It might sound like a conspiracy to say that tech workers are subject to a rigged job market designed by billionaires for the consolidation of wealth and power. 

After 2+ years of continued instability, mass layoffs, a hellacious job market, wage stagnation, RTO mandates, and ever increasing workloads, we need no more proof that Big Tech bosses and their acolytes see workers as disposable cogs in a machine. 

Amy talks with Lauren Friedman, founder of Workforce Consulting, LLC, to unpack the hidden forces and power plays shaping the tech job market. With extensive experience in tech recruiting and workforce consulting, Lauren spills the tea on the machinations of Big Tech to hoard talent, knowledge, and money as a deliberate business strategy with disastrous consequences for millions of tech workers.

Precarity has come to tech work, but you don’t have to be a fish in a barrel. We have the individual and collective power to enact change and survive this together.

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Find Lauren on LinkedIn

Episode transcript

It's been a tough couple of years for UX research professionals, and many are considering pivoting their careers within tech or beyond.

Leadership coach Tatiana Vlahovic reminds us that researchers plenty of marketable skills that can be applied in other contexts and roles. Challenging as they may be, professional and personal inflection points present opportunities for UXR practitioners and leaders to expand and evolve their careers. 

During this time of uncertainty, we hope this episode causes listeners to ponder an important question: What do I really want for my career and life, and what will I do to get there?

Tatiana Vlahovic is the founder of Nurturing Clarity, a boutique leadership coaching and development firm where she creates custom partnerships for leaders and teams in UX, tech, and beyond to support them through leadership challenges and to open new possibilities.

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In this AMA, Amy and Laura (or maybe her doppelgänger) answer some listener-submitted questions.

- Hiring managers want UX rock stars, so how do you get hired if you've had the misfortune of working in places where you weren’t supported or were underutilized, and didn't get to have much impact or work on cool stuff?

- How do you describe work impact on your resume if it's not tracked or measured, a project got canceled, or you got laid off and don't know what happened?

- What should specialist designers do in a job market that favors generalists and visual design skills? Is a generalist path still viable?

- A role for Senior UXR at Amazon wants 6+ years leading research projects with demonstrated impact. Would academic research count toward this?

- I was recently interviewing for a job and the salary I discussed with the recruiter was $105K-$110K CAD. I got the job and now they’re offering me $82K-$90K CAD. Is there a way to re-negotiate this offer?

- What’s your take on engaging with LinkedIn content that's critical about the inhumanities of the job search?

Bonus: find out how Laura really feels about Figma.

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Episode transcript

Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.

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A lack of standardized definitions for UX research roles and levels across companies presents a challenge for job searches, hiring, promotions, and career planning. 

Amy chats with Lawton Pybus and Thomas Stokes of Drill Bit Labs about their research on the state of UXR job leveling, qualifications, responsibilities, and compensation for IC and manager roles. 

Join us for a fun discussion of what they learned and actionable recommendations for how you use their new data-driven leveling framework to design a more effective and efficient job search, hiring process, team leveling infrastructure, and UXR career plan. Plus some an update on the UXR job market.

Come for the insights, stay for the research nerdery.

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The research: What we can learn from UX Research job descriptions (three part series)

Drill Bit Labs Newsletter

Why is the tech job market still so bad? Why are the mass layoffs still happening? Why is hiring so broken, and whose fault is it? Job seekers, hiring managers, and recruiters alike will want to tune in to my conversation with recruiter and founder of Hire Breakthrough, Kimone Napier, for some commiseration and perspective during this defeating and demoralizing time. 

We also talk what exactly an ATS is and why you don’t need to worry about it, what companies are legally allowed to verify about your past employment, and building a resilient career in uncertain times.

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Got a request for a topic or guest? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Links

How to navigate the ever-changing job market

Hire Breakthrough

Weekly Job Leads 

Kimone's LinkedIn

Building a resilient career in uncertain times

Amy chats with writer, podcaster, speaker, Pokémon enthusiast, research champion, and founder of User Research Academy, Nikki Anderson. Nikki provides sage advice for taking your job interviews, resume, and portfolio up a few notches, and shares the most common mistakes she's made as a candidate and what she's seen as a hiring manager.

She also imparts a supportive message to job seekers, and realistic perspective on the current and future state of UX during a very challenging time for everyone in the community. The chaos and uncertainty of mass layoffs and AI have led many to ask, is UX dead? Nikki believes that UX will persist and encourages us to use this moment as an opportunity for a conversation about reimagining and rebuilding in a better way. 

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Episode transcript

Join Nikki's User Research Academy

Subscribe to Nikki's Substack

A UXR Resume Journey (Nikki's comprehensive guide)

Nikki's guide to case studies

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Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Amy chats with coach Roberta Dombrowski about the experience of interviewing for tech jobs as “an only”. If you’ve ever been an “only” (woman, person of color, neurodivergent, queer, etc.) or first of your kind on a team, this one’s for you. Hiring managers, recruiters, and anyone else who cares about other people, can also learn a thing or two about creating an inclusive hiring process to set “onlys” up for success.

Roberta is the founder of Learn Mindfully where she helps onlys reestablish their relationship to work, themselves, and the people they work with, through an integration of head, heart, and body. 

With more than a decade of experience designing employee and customer experiences and working with leaders at companies like Adobe, Instacart, Shopify, ServiceNow, and LinkedIn, she is dedicated to leveling the playing field at work and believes that leaders at all levels can spark change.

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Episode transcript

Navigating Job Search Bias

70+ questions to make sure your next role meets your needs

More resources from Roberta

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Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Senior Product Design Manager and respected UX community contributor Mitch Clements shares how he created an attentive, fair, and effective hiring process to scale his 26-person (and counting!) design team at Encino. UX hiring managers and job seekers will appreciate Mitch's reflections on:

• Lessons learned on screening and interviewing candidates in a crowded market, from entry level to advanced practitioners

Links

Episode transcript

Mitch's website and coaching services

Mitch's LinkedIn

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Leadership coach, design executive, and founder of Happy Path Sally Carson. Sally shares her hiring insights and job search advice based on 20+ years in tech, including her time as a hiring manager and leader of design teams at LinkedIn and Cisco. We talk about:

Using a "jobs to be done" framework to craft your resume, portfolio, and other materials according to the needs and goals of your audience

Insights into how recruiters use LinkedIn search and filters to find qualified candidates (Sally's team worked on variety of features for finding talent)

Tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile that go beyond the basics (like adding skills tags to your jobs so you come up in search)

One Weird (Smart) Trick for figuring out how to talk about the business impact of your work

How managing up *might* help you avoid a layoff

Why design and tech professionals need to learn AI now

Something about bras for dogs?

Links

Episode transcript

Sally's website

Keep your job in 2024 by managing up

Adding business results to LinkedIn profile

Importance of adding skills to LinkedIn profile

The AI Dilemma - from the Center for Humane Technology (vimeo)

Free LinkedIn Learning AI course

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Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.