#48 Designer at a fast-growing startup
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As for designers, fast-growing three IPO startup, it's very good space to be because in the early stage startups, you often don't have funding and tools and time. In the bigger companies, you feel like you're having a stability, but yet it's not always like you have all the

possibility to do whatever you want. Now with this pretty sweet spot, I would say you do have funding, you have responsibilities, you're empowered to do whatever you want, you have tools and not always you'd have timeline. You still have this luxury of making mistakes and learning from them and seeing how they impact things, which is very interesting place to be at.

Hi everyone and welcome on a new episode of Honest UX Talks. As always, I'm joined by Anfisa and today we will try to share our own experience working in fast-growing pre-IPO startups.

This is a very specific niche, but it's one that many companies are currently in and many designers are working in these types of, let's say, hectic, but very exciting environments. And we've both had this experience working in pre-IPO companies.

So, we definitely have some stories to share and some insights that hopefully will be helpful. But before we jump straight into the topic for today, I want to take a moment to thank Spline Design Tool for sponsoring our conversations.

to happily tell everyone that last week I introduced my new branding for UX goodies, which is a moment that I've been planning for a long time now. Actually, I started thinking about the new visual elements and the new typography and all the style that I was going for

more than one year ago, but it took one year to find the courage to move away from the blobs that were so UX goodies and that people were actually telling me to stick to them because they're like, so me. So it was a hard choice to make, but I did it. And the nicest part is that I will be using more and more 3D elements thanks to picking up Spline as a tool. And so I will be using more 3D in my visual work, in my branding.

And I hope that this will become my new trademark as the blobs were in the past. And it's very fun. And the process of learning and trying to like enhance my messages by using the right 3D elements is super fun. And I feel that it could definitely benefit my key messaging. So I could definitely...

tell more by using the right images, which is something that we actually do as designers in general. So with this nice intro and exciting news, if you want to check out my new visual style visit UX Goodies on Instagram, you're going to see it already popping up. Let's start with our usual tradition. Anfisa, how was your past two weeks?

It was two weeks because you were traveling, right? You'll tell us more about it. Well, I would say that like two weeks ago, I can just keep calm about it. It was extremely, extremely bad. I'm Ukrainian, just to remind everybody. And I'm very worried about what's going on right now. And two weeks ago, it was really crazy because first,

they liberated Kyiv. So Kyiv is back to be safe right now. But then they started showing the photos of what really happened in the Kyiv Oblast, where I'm from. And it was just extremely devastated. And I think for the first week, I was just almost depressed. But then last week, it was better. I mean,

It's very hard. Like you're living with this right now, right? So you kind of remember and you live with this every single day, but you still have to move on and you still have to make sure that it's not progressing anywhere. And it's a long topic. I'm not going to go into much details about it. But point is, yeah,

Ultimately, we're living with this and ultimately I'm still working in a new company, which we're gonna tackle today and talk more about. Yeah, actually on the good thing, finally last weekend I was able to actually publish my website. It's not really publish, let's say finish my website that I was planning to do, I think from November.

And so this is really exciting. It's almost done. I'm still finishing some integrations and some kind of like interactions there and I just need to make it pop and stuff like that. But I'm really, really relieved that I was able to sit for one whole day last weekend and just like finish it. Done. It's there. The content is there. I think it's been like 10 years since I wanted to build a website.

And you know how it goes, right? In the first years of your career, I will not build this website because my projects are not good enough. And then as you start being more involved in the career, you're never having free time. So you are like, oh, I don't have time to put things in my portfolio yet. I mean, I don't have a moment where I can sit and just do it because I can do a new project and it was a new client. And now finally after ten years when I was laid off in the kind of November from my previous company,

finally I was like yes now I can actually build my website but then you know Christmas happened winter happened February with Ukraine happened and I never get a chance to finish it but yes last weekend was the time and uh yeah hopefully by the moment when this episode is going live I will finally put it live and announce it so that's exciting and how about you how was your two weeks Ioana

Well, pretty intense. As some of our listeners probably know, last week I traveled to Madrid for eight weeks. I spent some of those weeks shooting a Domestika course. It was something that I kept postponing to announce because I wanted to make it a big, big surprise on my socials. And hopefully it was a surprise. It was very well received by my...

friends on social media, everybody told me, oh, wow, it's so great. I love Domestika. They have such a nice aesthetic. I'm so happy for you. Yay. And so on. It was pretty nice because I wasn't sure how it would be received. And there was quite some enthusiasm around it. I haven't yet disclosed the topic of the course. It's still to be announced once I launch it.

It was actually a very interesting experience in itself because it's pretty intense. You shoot almost all the time for three days straight, sometimes four days, and you have no feedback. You don't know if you're doing things right. You don't have a prompter. So you say everything from your head and just hope that it's going to turn out the way you intended to. And there's no rewind. You have to be comfortable around uncertainty, unknown. And just, it's a, it's a very interesting personal experiment as well. And it's,

wow, it's so complicated to pull something so complex off. I mean, the engineering behind it, the kitchen, everything, the ingredients that go into making a course, it's incredible. So many devices, so much equipment, so many people, like, I don't know. In total, I think I had to work in one way or another with

15 people for the course. So it's huge. The production behind it is, I wouldn't have imagined it. I think I imagined that I would be in one room with one person and that's it. But in reality, they're like the photographer, the videographer, another videographer, the microphone or the sound person, the light person and so on. It was really fun.

Yeah, so that was one thing. And also while being in Madrid, I got the chance to meet the Spline team. Spline is sponsoring our podcast, like I just said. And so it was very, very exciting to meet the team I'm collaborating with. It just happened that Mariana, she's from Portugal, but she moved to Madrid recently. And Farideh, she's from New York and she was traveling to Madrid for like five or six days. So it was an incredible coincidence that we were there at the same time. We got to meet in person and spend a very nice evening together.

And they also brought me flowers. It was so sweet. They met my daughter. I'm really grateful to be able to have partners that I can also be like friends with. So yeah, Madrid was great. I would do it again. I mean, it was super tiring, but I would definitely do another course and maybe another trip like that. I miss traveling. I traveled for the first time after a very long time. Yeah, exciting and intense times. I feel like it's very exciting and I'm really happy for you to doing this.

I remember you mentioned that you would never be able to do this on your own. And now you're saying, wow, you've seen it behind the scene and it's crazy. I can't imagine. I wouldn't be able to talk in front of the camera when everybody, 15 people are listening and you're like supposed to stay straight and focused and like put together. So I think it's awesome that you did it and you had this experience.

With this pretty long intro, let's jump straight into the topic for today and talk about what it is like to work in fast growing startups. And my first question to you is when did you have the first experience of this kind? Is this the first time you're experimenting this type of company and what's your experience so far? Like I mentioned, I guess in a few previous episodes, I started working in a fast growing three IPO startup.

literally months and a half ago. So it's very, very fresh for me. In the past, I was working a lot with the early stage startups and then with the enterprise companies as a freelancer also, obviously with some small and medium businesses. And so this is the first time when I got to work in the startup that already has money. That's the key, I guess, difference between the early stage startups and already has a pretty, not established, but the product that found the product market fit, right? So when you are talking about

fast growing sort of late stage startups. We're talking about the companies that found their zero to one sweet spot on the market and they have the customer base, they have a recurring stable monthly revenue. It's growing. They have new people. They need to make the product better. They need to conquer the market. They need to become those unicorns. And when we're talking unicorns, we're talking about billion something revenue. And then of course, at some point you're turning into this very successful product that

becomes a public product. I think you're entering the IPO stage, right? So initial public offering. As I started working in this new company, it's called Muse. It's in a hospitality industry. So what we're doing is PMS, the booking guest journey tools, basically. But I want to...

particularly talk today a little bit more about how it feels right in terms of switching from the enterprise company, from working in the company that is big established many years into the market has lots of investors, has the public offering and like the shares and all of that. And then the company that is still not there, but is very successful and is actively growing. And there are many new people, right?

I think that's the most interesting part. And you and me, we were, I mean, I just started working in this company. You, it will tell your stories. You were working in this company and I think last year the company you were working at switched to actually being public, right? Is it correct? Yeah, that's correct. Kind of went through it really. And I'm, we're not still there, but I think it will come at some point. So it's very, very interesting. I think like this is a sweet story.

spot for designers to work in this industry because it's a space with lots of lots of lots of opportunities. But before we talk about all those opportunities, and I think it's very, very interesting and exciting times, I also want to hear your story. Well, I joined UiPath in January 2019. And at that time, they were already I think, at series

see. I think Series D was shortly announced after I joined. They were already sort of exploded. The year before I joined, they went from 200 employees to 1,000 employees or like fifth time growth in one year and so on. And then they continued to grow at until they reached like 3,000 employees all over the world, offices in the US and New York and Seattle and India and everywhere. I was there right in the

middle of this hyper growth if you want I wasn't there from the beginning it was sort of a regret I always had that I didn't join earlier to witness the journey from being like a small apartment company to like the huge it's

soon became very corporate, especially around the IPO. I joined right in the middle and I kind of got half of the journey. There were a lot of things that were absolutely exciting, other things that were very difficult to handle, but we'll dive into more of those as we continue in our conversation. So let's talk a little about what are some good parts, some exciting parts about working in a startup that's

in hyper growth, fast growing. What has been your experience and maybe even some generic things about why it would be a good experience to have? Yes. So basically, again, coming back to your story, I think the interesting part is that I feel like the company I started working at is in that limbo before it grew so much.

So I think we have around 300 or 400 people, it's not thousands yet. So it's still in that office, like a kind of apartment kind of office stage where we sit in a two floor building and it still feels pretty cozy. It doesn't have any sort of vibe of the corporation or entire enterprise. You got to know, you got to meet everyone. You have a relationship with pretty much every other member of the team and it still feels very like cozy. So I really love this getting back to the

question. I will just start with differences because I'm very fresh out of the enterprise culture. So I'm noticing so many things that are different and I'm literally feeling like, oh my God, I have to readjust myself completely because I've been working for three years in enterprise culture. Now I have to change my habits, change my patterns as to how I work. Now, so the first thing that I couldn't help but notice was that

immediately my communication style started changing because working in a bigger company, you imagine, right? Thousands of people, you would have to be not to say polite, but you definitely have to use a universal language that everybody would understand. It would have to be a bit more general, not as specific, not as saturated with emotions. So to say when I was working in a bigger company, maybe because I was like a not native English speaker, I felt like I had to really work on my communication skill a lot. Whereas

Right now in the smaller company and it's European, it's like most of the people I'm working with are from Europe. It's mainly like Amsterdam, Prague, Vienna, UK, and a few more locations. But people are from all over Europe and I think it kind of adds extra touch to it. Everybody has English as a second language, so it's easier to communicate.

I think people tolerate you really well because everybody has a similar background. Everybody's foreigner. But what's great about it is it feels like you can meet people so much more frequently and you can go to the office and you can jump right into next to their table and have a cozy, like casual conversation and discuss whatever stupid things around and jokes and local news and whatever.

And it feels like you know them, you understand them, you know their mimics, you get to know them on a more closer level. And that's why you trust them better because you understand the place they're coming from, right? So that impacts in the communication style as well because

because since you know those people, you don't have to be super polite. You would understand if let's say they are being super direct, that it's not coming from some sort of bad place or whatever. And so one thing that I immediately noticed how much more relaxed I am and how I talk. So I don't have to really like

Be very organized, prepare presentations, communicate always with all the words that everybody will understand. But moreover, I can joke around and talk like almost to my husband and he would understand me because he's in sort of similar language, if that makes sense. So yes, first is I got so much more relaxed with the way I'm talking.

Now, another thing which also I couldn't help but notice is that in the bigger companies, at least my experience, I would say like motivation incentive that I was working sometimes and I felt like this was a pattern that I've built was to actually be recognized by other teammates.

because it's important that everybody feels comfortable around each other, that everybody could work effectively, that you're doing your best and stuff like this. So communication was a big part of what I was doing in the past. Now here, there are almost no kudos, no like,

praise or nothing like that. Everybody's just running into certain goals and nobody cares about what other people think, but it's more like cozy, I would say. It's like everybody's very targeted into one goal, which is metric, whatever metric it is. So everybody is so focused on numbers, so data-driven. And so the biggest praise right now for whoever is working

with me is like seeing the differences in the numbers. And I think the biggest difference is that you're so much closer to the product, to the people, to the customer is that you can talk to them every day. Occasionally you can have the continuous research tools in place. You have a very close relationship with your team. So for example, we are working in trios, tech lead, PM and designer, and we are meeting pretty frequently. We're discussing the next step.

steps we're discussing a very short term vision, the next spring planning, but we're also talking about the roadmap and the steps needs to be taken to shape that roadmap and how we're targeting that north stellar experience and how much we're still far away from it. So what are the steps that we need to prioritize to get there? So it's very, very like hands-on product approach that I was missing in my previous place.

It was more of a waterfall approach where, okay, here's initiative, let's build it. Maybe at some point we'll test it. Maybe at some point it will be picked up. Whereas now it's really like build as you go, as you test, as you iterate, as you communicate all at the same time, it's very dynamic and it's very, very data driven.

So we're talking business language pretty much every single day. It's like every day we're looking at the numbers. Every single meeting we have, it will definitely have words like churn rate, conversion rates, LTV, SaaS, AR, et cetera, et cetera. Looker, another heap, opportunity cost, all those things, you know? And if those words doesn't mean anything to you, then you definitely need to figure it out if you're interested in working in the startups.

It's very, very data driven and it's something refreshing to me. I think I was really looking forward to get to it. And now as I'm working with these numbers and I'm understanding how every single design decision we're doing impacts those eventual numbers and conversion rates.

This is so relieving and I think it was like, it's amazing that I'm able to see an impact first of all, but also having access to the tools that helped me to see that impact. So I'm so much more closer to product and to the tools and they enable me to make better decisions. And I guess the final thing is that all I'm saying is right now along the lines of having a closer communication and relationships with the people you're working on plus tools,

Which enable you to do whatever you need the qualitative research to do it. If you need the quantitative, do it. You have a trio, you have like a close understanding on the roadmap of the product and how you're shaping it. With that, of course it comes bigger responsibility, but it's exciting because you've got an access and you're

You're empowered to do what you need to be done. Your hands are untied and that's really, really awesome. So that's my biggest, biggest, I guess, takeaway from what I'm doing right now. And it's also pretty cool to see how other teams are working because we have lunch and learn, or we have like lots of sharing sessions and workshops and hackathons and all of that. So it's really dynamic, which is, I think lots of things I have said right now is very positive, but we will get probably to also some of the negative things.

What is your experience, Ioana? No, thanks for sharing all your insights. It was actually super interesting and I do relate to a lot of them. So to be completely honest, it sounds very similar to my own experience of what makes these kinds of companies great. Now to share a little from my own personal experience, it's actually very similar to yours in many aspects, in all aspects, if you want. So I was also transitioning from 10 years of working in a corporate company. So I worked for

ING bank and I've held different positions and I moved around in different roles in different parts of the company, but everything was in the same corporate setup. The corporate was very imprinted in me and I was very much accustomed and very comfortable with the entire corporate world, the processes, the ways of working, the collaboration system, how everything... It's a different world than...

the world of startups I was to discover it later. So definitely a very different experience. And so I came with this, like not necessarily system or preconceptions, but I came in with a way of doing things. And then I was met with this incredible speed. All of a sudden, everything was moving very fast. We were

building a solution in like one week. And then, I don't know, I did the design on Monday and on Friday, I would see it up in the product and it was just incredible. And just like you said, there was a lot of actual product being done. So in big companies, functions are very, very isolated if you want. So there's a lot of collaboration happening, but it happens in groups if you want.

So the design team in its whole collaborates with the development team in its whole. And so it's like big buckets of people collaborating together. But in startups and in companies, even pre-IPO, so the kind of companies we're talking about, like in your example with the trio, you work very closely with the other roles. So it's like a more intimate connection. It's a more productive way of working and definitely more productive.

product focused if you want. So as opposed to being process focused or project focused or whatever, this kind of companies have product at the core of their business because that's what they're focused on, building the product and optimizing the product. So it's pure product if you want, as opposed to like, I mean, there's a lot of product being done in big companies. Don't get me wrong. If you work at Facebook, Google, whatever, or whatever, the biggest company you can imagine, you're still building products.

But the pace is different. And just like you said, the autonomy, the freedom, the level of empowerment is very much different. And this is something that I experienced firsthand. But in the beginning, I was pretty like shocked. It was a cultural shock. I was like, I couldn't even breathe.

hear my thoughts before things were being done. I couldn't even understand what I was doing and things were already being built. I wasn't even sure that the solution I came up with, was this good? Is this even good? Oh, wait, that's live now. And so, yeah, it was a lot of self-doubt and it took me a while to adjust to the new speed and the new setup.

But then I loved it. And so once I accepted it as the new reality, I embraced everything and it was just amazing to see things being built so quickly. So.

Definitely this fast pace is not for everyone or not for every stage of your career. But at that point, for me, was something extremely new and extremely valuable. So, yeah, those are some good parts. Plus, like all the things you mentioned, for me, what was the most interesting part was that I built different kinds of relationships. So a more...

success-oriented kind of relationship. So it wasn't just collaboration for the sake of, oh, we need to do that. My department has to collaborate with your department and whatever. This was like, we're a small team of people and we have to make this happen. And it was like a very close, a very tight relationship and a very...

productive way of building products. Yeah. So yeah. And everybody's very hacky, I believe, and everybody's figuring things out on their own. And sometimes you're doing different things, but it's like not necessarily even design things, but it's, I think it's exciting. Like it's refreshing to be like, I think I felt it also when I was doing an early stage startup, but at that point it was maybe

too unhealthy already because i was doing everything like things that i'm not supposed to at all but here it's like you're still within your zone of responsibility but you're untied and you can do whatever and if you need to figure it out and go hack it you do this and nobody will stop you because it will break something on the different side of the world and

different side of the product, you know? So it's definitely very, very interesting. As for designers, it's very good space to be because in the early stage start that you often don't have funding and tools and time and sometimes it's too much, you know, for one person. In the bigger companies, you feel like you're having a stability, things are not so rushed, but yet it's not always like you have all the possibilities to do whatever you want. You're sometimes tight.

in whatever like in the tools and even sometimes or like restrictions you're having and the process you're having and the compliance you need to follow and stuff now with this like

pretty sweet spot. I would say you, you do have funding, you have responsibilities, you're empowered to do whatever you want. You have tools and not always you'd have timeline, but you can build an immediate list because the audience, the target audience or the product users is not like the whole world. So it's not too much of a deal. If you break something, you can immediately fix that. So the scale is smaller. You still have this luxury of making mistakes and learning from them and seeing how they impact things.

which is very interesting place to be I think. What about the cons of it? What would you say were the things that you were not enjoying or felt maybe challenging to you? So I think that if you're a person that likes clear structures and clear instructions and clear responsibilities and a role definition that's very clear then you will not thrive in these kinds of environments. So

So there was a lot of the speed reflected in everything, even the speed at which teams changed, roles changed, organizations changed. So it was a lot of iteration and improvement very quickly, like you do with newborn products and newborn companies. So definitely it's a very...

unpredictable if you want the environment it's not as uncertain as it would be if like you said it was in the early stages when you didn't know if it's going to survive until the next month if there's going to be enough budget to pay your salary or whatever it's it's absolutely more stable but there is still a lot of change and adjustment being done from one week to another sometimes so

If you like predictability, maybe you want to go for still a bigger company, a more established company that's been through the IPO or not, or it's just a big company with a lot of history. So one thing that I struggled with was the speed at which people switched even roles, they switched teams, they were promoted or whatever.

Sometimes, I don't know, in small companies, people might even get fired more easily because they have to focus on performance and they want people who are doing their job. And sometimes jobs become redundant because things change very quickly. So it's a very fast pace and you have to be ready for

for uncertainty and unpredictability. Again, not at a level of early stage startup, but it's still something you deal with. So this is one thing. And then another thing is that sometimes you don't have enough time. So for me, this was frustrating for many parts.

Speed comes with the sort of pressure and with time constraints. And so everything was a bit rushed more than I would have liked it to. And even though I was feeling the sense of accomplishment and oh, my God, I did this. I did it so quickly. We did it. We built it. But but then at the same time, there was like something we sacrificed to do it so fast. Right. So we sacrifice sometimes. I don't know.

the time invested in research, sometimes research was maybe superficial and it would have been better if we wouldn't do it at all and just take the risk. And so sometimes you don't have the luxury of taking enough time to do things properly and you have to push for that. And there's a lot of even politics because it's,

it's already a big company so you have to push for the design space to get its rights and have the resources it needs. And so yeah, that was a challenge in itself, having the time pressure. Indeed, sometimes you have to work a lot. So especially when we had releases or when we had, I don't know, even before the IPO and all the company was running around. Well, just before the IPO, I was actually

on maternity leave. So I didn't experience that firsthand, but I was there like in the year before. So it can get very hectic and you can experience the same level of intense work like in a small startup. So sometimes you will experience that in big companies. So there's no clear like delimitation as to this company will be like this. So there's no clear recipe of

of any kind. But definitely the rhythm tends to be pretty intense at this stage of a company's life. I worked a lot and it was for many parts I felt like I was like maybe dancing too close to burnout.

playing with fire when it came to burnout. But I learned a lot and it was incredible. So I would do it again. How about you? What are some bad parts in your perspective? - Yeah, not bad, but challenging for sure, I guess. Because it definitely, what you just said, rings the bell with me as well. Even though I'm very fresh in this, I guess. I'm still there to figure out all the cons and fill them strongly. That's why I'm calling them challenges yet. But I think at some point I will fill them frustrations. We'll see how it goes.

But I agree with you, like, even though it's been just one month, I personally have done the work I would imagine to do maybe in half a year in a bigger company. Because things are immediately like they need to be done already. Like things are moving, like I said, extremely fast. In the blink of the eye, you're changing things. People are very pumped. People are very like, you can see so much of this energy and motivation. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. It pumps you. And then at some point, if you realize that you were overworking, that it's

you know, 9 p.m. and it's Friday evening and you're still working. And I mean, first of all, for me, the gut feeling was that's great. I'm motivated. I'm really interested in doing this. I want to do this. But I feel like if that will be like the speed at which I will be working for the next

half a year, year, two years, I might burn out. Like you said, it might be an actual reality and you would have to build those walls around yourself and protect your time. Like I'm one of those people who's very easily pumped and triggered and motivated. And if you just make it exciting, if it would be this hackathon with pizza and beer around, I'll be like all the time, just working and doing stuff. Like it's very easy to make me, you know, work all the time.

Cause I'm excited usually. And, and, and that could be very, yeah, not healthy long-term. So we will see how it goes, but I'm, I'm feeling those bells already. I would say.

That's the first thing for sure. Now, the second thing is this fast pace is actually very connected to the next round of investment, right? For the product companies. I mean, there are definitely bootstrap companies, but I'm talking about my perspective, I think like you. So we're talking about the companies who are pursuing the investments this round, CED, et cetera, et cetera.

And so that means that you have certain expectations to be met with certain KPIs in mind. So everything you're doing in a short amount of time have to perform and have to meet those KPIs. And if you're not, then it's a problem for the whole company. So it's like everybody's focused on that one goal so much that you might not realize how much you've been working and you just need to take a break. Otherwise, yeah, it's going to become hectic too much.

And so that's kind of talking again, I think we're relating a lot to the name of this topic, right? Fast growing company. But another thing that I realized as a designer, there was something not to say new to me, but I've never experienced it as intensely is the challenge to always zoom out on a big and small picture at the same time. I definitely experienced it in the past.

but not as intensely because in the past I would always have some sort of margin or space to work on a bigger picture, work on a customer journey, the vision, the figure out where we're heading and then break it down into stages and start working on those stages.

But in the space where I'm at right now, you have to, like they say, build the plane and fly it at the same time. Every single sprint you have to say, we need to build this XYZ feature or small thing or whatever improvement.

And this improvement is supposed to contribute to this high level, north stellar experience, vision product, et cetera, but you don't have it yet. So sometimes you're really working in the dark, in the blind, and you're contributing towards something you didn't even figure out yet because you're so fresh here at the whole new industry, all the people, all the goals, all the metrics, all the experience nuances and the platform complexity, you're still grasping it.

But now you have to have vision in your head and now you have to like already build things, right? So I feel like every single day it's a muscle I'm building and pumping by myself.

trying to imagine the bigger picture, trying to put together a massive information and trying to quickly iterate and kind of conceptualize and quickly test things while delivering it at the same time. It's really like it's the delivery on the steroids and could be very challenging. I sometimes actually have to voice it all the time. If we're working in this environment, the risk of the mistake is pretty high. My team needs to know about it and try to voice it.

But for sure, like the responsibility is still on you and it's kind of challenging. Like if you don't have an experience and if you haven't been able in the past to experience working in a bigger and small picture at the same time and learn to sort of impact effort, prioritize things every time on the go 10 times per day, 55 times a day, then it will be very challenging for you. For like not experienced designers, it could be a very hard place to be at.

If you have experience, it will be still challenging, but at least you can wrap your hand around it. So I guess, yeah, my take away here is that it could be very hard to capture so many things at the same time and know what you're doing to have a clarity and all of that. Let's move into our top three ideas for today. I guess from my side, I would just say that

A, it's a very exciting place to be at. And so if you were feeling that you were stuck at some point and you need an action and you need the motivation and you want to be triggered and excited about what you're doing, if you need to see the results you're doing designing ASAP, then this is a place you want to target.

However, it comes with lots of like sacrifice. I would say this will engage you too much. So you would have to spend lots of time working on this product. And let's say if you're maybe like right now you need a more stable, more predictable, more calm environment. If you maybe, for example, just got a, had a baby and you, you need to be in different places at the same time, maybe it will be very challenging. Also, if you are very junior designer, if you're still not confident and, and

and you haven't experimented a lot in your past and you haven't been challenged enough, then maybe you're biting more than you can chew.

It's a challenging but very exciting space. That's the takeaway number one. Second is if you're still interested and if you want to target fast growing companies, then definitely make sure you know what the business and data driven environments are. Let's say you maybe want to take some business course. You maybe want to understand the typical metrics of the product. You want to understand the conversion rate at least. You want to understand how to work with analytics. You want to understand how to build those, how to literally speak numbers.

because this will be the language you would have to, at least in my experience, maybe the companies are different. Maybe the business specifics are different, but the company I used to see and work with always would like prey on numbers and it would be so data driven that every decision they're doing, they need to see how it impacts. And altogether, the whole company will be talking this business language, numbers language, because that's the food, that's the petrol that is driving the company to the next stage.

So that's another, I think, important thing to keep in mind.

And I guess my tip here, maybe this is not a takeaway, but the tip here, if you finally started working in a fast growing company, it would be to definitely build the relationships early on. Taking those lunch and learn sessions, meeting people, going, having fun with them, having beer with them, whatever you're usually doing, making sure you know each other so well that the language you're choosing to speak with them doesn't really matter because you know them so well that you trust them.

nobody's questioning and thinking behind the back and stuff like this. So it's very, very like trustworthy and everybody knows each other so well.

because you build those relationships. And I think that's a very, very important fundamental to be agile and be quick. And because otherwise, it's going to be very hard to sustain, you know, I don't know if it makes sense, but I feel like the relationships are core in any big and fast growing company or startup. That would be my last point. What about you? I'm going to actually build on your last point and say that definitely fostering a space where you build trust with the people around you. And I think and

And good relationships is essential because in a very fast pace with a lot of pressure, with a lot of tension, with a lot of immediate objectives and everybody's running around and you have to trust each other and trust that everyone wants what's best for the product and that everybody knows what they're

doing even when they're not, because many times you will be doing things that you're probably doing for the first time. Or we've been through the point where we said that you'll be doing a lot of experimentation and everybody puts on all sorts of hats and plays with all sorts of methods and tools. And so there's a lot of experimentation going on. So, but I think the core thing here is to trust the people you work with and trust that everyone is pushing towards the same goal, which is the success of the product and making the users happy.

And so trust is very important in any relationship, obviously, and even in big companies, small companies, but especially in this kind of environment, I think it's essential. This is one thing. And then I would also want to re-mention the fact that maybe this is not the first, the place where you want to have your first job as a UX designer because you get the best of both worlds, but you also get the worst of both worlds. Pretty high complexity for a junior designer to manage. So I would say,

You definitely need to have a similar experience in your career at some point as a designer. I think it's very valuable to be on this bridge between small, small companies and their struggles and their feed and everything and bigger companies which are...

sometimes slower, but more efficient for other parts and more stable and more predictable. So you want to be in this space where you have a bit of everything, but maybe not as a junior designer or as your first job, because you'll have a lot of complexity to manage and it might

feel overwhelming and you might feel like you're failing. Even as a senior designer in these kinds of environments, you might feel like you're failing because you don't have enough time to do things properly and you're expected to do big things because it's a company that's already pre-IPO. So the product is pretty mature by then. So there's a lot of responsibility and a lot of autonomy, a lot of power. But as a junior designer, it's very hard to handle those

So definitely, I would say, try experimenting with these kinds of companies once you're in midway in your design career or a senior designer. And the last point that I want to make is that

I think it's great that you have spaces in which you can really make an impact and you can really define the culture for the design team and you can really have a say. And not everything has been established. Not everything is set in stone. There are some things that are pretty clear, so you're not operating with

huge amount of unknown and just going in the dark all the time, you have some clarity, but you also have a lot of remaining room to make a say, to put your word in there. I mean, to make an impact as a designer, both internally and when it comes to the product itself.

So I think that this is a very, very magical land if you want. And I'm happy that you're currently working in this magical space and myself actually, but I'm still at home with the baby. I guess that's it for today. Thanks to everyone who listened. Sorry for the occasional interruptions.

This is the Honest UX Talks podcast, so things are pretty honest and raw. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Spline, for sponsoring our conversations. Thanks to everyone who voted for us in the UX Tweak survey. Turns out that we are the number one most voted for podcast in the UX design category and voted by UX designers, actually, because it's per role.

of the respondents. So it's true that there might be a small bias there because we shared it on our socials and maybe our community got activated, but at the same time we celebrated, we're very grateful for every listen that we get for every review that we get for all the nice messages and every topic suggestion as well. So if you have any ideas for future episodes, feel, please feel free to message me or on FISA or check out our,

Instagram page on SUX Talks. You can find us there. Thank you everyone for listening and see you in the next episode. Bye. Bye. Have a good day.