July 6, 2021
The not-so-rosy side of learning the craft
TL;DR
Four years ago I wrote this: diz.lt/pradzia
Two things have changed since then:
I've taught at a few of them. Some academies' marketing tends to inflate student expectations. And articles like mine probably don't help reduce those expectations either.
So let me tell you about the not-so-rosy side of learning the craft.
When I taught at Codeacademy, we asked students to spend 10 hours a week in class and another 10 hours grinding at home. For two months. With the first cohort, prepping for a lecture took me roughly as long as giving the lecture itself. I was working full-time at the time. That's about a 60-hour work week. I can very well understand how f**ked the students were who dedicated the bare minimum recommended time at home + lectures + full-time job. By the end of the course I was completely burned out and would take a few months off before picking up the next group. After a course like that, you naturally want to catch your breath and feel like the hardest part is behind you. Well... it's not. The hardest part is yet to come.
In Interakcijos' latest Lithuanian UX job board roundup there are 20 job postings at mid-senior-lead level. And 1 junior-intern. Meanwhile, a three-digit number of people finish various UX courses every year in Vilnius alone. You're facing massive competition. Personally, seeing that you've completed a course means nothing to me - what matters is how many skills you have. Maybe it matters to others. But it still won't make you stand out from the crowd. The value of courses isn't in the line on your CV that says you studied. The value of courses is that they can help you grow faster. At the end of the day, what matters is what you've learned and what skills/experience you have. With courses or without them.
One path is to freelance and hustle on various platforms (i.e. 99designs, Upwork, Fiverr, etc.) - financially you'll probably be at a loss, not a profit. But it's a totally legit way to gain real experience. With tragically worded briefs, clueless clients, and all other injustice the world has to offer. 99designs creates an incredibly dysfunctional designer-client relationship, and is basically spec work. With all these downsides, a few months of grinding there will build way better muscles than yet another sterile course.
Another path is an internship. IMO internships should be paid. But let's put that aside. Regardless of whether it's paid or not - an intern costs the company money. A senior designer (including equipment, licenses, vacation, and coffee) costs the company at least €40 per hour. How many hours of that designer's time will an intern eat up over a few months?
OK, so we've established that even in an unpaid internship, the intern has very real costs for the company. What benefits can the company expect? Usually, reading motivation letters, the benefits are two:
The problem is you can't spread desire to learn on bread. And it's not even clear whether that desire won't vanish after the first failures. If the company can choose (and the market is such that they can) - you need to offer the company some real skills. Some of the easiest skills to develop on your own are UI design and working with UI design software.
For those skills to appear - you just need to do the work yourself. Just take things and make them. If you save your early terrible and crooked designs - you'll be able to show how fast you're progressing - that's also a great datapoint when selecting people.
I'd strongly recommend writing to companies that aren't even looking for interns. What matters is that you can clearly articulate the value you're offering. "I crave knowledge and learn fast" - not sufficient value. "I can clean up your component library migrating from Sketch to Figma" - value. "I can moderate usability tests" - value. "I can tag your HotJar recordings where usability problems are visible" - value, etc.
If you have skills, I believe you can find an internship, maybe even create one - i.e. if by showing what you can do you convince potential internship providers that you'll be not a burden but a net positive for the company - somewhere or another you'll get that internship. And then you can see the company's kitchen, and a ton of practical work nuances. If you work and improve for about a year, it's very likely you'll make it to the other side of the river. To where there are 20 job postings every month, and there's no longer a cloud of people applying for a single position.
To wrap up, a few things I highly recommend reading:
Whether driven by passion or by calculation, I think UX design, product management, and programming are all great career choices. It's just that the beginning of the road can be longer and muddier than it looks. And nothing, absolutely nothing, replaces focused independent work and skill-building.