A common question for mid-career designers is: “Do I want to be in management? Do I want to level up as a senior IC?” 

How should designers at this phase of their career think about their career growth?

Renee Solorzano

Early in your career, you don't yet know all the things that you might like, and there's so much variety in the design industry.  as many opportunities as you can. The number one thing that you need to keep in mind is that you're always learning.

What do you want to focus on learning right now? You will have a long career and you can focus on different things at different times. Something that I wish somebody told me was: “you won't get to work on craft forever. I think the more senior that you get, the more that you have to think about the strategy and collaboration and all the other things”. 

But I think when you're in IC, you get this amazing moment in time to focus on the details, to focus on the pixels. That won't last forever so use this time to really hone your skills and your craft so that you have that really strong base.

Definitely think about dispersing your opportunities. I would say don't get stuck at a company because of their perks, be selfish. You have to think about yourself and what you want to learn, not what a company's giving you.  

A lot of designers love to think about their career, but sometimes they find it hard to bring up with their manager or sometimes the manager is not capable of handling these types of conversations. What tips do you have for designers to have more productive career conversations with their managers?

Renee Solorzano

I think it all starts from a basis of knowing each other and knowing where you're at as a designer, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What do I want to grow at?

And those are conversations that you should be able to have with your manager, if you can't, there's a problem. I think that is their job to know you as a designer, it should be a collaborative conversation. Sometimes a manager is able to look at that holistic experience and pull things out of you that you didn't know yourself. And that's kind of like the joy of having an amazing manager. So the first thing is understanding kind of where you're starting from and then it's where you want to go.

Some companies have ladders, some companies don't. Regardless of the state the company is in, you should be able to at least know what you want to grow at and what it looks like to get there. You should know where you want to get to and the tactical things you can do to get there so that you can have real conversations with your manager. And if you can align on the tactical things, you can actually see progress moving forward. 

Kary Romero Shapiro

What I want to impart to all of you is don't be shy. We're in this American society that rewards the squeaky wheel. And sometimes you have amazing managers who look beyond that and say, who's actually really doing their job and who's actually not shining a spotlight on themselves, and I need to shine a spotlight on them because I actually see more potential in them than maybe they even see in themselves or maybe they do and they just don't care to talk about it. 

And that's really not their job. It's not your job to be out there selling yourself all the time. Like exhausting at least and I think when you have great leaders, they can see that and help their team grow, and provide a sense of equity across the team.

But as an individual, thinking about your career, identifying, who pulls the strings as well as who is a great collaborator, who's not your boss, but how can I make amazing things with that person? Like they seem really talented together. We could be five times better. I think, starting to look out at your community and identify who is around me, where I could help them. They could help me. And also who is pulling the strings and how do I have transparent conversations with them? 

You may be feeling nervous but know that you're not the only one doing it. In fact, it's happening all the time. So know that people are used to getting those conversations brought up to them, and if they're unable to engage in them, then there's a deeper problem because a real manager's role is to help you grow.

The more that you're growing and the more responsibilities you're taking on, or the better that you're getting at your job. The better it is for the business, the easier it is for the manager.

How do we bring more leadership behaviors into the work that we do? A lot of the designers in this audience are currently independent contributors. Sometimes there is this weird space between how can I demonstrate leadership? Not as a manager, but how can I show more of that leadership behavior at the IT? So where should designers start thinking about this? Like how can they effectively demonstrate some of that leadership quality?

Renee Solorzano

Titles don't matter in this. I think you can be a leader as early as you can in your career. And I think the biggest advice I have here is to be really proactive. Don't be scared. If you see a problem or an opportunity to help your team to help the company, just do it, don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.

You can find these opportunities within your teams and just go and do it. You just have to be confident in yourself and to be like, I can actually put this plan together, crowd people, and lead people in making it happen. And then people are actually going to start to see that in you.

I was starting to develop these skills way before the time that I was a manager, just because of the stance that I was taking within these companies to be a leader in that space. So if you carve it out for yourself, things will come, and from there, it's just a domino effect of what you can do.

Kary Romero Shapiro

There's a lot of incredible designers who I know, it doesn't matter if they're just getting started or if they've been in the industry longer than I have, and they're continuing down this path as an individual contributor that has found their own ways to lead in their own authentic way. 

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I think helping others solve problems, empowering them, mentoring them, teaching them, and being open to learning from them, can situate you as a leader because you're starting to spread skills horizontally and absorb them yourself and grow yourself.

It's just about having the mindset of wanting to learn and wanting to help, and being open. When I think about most senior designers, principal designers, or whoever that I worked with, they really became like partners in terms of how do I clear a path for them to draw up a vision and to collaborate with other designers and allow them to be the ones giving the feedback and critiques, allowed them to be the ones who are really driving forward craft on the team. 

Finding that natural ability and starting with career coaching is like an amazing place to start to uncover some of those things. Writing those things down for yourself. Identify what I value right now. I'm going to write that down next to my goals. So every time I'm working towards something it might seem annoying at the time, but I am actually setting others up for success. 

And I want whoever takes on this file to be successful next time, creating these trails of the action that you're taking, how it's helping you meet your goal as well as like, how does that really relate back to something that you value can bring a lot more meaning to your work? and it can also help you grow as a leader to be able to start to identify those things in yourself, allow to have the ability to identify those skills.

If you could list two or three things that had helped you get to where you are today, what would they be?

Renee Solorzano

I think one is just how I was raised. My parents are both immigrants. So there's a level of hustle, that needing to do what we do and get to it, has really helped me in my career as well as empathy. I grew up in a one-bedroom home, so we were all on top of each other, and our home is the user experience to figure out.

How we can have a clean house and have our own spaces, but also be aware of each other and still give each other our space. I obviously did not know this at the time, but when I became a designer, I was like, oh, I'm empathetic because that's how I was raised. 

The second thing is meeting amazing mentors along the way and bringing them with me. And some of this is by luck. I only got the job at Yahoo because at RISD we had a portfolio day and there were all these amazing agencies, and there were lines out the door and Yahoo was in the corner. Literally, nobody was talking to them. So I went up to them and I brought them my portfolio. And I was like, I don't do web, but do you want to look over my portfolio? And I got a call that summer from Jeff, the guy that was at the career fair, and he said: “would you want to work here?”

And I was like, what? And I took a chance and I did it and he became my mentor and he was like, yeah, I got it. A production job. Like literally Photoshopping people's heads out for things, but he's like, I'm going to teach you UX on the side. So he took a chance on me. 

I like to put myself in situations where I'm meeting design leaders that I can connect with and can find that mentorship into. I'm not an extrovert, I hate going to design leadership places, meeting people, having to talk to people on my own. Four days of literally talking to people every day is my worst nightmare. But I put myself in these situations because I know it's important and I know I need to make connections. And I met another amazing mentor. Her name's Vanessa Cho. And she has been my guiding star. So having people around you to connect with later in life is really important. 

Last one is very tied to this, which is, it's all about people. It all comes down to people and making sure wherever you are building connections with people and they will remember you.

You might not work directly with somebody, but they might come up later in a couple of years. I think at every place you're at just make sure that you're building connections and being a great human and it's just really important to know that you are making an impression.

Kary Romero Shapiro

Being open to all different types of people has really helped in a creative profession. Because when you're able to spot people, you're able to see how these people together could make something really amazing, and being able to build those chemistries in those communities.

It's a big world, but it's a small world. You’ll end up overlapping, you end up building these trusts, and usually when you have the most trust, you have the most creativity. So, that's been really helpful, in the sense of connecting people and wanting people to make things. And just as simple as like, let's make fun things together. 

I do think there's a lot of luck involved, but you can kind of create your luck by opening up yourself to new experiences, and I think later in my career, much later when I was dealing with a lot more like politics and things like pay equity and a lot of HR things, just really seeking out ways to find support outside of work.

To find support in my family or to invest in my friendships because it's really easy when you're focused on your career to let those things be sidelined. But I found that, as I matured more in my career, it became ever more important.

The community around me was solid so that I could have the soul and bandwidth to take on these problems that have a real impact on people's lives beyond their Twitter bio. I think having that strong network outside of work actually does contribute to you succeeding within your job.