We’re taking a holiday break, so we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes this year with Cassie McDaniel, Medium’s head of design. We’re also including video from the episode, which you can watch here or on our YouTube channel at dbtr.co/youtube. We hope you have a lovely holiday season with your family, friends, and loved ones.

—Eli & Aarron

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Cassie McDaniel, Medium’s head of design, is someone with a clear vision for how a design team should work. She believes team members should have a breadth of skills, craft should be the foundation of product design, and experimentation is important in both work and workflow. To that end, Cassie and the leadership team at Medium recently made what some might see as a controversial decision: They eliminated product management. The result? They are moving faster than ever.

We chat with Cassie about what led to this decision—and why it might not work for all teams, how she thinks about balancing Medium’s legacy of thoughtful design while moving the product forward, and how writing can help you advance your design career.

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