Sr. Designer 11 Months After Bootcamp

I began my UX journey just 15 months before I was promoted to Senior Product Designer at my organization. I didn’t anticipate my career to accelerate as quickly as it did. Part of the reason I’m writing this is to try to make sense of it for myself. Hopefully it helps someone else just starting out.

Here are some of the things that I think helped my rapid career growth:

I’m new to UX, not the workforce

I’ve had held several past careers, including sales and customer service, as well as a successful side hustle as a writer…and a less successful stint as an entrepreneur of a small retail business. I came to the table with many soft skills, that, frankly, I just didn’t have when I was 20 years old. That doesn’t mean all 20 year olds are inherently feral creatures not fit for the workplace — but, I probably was. What I’m also trying to say is, if you’re a career changer, this can be a good thing for you, so long as you know how to transfer your skill set from your past life into your new career.

I started at a start-up

My first full-time UX role, after some freelancing, was (and still is) at a start-up. This gave me an opportunity to step into a lot of responsibility, which led to quick advancement.

I asked for it

Several months into my job, my boss mentioned I was on a trajectory for advancement. Soon after that, I was being contacted by recruiters for Senior roles (note: this also happened at the start of my job with off-shore recruiters spamming me via email. These more recent recruitment solicitations were different in that they were by US recruiters on LinkedIn who had actually bothered to look at my profile).

This newfound attention gave me the added confidence to invite my boss to my own performance review. This isn’t something I’d necessarily recommend — my boss said that it might have been better if I had just asked her when my review might be, which would have been reasonable given the aforementioned comment about my promotion. However, I think if I hadn’t pressed my very busy boss to discuss my career with me, and had I not put a meeting on the calendar so that we would both remember to make the time to discuss my progression, my promotion might not have arrived when it did.

My boss is really awesome

My supervisor is amazing. She values the professional growth of her direct reports. She’s respectful and considerate. She’s a tremendous leader. I got really lucky here.

Although I try to look for employers who can also be mentors to me, she came onto the team about 6 weeks after myself, so I can’t even take credit for that. Sheer luck. And for that I’m very grateful.

I worked for it

If you ask my live-in partner how serious I was about my UX Career, he’ll tell you he saw me studying 7 days a week while I was in bootcamp and still after bootcamp.

The summer I “graduated” I filled my portfolio with student projects, design challenges and “real world” work done through volunteering and freelancing.

And now, it’s not unusual for me to go back to my desk after dinner to finish a design project, or to clock volunteer time on a Saturday morning.

I’m not recommending that someone wanting a promotion should exhibit this flagrant disregard for healthy boundaries and US labor laws. I’m just saying, I put in the time. I did my best. I tried every day.

Sometimes it’s really hard. I have imposter syndrome. I have insecurities. I sometimes get defensive when people ask me valid questions in design reviews. I sometimes struggle with humility and constructive feedback.

I’ve definitely stumbled along the way. But I got back up, every morning, and showed up at my desk; coffee in hand, cat in lap.