I Almost Quit Design.
In July, I was let go from my job.
I’m not going to dress that up or soften it. It happened, and it knocked me sideways in the way that only losing a job can — that specific mix of shock, self-doubt, and the sudden, disorienting feeling of not knowing what comes next.
I updated my CV. I reached out to people. I started applying. And then the interviews started coming in — some through referrals, some through applications, all of them feeling like a fresh chance to prove myself.
I didn’t get any of them.
After a few weeks of this, I did what I probably should have done from the start. I sat down and got brutally honest with myself.
The Self-Audit Nobody Wants to Do
A self-audit sounds very professional and intentional. Mine was less glamorous. It was me, alone, going back through every interview in my head and asking a question I had been avoiding:
What am I actually saying in these rooms — and is it landing?
I started replaying conversations. The way I walked through my portfolio. The words I used to explain my decisions. The frameworks I referenced. And slowly, uncomfortably, a pattern emerged.
I was speaking fluent designer in rooms full of people who didn’t speak designer.
I was talking about design systems and component libraries when the interviewer wanted to know how I’d helped a product ship. I was referencing design critiques and iteration methodologies when what they needed to hear was how I’d worked with engineers under pressure. I was leading with the craft language of my discipline — the vocabulary that impresses other designers — in conversations with recruiters, founders, and hiring managers who were thinking in terms of timelines, business outcomes, and team dynamics.
I wasn’t communicating. I was performing. And the audience wasn’t following.
The Recruiter Who Changed Everything
Here’s where I have to give credit where it’s due.
After one particular interview that I felt — again — hadn’t gone well, I did something I hadn’t done before. I reached out to the recruiter afterwards and asked for honest feedback. Not the polite kind. The real kind.
She gave it to me.
She told me that while my work was clearly strong, I was losing people in the way I explained it. That the language I was using was creating distance instead of connection. That the people in the room weren’t evaluating my knowledge of design principles — they were trying to figure out if I could work with their team, understand their problems, and help them build something that worked.
It was one of those moments where something clicks so hard you almost feel it physically.
I had been so focused on demonstrating that I was a good designer that I had forgotten to demonstrate that I was someone they could actually work with.
The Real Problem With Design Language
Let me be specific about what I mean, because I think a lot of designers are doing this without realising it.
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Before the self-audit, I would explain a project something like this:
“I led the design system implementation for this product, establishing a component library with consistent token architecture that improved design-to-development handoff efficiency.”
Every word of that sentence is accurate. Every word of that sentence is also, to a non-designer, almost completely meaningless. What’s a design token? What does handoff efficiency look like in practice? Why should a founder or a PM or a recruiter care?
After the self-audit, I started speaking differently. The same project, told differently:
“The engineering team was spending a lot of time rebuilding the same UI components from scratch every sprint. I worked with them to create a shared library that cut that time down significantly — which meant we could move faster without the quality slipping.”
Same work. Same outcome. Completely different frame. One speaks to designers. The other speaks to anyone who has ever cared about a product shipping on time.
The shift wasn’t about dumbing anything down. It was about blending languages — taking what I know about design and translating it into the language of engineering constraints, stakeholder priorities, and business outcomes. Speaking in a way that a PM could relay to a founder. Speaking in a way that an engineer would nod along to. Speaking in a way that made the value of design legible to everyone in the room, not just the ones who already understood it.
What Nobody Tells You About Design Interviews
Here’s the thing design school and design Twitter don’t prepare you for: most of the people who will hire you in your career are not designers.
They’re recruiters trying to figure out if you’re a fit. They’re founders who care deeply about the product but think in terms of growth and retention. They’re engineering leads who want to know if you’ll make their life easier or harder. They’re PMs who need a collaborator, not a critic.
And when you walk into those conversations speaking exclusively in design language, you’re essentially asking them to do translation work — to take your Figma-speak and your methodology references and convert them into something they can evaluate. Most people won’t do that work. They’ll just move on to the next candidate.
The designers who get hired aren’t always the most skilled. They’re often the ones who can make their value immediately obvious to whoever is in the room. The ones who know when to go deep on craft and when to zoom out to impact. The ones who can talk to an engineer about edge cases and then turn around and talk to a CEO about conversion.
That’s not selling out your discipline. That’s being good at it.( I am not following my own advice. Probably that is why I am not yet hired)
I’m Still in the Search
I want to be honest about where this story ends — or rather, where it doesn’t end yet.
I haven’t landed the next role. I’m still interviewing. I’m still learning how to tell my story better with each conversation. There’s no triumphant conclusion here, no “and then I got the job of my dreams.”
But something has shifted. The interviews feel different now. The conversations flow better. I can see people engage when I talk about my work in a way that connects to their world rather than mine. I leave rooms feeling like I’ve actually communicated something, rather than just performed competence at someone.
And honestly? The process of losing a job, sitting with the discomfort, doing the audit, and rebuilding the way I present myself has taught me more about design than a lot of the work I’ve actually shipped.
Because at its core, design is communication. It’s understanding your audience and making something that works for them. I had just forgotten to apply that to the most important audience of all — the people deciding whether to bring me in.
I’m still working on it. But I’m working on the right thing now.
