Design managers and directors, how is your time spent?

Staples
Owca31

Go to company page Staples

Owca31
Feb 16 4 Comments

I have a couple offers, one staff and the other a manager role. I have some management experience with having a couple direct reports in the last, I've managed offshore design teams, mentored junior designers, and been involved in a lot of design ops stuff. Is becoming a manager pretty much these things but just doing them all the time? I've had the luxury of being mostly IC while just dabbling in these areas as needed. So in turn I haven't been in endless soul crushing meetings, manage budgets, or hire/fire. I'm at a point I want to figure out if people mgmt is something I'm into as a career path or not. Personally, I love the mix of IC and mgmt responsibilities the problem is I'm not being paid as a manager haha. I worked at Salesforce for a few years and it seems like once you became a manager you literally just went to meetings all day and did no design work. I definitely don't want that kind of a manager role, just not sure how many manager/director roles out there are what I'm talking about. Would love to hear from people in these positions across various companies on their experiences. Thanks! #design #ui/ux

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TOP 4 Comments
  • Amazon
    vccxxd

    Go to company page Amazon

    vccxxd
    If money is the issue, manager isn’t always highest paying. You end up working more and taking on more stress for 10% pay higher than IC at same level…

    Try principal at a top tech (FAANG)
    Feb 19 0
  • New
    ctrl-c

    New

    ctrl-c
    Does depend on the org a bit, but yeah instead of designing products you are designing teams. Expect a lot more time in meetings, decks, docs, and spreadsheets.
    Feb 16 0
  • Google / Design
    inbfr19

    Go to company page Google Design

    inbfr19
    Manager/Director at Google is almost all meetings — crits, product strategy, alignment with cross-functional partners etc.
    Feb 16 0
  • Truist
    bloombo52

    Go to company page Truist

    bloombo52
    What do you mean by design work? As a manager or director, you’ll still be doing design, but you are working on more strategic design as opposed to design execution.

    Unless you are a manager/lead at a startup where you’ll likely be expected to produce design deliverables for developers, you will most likely not be doing design execution as a people manager.
    Feb 16 0