I Got Fired Over Christmas And Nobody Told Me - Product Design Horror Stories
Watch & Listen:
In 2015, Nick drove to an interview in his moms car. Three minutes in, the hiring manager told him he would never make it as a designer. 10 Years later, he loses his product design job over Christmas. And that's just the start...
In this episode of The Design Table Podcast, Tyler and Nick share the worst moments of their careers so far. Nick gets torn apart in his first ever interview, prints a batch of flyers that come back the wrong color (because nobody told him about RGB and CMYK), and takes on a small favor for a client that turns into a project so big it costs him two clients.
In the meantime, Tyler gets thrown into a print job with zero training, discovers his own company was quietly interviewing outside UX agencies behind his back, and gets let go about a month later. Nick turns down a request to fly to Asia for work, gets let go over the Christmas break, and finds out because nobody bothered to tell him.
They weren't bad at their job (is what they're telling each other). Sometimes it is just not the right fit, for either side, and the only way to find that out is to live through it.
Key takeaways
"I always was scared to ask too many questions because I didn't want to come across as someone who just doesn't get it or waste time of the stakeholder slash client. So I would rush to this point of, yeah, yeah, get it. I'll get to work, you know? But then you have this big risk of what what I just told you, just misaligning on, you know, hours required or things to deliver. And then the result then is just way worse compared to asking one or two extra questions."
"I always was scared to ask too many questions because I didn't want to come across as someone who just doesn't get it or waste time of the stakeholder slash client. So I would rush to this point of, yeah, yeah, I get it. I'll get to work. But then you have this big risk of what I just told you, just misaligning on hours required or things to deliver. And then the result then is just way worse compared to asking one or two extra questions."
Watch it on YouTube
Hosts
Tyler White
Tyler White is a Principal Product Designer with 15 years of experience in B2B SaaS and fintech, helping teams scope, frame, and connect design work to real business outcomes.
Nick Groeneveld
Nick Groeneveld is a freelance UX and product designers from the Netherlands. He started his design career in 2015 and has since then worked for startups, government agencies, and corporations.
