because they need to track the best talent with experience, with no time to waste on explanations and educations, but immediately start building the better products and whatever delivering better value.

That creates this, I guess, big demand for senior designers with a higher salaries.

salaries, but then still there is this huge gap. And we discuss it a lot in this podcast for the junior designers where the entry salary is much lower, even though it's still high, I guess, in the market. And then there's not so many jobs or opportunities for junior designers. So that's just another factor I wanted to mention here. And that's why I think when we are being promised the great future out of the bootcamp with a hundred K salary,

right off the bat in the first role that's a very very I guess beautiful fairy tale but that's not the reality especially if you're not in US uh well I think the world is maybe changing at this point I mean after 2020 things are shifting slightly to be completely honest you can expect pretty high salary maybe in some locations in in like Europe and in US mainly or maybe Australia but in most of the cases

I'm coming from Europe background, I can see how things are operating in Asia and in other locations of the world in Africa. I can definitely see that in many places design is still very much underpaid. If you compare the value that typical designer will bring in Czech Republic

and the value the designer can bring in the US, it might be the same value for the business, but the salaries they're being paid is completely, completely different. And another aspect, of course, we have to consider as designers is that the tax situation is very different.

So even if you're being offered a pretty good salary as a starter, you still have to consider other aspects of life in the demographics you're in. So things like taxes in Germany, it could go up to 50% per salary in Czech Republic. It could be from 8% to 35%, depending really on the way of your work.

And it's really very different. So demographic is a big factor. Taxes is a big factor. The role is the big factor as well as the company type. So for example, if we're talking about the local company, again, let me take my example, local company in Czech Republic serving the Czech market, then the sellers will not be as high as if I were working for a global company, maybe operating in US market or whatever other European markets.

And that also makes basically the budget of these companies bigger, hence the better salary. So as we can see, I guess, in this conversation right now, there are so many factors that actually make up the salary. It's not going to be beautiful out of the bed. Sometimes the companies try to match the salary towards the average market and at least match the expectations. But for some companies it's harder. For some companies they cannot afford hiring

remotely even. So they have to hire locally and not always the local salaries, especially if you're not in US or European markets, then the salaries might just not match this local demographic expectations. With all those factors that we have just discovered, Ioana, imagine if you were a junior designer and you're starting to go through the hiring process

And the HR in the first interview round, or maybe even the second later, depends, asks you, so Ioana, what's your expectations on the salary? How would you approach answering this question? What would you do? What would be your homework? And how would you answer approximately, not to say numbers, but in general, what would be your thinking process when you say what's your expectation?

Very good question. And I'm going to answer from my own experience. I think there are two ways to go about it. So one way would be to do your homework very well before interviewing with that company. And you go prepared and you understand, like you said, all the factors that weigh in to the potential salary that you might get.

Is it a big company? Is it a company that's offering big salaries in the market because they're like hyper growth type of company startup that's just preparing for IPO and they want the best talent in the market and so they have the budget because they have a lot of series funding. So is it that type of company? Is it a company that's struggling? Is it a startup that's in the beginning and they don't have a lot of funding? They're self-funded maybe. So weighting all the factors and then try to

corroborate everything with the market indicator so i know that when we were preparing the boot camp we did some research as to what are the median salaries of course there are a lot of information online where you can look up median salaries per career stage you can just look

junior UX designer on Glassdoor or on Indeed.com. And then you'll see what are the average salaries and also weigh that in to the proposal that you're going to ask for. So you can go prepared and just say, this is what I want. But what I typically do and did even as a junior designer is that when they asked me in an interview or in a conversation with HR, what's your salary expectations?

I would say, give me a couple of days to think about it. And then I would reply back. Why I do that is because many times that conversation comes up either at the end of a conversation with a manager, maybe it comes up at the randomly the HR calls you and it's before you will have an interview with them. So for me,

I might adjust my salary expectations based on how much I like that company, based on how much I want that job. So there are factors that go into my personal decision. So maybe if I feel the job is very, very complex

and it requires a lot of work, and I will definitely, I assume that I will be doing extra hours to deliver on what they need in their particular case, then I will probably weigh that in as well in the salary. So typically I wait a little and take some time to think thoroughly what's the salary that I would be happy with

for that particular role in that particular company with that set of responsibilities and so on. So either you go in, this is what I want, regardless of what's going on in the interview process, or you adjust, of course, not hugely, not this very sensibly. I don't think that you should ask for, I don't know, 10K or 30K.

It shouldn't be a difference like three times bigger, but definitely I have some wiggle room every time I have a conversation. And I also look at how much I would be happy to work on that job. And maybe it's a job that I feel won't be very demanding. So then I won't go over the top with the salary request and so on. I think you get the point.

I think that's it. And one last point about negotiating as a junior designer is that a mistake I made and a mistake I see again and again and again is that junior designers feel like somebody is doing them a favor for hiring them and that they don't have the upper hand and that they should go in the conversation

humble and apologetic and kind of shy and stressed out and it's a difficult conversation to have and they just want to get the job they don't even care about the money and that's a mistake because work is valuable regardless of your years of experience so the work you will put in as a junior designer is the work of a junior designer which is what they're hiring for so your worth

is the same as the one of a senior designers when it comes to the need that you'll be covering for. So go in there confident. You also have the negotiation power in that conversation. Don't be apologetic. Don't be shy to voice out the needs and the expectations that you have.

respect your self-worth is something that I really, it took me a long time to figure out and to actually feel. In the beginning, it felt completely strange to like act like I'm super worthy and everything. It felt like I'm a total imposter or it felt like this is ridiculous to go into a negotiation like very quickly

very cocky and confident. But then I realized time after time and conversation after conversation that not only you're doing yourself a service, but you start off that collaboration on a note of showing self-respect if you want and knowing your worth and knowing that you will bring value. And it's a good signal for them as well. So this is what I would do now.

I totally agree with the confidence. I didn't mention this, but during the interview, it kind of turns to be a big factor and sometimes depending on how you position yourself, how you confident you can bring values. Because obviously you haven't been working with them. They cannot estimate really how much value you can bring. So the way you bring yourself up and how you position yourself will actually impact the way they believe in you and

and how much they want to trust in you. And that also reflects in the salary. So it's true that it's a big and important thing that special designers in the early stage needs to work on. That's what I'm seeing in most of my students as a problem as well. Anyways, talking about like how I would approach it, it's actually different for me a little bit.

because i am that kind of a person that finds it better to say it in the beginning like as early as possible if you are an early stage designer you don't know really which company you want to work with maybe you're still like talking to different types of companies like agencies startups later startups corporations and you really like

still trying to adjust and kind of grasp the market, what really is going on here. In that case, it's true that you do need to do some probing and figure out what's the challenge here, what are you going to work on, and that could impact your answer. So my approach would be to actually early stage to

narrow down the list of companies i'm targeting like i mentioned in the past that i would target like specifically companies that are like growing startups so there is let's say in czech republic that will be like a 10 companies like this and i would start talking to some of them and also i would do my homework deliberately like you said going to glassdoor looking into the average salaries in that company reading some reviews maybe i have friends working there or maybe i have a friend of a friend who works there and i can

get them a coffee and talk to them a little bit, trying to grasp not necessarily like specific number, but at least the range. And so I would do a lot of homework before actually applying. And then as I'm starting to talk into the HR, the design managers,

I would know at least the range that I'm targeting. So that kind of helps me a little bit to be more confident. And to be very honest, like Ioana mentioned, like in the early stages, hard to know the number, especially if you're transitioning from like freelancing and you know your hourly rate, but now you suddenly have to think yearly rate, like what your salary is yearly. How do you calculate this? There could be a huge, huge gap.

And at some point I was transitioning from freelancer to the corporation and it was very hard for me to say, okay, wait, what's the salary? What's the monthly? What's the weekly? What's the hourly? What's the yearly? Oh gosh, how do I make it like real? So yes, I feel the pain there.

but and i did a lot of mistakes saying sort of especially in the moment when you know the hr is they're trained to ask you questions suddenly maybe sometimes you're not expecting this question to be voiced and you might not be very prepared for this and so they might use this opportunity for you to be a little bit like hesitant not sure what to say and say at least something i was once in this situation when i wasn't expecting this question i didn't prepare to answer it i wasn't sure what should be the

the salary and they asked me for some number, I randomly set some number and then I realized it was much, much lower than the market is actually offering right now. So be very careful, especially if you're feeling that you're pressed to do this. It's not like a right moment, to be honest, to ask the question. Maybe you were just in the whiteboard challenge and your head is in a very different place. You're still solving that design challenge and now suddenly they're asking you, what salary do you expect?

For me, that would be a red flag because it's not the right question at the right moment. It should be asked in a different context. The point is you kind of need to do your homework better upfront. And if you're getting into this whole process, it's better to make some sort of comfortable range that you're interested in. That's at least my approach. And also

If you have a range, maybe not a specific number, maybe not say that I want 10K, that's it. Maybe it's okay to say like a range. There are different angles how to look at the range, but my tip would be here to not say your minimum expectation, because the minimum would be actually the minimum and that's something that they will start offering you if you go through the process and they decide to give you an offer, they will actually start from your minimum end.

let's say I have my like sort of range in my head. So I would definitely start by saying something in the middle as my low end. Let's say, give an example. I don't know if let's say from three to 5K, right? And if my low end is three, I will start from four. So I can actually go from there upwards, not, you know, downwards from the bottom to the top.

so be be careful with your ranges make sure you're saying not the very lowest end but at least something in the middle so you can grow from there that would be another tip

Okay, so now let's also maybe talk about the gradual growth of your salary. Let's imagine you already got your first job and have your entry-level salary. Cool. You got some experience, maybe one year in, two years after. Probably every year you will still have some little raise to match with the inflation, like 3% up, 5% up. But let's say at some point you realize you can bring so much more and you feel yourself more confident and you want to target the next role, maybe middle designer.

How would you want to approach this transition? How would you frame the next expectation? How would you say, okay, I actually want a better salary? What would be your thinking process to name it? So from my experience and watching other people around me and watching my friends' career as well, I realized that the biggest salary increases you get when you switch companies.

So unfortunately, that's pretty sad in a way, because maybe you're very happy in your company and maybe, okay, maybe increasing your salary isn't your main goal at that stage in your career. But if salary is an important part for you, then I don't necessarily push for job hopping, like switching every six months just to increase your salary. But definitely the biggest increases and the biggest negotiation power, that's one thing. It's hard.

harder to negotiate inside your company than it is to negotiate with another company that basically takes you from where you are at that moment. So in your company, let's say you started as a junior, maybe now you're, you're advancing towards mid. So it's pretty hard to convince everyone in the company that you're a mid to senior designer. But if you go outside and definitely they know you at that snapshot in time, which is, is like,

even on a perception level, you have an advantage when you discuss with companies outside. Big salary increases definitely happen when you switch companies. Now, in terms of percentages, how much they change from a junior designer to a senior designer,

I feel like it can vary a lot. So there's no mathematical formula for that that I can share. Even looking on indeed.com or on Glassdoor, you can see that the salary of a junior designer can be even double for a mid designer and sometimes even three times higher for a senior designer. So I would look in maybe as a very general, like super, super high level, super...

It's a speculation, let's say, but I feel that this is kind of the scale. So you start, let's say, with 50K per year. This is a high salary. We're talking US now. We're talking good payment. It's not the... Okay, so you're starting with 50K per year. And then when you're a mid-designer, three, five years into your role, you can get maybe 100K. And then if you're a very senior designer, principal designer or anything of that

swords, you can get 150K. I wouldn't go above that. Although I'm sure there are people who earn even higher salaries, definitely with seven, 10, 15 years of experience. So I would say double as a mid and then triple as a senior. It's I'm not sure if that stands statistically, if we go look at the data, but from all the research that I've done again, I haven't done like academic research on salaries.

But from my feeling and being in the market for so many years, this is the feeling that I get. What are your thoughts? I totally agree with you that unfortunately it's a trend that if you want to get a better salary, you probably just have to look out. And honestly, sometimes it could be a great exercise that you look out

You find a better offer and then you get back to your company and say, hey, I've been sort of offered a much better payment and I think I'm worth this much. And I'm actually still interested in staying in this company. Let's maybe talk. Maybe we can negotiate something if there is a way for me to match my salary to this standard.

And if not, unfortunately, I would have to accept this offer. Sometimes you can actually make a case for it while being outside. And by the way, I don't think it's bad to look outside on the market and talk to other companies. Of course, it's up to you. It's your personal choice. If the company you are working in cannot satisfy your needs and cannot satisfy the comfort level

and I guess the interest in the company, then it's not just your disloyalty, but it's also their own employee satisfaction problem. And it's also for them to work on this, not just on you. And I think it's totally normal to log out for other companies, especially if you don't feel satisfied. And it's also okay to say, "Hey, I think I'm worth more, but if you cannot offer me, that's all right. I mean, I would have to accept it and just have a normal human conversation explaining the situation."

Now, as for actually growth, maybe even internally, the company, I can say again from Czech market, and I agree with you, I haven't been able to do this proper research comparing numbers and how they're different from demographic to demographic. But I would say that in Czech Republic, at least I can see that the junior salary would be twice less than senior salary, at least when I was searching for a new job, that's

something the trend i've noticed and we're talking about central europe right now right so it's different probably especially in us i've seen a very different gaps in us even but yeah like in in czech republic i would say it's like from junior to senior you would double your salary and in between maybe 25 up

Something like that, that would be my assumption. But it's not for us to say here are the benchmark. It's just that I'm trying to give at least some example, but it's still for you to make your homework and figure it out on your local market. Like I said, there are markets where the design standards and salaries are actually pretty, pretty low. And still, that's a design role in the company is not being treated as a digital product.

partner, but rather of a pixel pusher, right? So it really depends. And like you, Joanna said, it's like some companies do have better payments because they are in a better financial situation. So you might work today in enterprise and tomorrow you join startup and actually startup pays you twice more. That's totally, totally possible. It really depends on the company.

By the way, another story I really will add here. I don't know if I've mentioned it in the past, but to be very honest, and this again, to bust a myth, in the beginning of my personal career, I was not making any money, but it was personally my choice. If you look at this career at a very high level and try to decide which way to go, I personally saw for myself two direction, two trajectories. One is me.

doing whatever I want to do, no matter how much is it paid. Experimenting, building the portfolio. I want to build working on the projects I want to work on or actually just joining the company and being given the projects, right? So like basically being in a team and learning from others, but not being able to choose the projects I want to work.

And I basically chose this first trajectory when I would be working on my own projects, building startups, freelancing for stocks, so to say. Well, actually, kind of percentage of the company, which never really happened to be a company. So basically for free. But I basically chose a track when I wasn't paid for the first, can't remember exactly, but I think it

least three four years and that was all right for me because i kind of chose it i don't think it's it's it's good and i think this is not happening right now today every single hour you put into work has to be paid even if it's not too much

But that's the reality I chose and I think that some people actually think that even if you're doing like a shitty job, you will still be paid. And in fact, I see that a lot of the times you will do the shitty job and you will not even be paid. So the reality is especially in the beginning of your career are very, very different. You might even not earn anything in the beginning. You can earn very little like internship, few hundred bucks per month, really, really low payments.

But then you can actually grow suddenly and very abruptly and maybe four times up if you apply to much better companies. Like for me, the jump was really, really strong from like basically being paid almost nothing to then suddenly being paid like a few thousand...

USD. And that was a big deal for me because in the past I've never had so much money. So, so yeah, my, I guess my conclusion would be here is that the market is very different. It's not stable. There are no standards, even though I'm seeing a lot of initiatives in sort of making standards for the salaries and some companies take this great initiative of offering transparent salaries with kind of defined stages.

And the salaries would be basically the same for every single employee, depending on your stage in the career. So that's something really, really great, but that's

still not happening. It's very not equal at this point. So benefits are also something that needs to be taken into account when discussing salary. And here I think it's a very personal criteria. I think for many people having benefits like gym or health insurance or stuff like that, that kind of ensures that they have other problems in their life solved.

solved by the employer that's very important for other people they don't matter and there are also people who are very keen on having the benefits of i don't know a nice office with the famous ping pong table doing all sorts of games events and having snacks and having a lunch delivered and anything and for other people that that doesn't matter so i think it's it's very much a

personal formula that you have to figure out with yourself. But I think that one benefit that's universally interesting or appealing right now is the stock option or stock plan that you get. So that's something that I saw a tweet recently where they were arguing that the way to get rich in 2022 as a normal person is through stock plans. And again, here you'll have a lot of differences. So

So if the company is just starting out and there's no proof that it's close to becoming an IPO company and you don't know what's going to happen, then you're taking a risk and there's a chance that that stock will not mean anything.

While you can also interview for a company that's already listed, that's been in the market, you can interview for Adobe, I don't know, or whatever, EA Sports, whatever you want. And then they will give you a stock plan that's actually that means something. So even stocks might mean something or they might not mean much.

So, and indeed, there's also the difference if the company is already listed, like if it's an established company that has been listed, then the stock plan will be lower than you would get in a company where they haven't had an IPO. And that's a risk you're taking. So it's uncertain, but the reward will be bigger.

So, but stocks are something that definitely feel appealing for most people and it's totally understandable and it's an important benefit to discuss as well. I don't know what other type of benefits you might get. I don't know. We can go into a lot of granularity, like have daily meal vouchers or have like your family on your health plan and stuff like that. But those are like micro stuff that I don't think have a huge impact on anyone. I think it can affect.

if the company offers lots of those small benefits. Like in my past company, I think I was given at least 50% of my salary in the benefits every month, which was really, really good. Like meal vouchers, like you said, insurance, gym, all sorts of like things. And so for example, again, if you're transitioning from freelancer to freelancer,

a full-time employee and the company offers paid vacations that are maybe more paid maybe like one month of pay vacations and suddenly you have to transition your mindset from actually not being paid if you're not working i had like this problem when i don't work i don't earn i was like sort of anxious that i'm losing money and stuff like that now suddenly if you're working for a corporation or bigger company you have a month off and it's paid and you do nothing but it's paid it's like it's still you have to understand that

Your yearly package is made of the time you're not working that is paid, all those meal vouchers, like you said, like health plan, gym plan, whatever plan the company offers. And it could...

Ultimately, if you calculate every single piece of this cost, it could be sometimes 30, 40% of the salary that you're earning every month. And that means something. But you're right, like the stock options is still a very big part of it. Let's say if you're working for a bigger company, like an enterprise company, they do have a very strong stock options. This could be your third, not even third salary, actually. It could be like four salaries of the year, it could be five salaries, 10 salaries of the year. Of course, there's some vesting period, but

it could actually be a big chunk of money at the end of the day. And you don't have to calculate all of those. Let's say if you receive one number and you don't feel like it's a big enough number, then make sure you calculate all those other benefits that you're offering you because this is not taxable and this is actual value that you will be still using. And at the end of the day, it could end up being a bigger number that you were earning in a previous job. That's actually happened to me.

So if my husband wouldn't say, hey, make sure you calculate everything to understand the real number that could help you. And also for the startups that are pre IPO, it's also a very interesting gamble when you know the company is getting somewhere, there's a big chance they will actually be listed and you can actually have a very good price before IPO that

you as an early employee could get, but you don't know how the company will be dealing after it. So you're taking a little bit of a gamble. You can double it, you can triple it, you can 10 times it, and you might not get anything out of it because it's not a public company yet. That is an interesting topic. But let's stop, I guess, here and maybe let's jump into our top three takeaways with this little teaser.

Let's do that. So I'm going to be pretty short because this conversation, we've been through a lot of things, we've covered a lot of things into detail. So I'm just going to quickly go through the main themes that stuck out for me. So I feel that the main thing when it comes to salary is to take everything bootcamps advertise with the grain of salt.

and come into the market this is especially for people who are obviously just transitioning into ux design or considering a career in ux design or recently just started applying to ux shop so take everything you see as a marketing fluff with a grain of salt take out the marketing fluff from the communication that you're getting and and focus on doing your own research talk to designers that are actually in the market that are actually

design roles and get your information right because there's a lot of marketing push going on and you want to make sure that you're not being mesmerized or convinced with something that's unrealistic and then you'll be disappointed when you see that the salary is actually two times lower than you were made to believe.

Okay, so this is one thing. Do your research by yourself, independently. Be neutral. Don't trust anyone. And the second point would be that even if you're a junior designer, when you're negotiating your salary, you're bringing a lot of worth to the table. So this is my very important lesson for myself. I wish I would have been less apologetic, less hesitant, less...

self-doubting and everything and just go in there trusting that if they're hiring a junior designer, they need the work of a junior designer and I'm going to be a very good junior designer. So I don't have to be a principal designer to deserve a good salary. I can also be a junior designer. And of course, in the salary range of a junior designer, know my worth and own it.

And the last thing is that you can't really say that this is the standard salary for a UX designer, because as we've been circling back to again and again, the main idea is that there's a lot of variety in the industry and it varies based on geography. It varies based on the type of company. It varies based.

on different criteria points. So there is no official answer that you might get. You might understand the range. That's what you will be doing on your own, taking into account your particular set of conditions. But

don't trust any official numbers because they're definitely very biased in a way. So these are my top three ideas that I would like my listeners to take home with them. How about you? Great points. I think what we still can add here to your list is I am a big supporter of doing your homework and knowing upfront the range you should expect for that kind of role.

Again, that means understanding the factors that come in to the salary. So again, understanding at which stage the company is at, what's your role, what's the value that you can bring to the company. Again, as maybe talking to people working in the company, reading reviews on the Glassdoor and other services, and really having the very realistic expectation

and how you can match up to this, meaning that when somebody in the first interview asks you, what's your expectation? You know exactly what should you be voicing. So being comfortable with this number at the point when somebody asks you. Not coming into the first interview and being like caught out of guard when somebody asks you, so what's the number? And you're like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. I need to do some reading. I would be a proponent of saying, do this upfront. Know exactly before you even apply.

So again, it's useful because you don't waste anybody's time. Not theirs, not yours. That's the first thing. Second thing would be to calculate how much. So let's say if you're already in the end of the hiring process and you've been offered some number with some benefits on top of that before saying, oh, you know what? Maybe the number is a bit low for me. Make sure you still calculate the amount of benefits, how much maybe the benefit is, you know, is like an insurance and whatever else.

transfer these these benefits into the actual currency numbers and calculate how much money is this if you add it up together can be actually a pretty good number or if not maybe it's not worth it so make sure you still calculate the whole package not just like the number you're seeing as your

pre-tax income. And I think that's it on my side. I will have only two takeaways for today because Jojoana covered pretty good and strong points already. And with that being said, I guess we'll just wrap it up. Thank you so much, everybody who was listening this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please rate us on any podcast platform of your choice, whether on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts and any other podcast platforms that are available out there. And we always really appreciate your support that makes us motivated to keep it coming.

And if you have any more topics that you would like to submit, there is an anonymous form that you can fill in and we definitely will prioritize your topic for the next episodes. You can also just add your question into the stickies under the Spotify. There is this card with questions. You can add your answer there or send us a DM personally in our Instagram. And that would be it. Thank you so much again for everybody who are listening and bye-bye. Bye everyone.