Member-only story
It’s okay to be okay at your job
A friend of mine had just finished her second year as the sole UX designer at a medtech startup in Seoul when she was complaining to me about her job. We were at a Harry Potter café in Hongdae drinking overpriced but amusing drinks while people strolled past the windows in the crisp fall Saturday sunlight.
“I feel so bad at my job. I see all these cool projects on Dribbble and Behance and want to do them but I just have to make a chat window or menu. I don’t think I can make anything new.”
Tech is a crucible of overachievers. The 10x mindset has permeated every facet of tech, even in design. No one is “good at their job,” they’re ninjas, rockstars, pirates. No one is using boilerplate, standardized designs, they’re all smashing the status quo, breaking the grid, furthering humanity through their elegant yet sophisticated new take on design brutalism.
This is causing a massive rift between what the actual company needs and what people want to be seen as on their LinkedIn profile. Young tech workers are having breakdowns because they feel like they’re not accomplishing anything new or noteworthy when they’re doing perfectly usable, stable, fundamental work.
You do not have to be a generational talent to be successful. You don’t have to be the Buckminster Fuller or Nikola Tesla of UX design to be considered great…
