I have 0 UX YOE, but 7 YOE in physical product design (think toys, clothing, jewelry) and brand management. I’m having a hard time gauging what my salary range would be, and how much I’d be set back in terms of my TC with this transition. I’m 32 and weary of the change but in the long term it seems like UX tech salaries increase rapidly compared to CPG brand management roles. Current TC: $145k Things to consider: • Graduated with a Tier 1 Bachelor’s in political science • MBA, managed teams of 2-12 ppl • Completed 10+ certificates in art school as a hobby • have two design patents • designed an app as a hobby; only 140 customers used it though • no UX boot camp, working through Google’s Coursera now
You need a portfolio of some kind or at least a UX case study. For example, the app you made, why make the app, what problem/pain point did it solve. How did you address customer needs with your design? What features did you implement and why? Were they for adoption or delight? What did users say? Did you collect feedback? What changes did you make as a result. How did you drive adoption and delight? UX is not just your mock-ups and components. It’s how you crafted the entire experience and why. If you can put together some case studies then you would be able to start as a UX Designer, depends on where you live as to comp.
Thanks for thoughtful response - I’ll start putting together one. Are there any exceptional portfolios you’ve come across in the past that I can use as inspiration?
People transition from more distant fields. One area you would be a good fit for would be hardware UX. You can see if any companies have hardware UX manager roles open, think Facebook and Oculus, Google, Microsoft. That will be the closest transition. Perhaps while there you can pick up software design for the next role. Alternatively you can consider looking at SW UX design roles and leverage your general design knowledge as directly translating into a UX design role. Hopefully can get into senior level this way as an IC. note, hardware UX roles are fewer than SW. And as the other comment said, you need a portfolio, even if it's 2 projects with slides in PowerPoint/PDF about what the problem was, what you did or managed, why it was special, what the outcome was and what you learned or would do differently. You will probably have to send this or present to the team during interviews.
Thanks for the thoughtful response - very helpful and I’ll start looking into these.
This is all great advice - thanks everyone!
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Frustrating because one hand you'd prob be amazing as a senior designer and could net 300k TC easy. But they'd have to look past the lack of actual UX and recruiters are stupid.