Decide which career path is right for you—IC track or management—and develop a step-by-step plan to get promoted.
This book is based on interviews with managers, staff/principal designers, company policies, and an analysis of the career paths of hundreds of designers.
Understand the roles — Learn about the roles of staff and design manager, and evaluate which option is right for your career.
Find the gaps — Identify the skills you need to improve to get promoted to a lead, staff, or managerial position.
Build a plan — Create an actionable plan for advancing to the next level of your career, based on insights from designers who have done it before.
Take action — Improve the skills needed to get promoted to a staff designer or manager.
I'm a product designer based in Berlin. For the past 14 years I led design at multiple startups, owned a small agency and worked as a freelancer and consultant.
In the last five years I’m building my own products and published three books including the Amazon-best seller “Solving Product Design Exercises”.
The products I built for the design community are used by tens of thousands of designers working at companies like Google, Meta, Airbnb, Netflix and Boeing.
The Path to Senior Product Designer
Knowing every Figma trick doesn’t get you promoted.
Learn 12 skills that do, like mentoring, giving feedback, presenting design, and improving processes.
The book is based on how more than 50 companies evaluate designers and employees, including Etsy, Medium, Dropbox, Square, Figma, Zendesk, Intercom, and Coursera.
Leading and influencing people without formal authority.
Deciding if management is right for you.
Leading end-to-end, large-scale design projects.
Guiding, mentoring, and developing junior designers and peers.
Working effectively with cross-functional teams, including product, engineering, and marketing.
Identifying the skills you need to improve to progress to a staff, lead, or managerial role.