HeyJaredUX Mentor Diaries
The unspoken UX career rules are being rewritten fast. I document what's actually working now. Dead honest career advice from the VP trenches.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 17
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Aug 5, 2026
Latest issues
🫷How to effectively push back as a designer when leadership already loves the AI prototype PM created (opens the original)
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The message my client got from their PM:“Leadership loved my demo. Can you review the experience before we pilot in 4 weeks?”This is how a Principal designer (my client) had been sent a “working prototype” of a new support workspace. Her PM had designed and built it with AI, with help from one engineer. It looked convincing, the VP loved it and already wanted to pilot it.A 4-week-from-now pilot date was already circulating.My client was being asked to “review it”.Not an ideal time to consult a r
🆕 Before Monday: top 5 news for designers on hiring, AI, leadership and org power (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="630" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!maVo!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F51a73e57-16cf-4074-9fad-ae79ea968907_1200x630.png"
🚨 If you’re running an external job search AND internal promo at the same time, read this to avoid common traps (opens the original)
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A Principal designer, 12 years in, booked a session with me because she felt that “the market was broken.”That was her framing and I did not argue with it, because the state of market was definitely not helping. She submitted 11 highly tailored applications over about a year. Got 2 screens…and no offers. In the same 12 months she had done everything the advice told her to do. Learned some product strategy, took a front-end dev course, voluntered for a stretch assignment into research ops.She had
The two loudest pieces of career advice in design cancel each other out (opens the original)
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No, you are not confused..but the advice you’ve been getting is.Because here is what happened this year. Nielsen Norman published their outlook and said the people who thrive from here are adaptable generalists, that the job now demands breadth and judgment rather than artifacts, and that treating design as strategic problem solving is the way through.Then the hiring research landed and said something close to the opposit
The art and science of making decisions at work (opens the original)
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Ok, on Saturday, I gave you “the sort” for making decisions: compare what “a week of waiting” costs against “what being wrong and correcting” costs, and if the undo is cheap, make the call.Then “somebody very senior” asks “why you moved without checking with them”, and everything I told you on Saturday goes out of your head 🤦🏻♀️So here is the thing I most want you to take from this issue ↴
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