Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Exploring What Decades of Expertise Can Do Outside a Traditional Tech Role
This video is featured in the Learning playlist.
Summary
The actual landscape is wider: fractional leadership, independent consulting, advisory and board work, portfolio careers, and others that most senior practitioners have considered in passing but not deliberately.
Greg Baker is co-founder of DesignMap, a 20-year UX strategy firm, and author of the Substack The Sustainable Practice. He shares what he's noticed watching directors, VPs, and principal practitioners navigate the shift.
Key Insights
-
•
Discretionary budgets for design partners in enterprises have vanished first, signaling tougher job markets ahead.
-
•
Senior design professionals face longer job searches, sometimes spanning years, making multiple career strategies essential.
-
•
Independent pathways include consulting, fractional leadership, product building, expert network calls, and teaching.
-
•
Most successful independent practitioners combine multiple work pathways to create a flywheel effect.
-
•
Business development is the hardest part of going independent, often taking half or more of your time.
-
•
Reframing sales as helping others rather than selling makes business development more natural.
-
•
An essential early exercise is re-describing yourself without your job title, focusing on problems you solve, not artifacts you deliver.
-
•
Networking is the primary engine for finding independent work; cold outbound approaches rarely succeed in design.
-
•
Testing your personal positioning through quiet market reconnaissance calls yields honest and actionable feedback.
-
•
AI and automation tools can optimize administrative work, but building without early validation remains a common pitfall.
Notable Quotes
"I feel like there’s going to be less of these in-house roles inside big agencies in the future."
"If you go independent, you may have to spend half of your time or more selling your work."
"I’m not trying to sell things to people, I’m looking for people to help."
"Ask for work and you’ll get advice; ask for advice and eventually you’ll get work."
"Describing yourself without the word design in your title forces you to focus on actual problems you solve."
"Independent work runs on trust; cold outbound rarely works in our field."
"The hardest part isn’t changing diapers, it's everything else — the work around the work."
"Every gray hair means you can charge more because it’s knowledge and experience."
"The sale is the sample — how you do discovery calls shows them what working with you is like."
"It’s never been easier to build the wrong thing — you must get input before going too far."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"An elite athlete doesn’t turn up at the Olympics and do their thing without coaches, physios, nutritionists."
Dr. Karl JeffriesThe Science of Creativity for DesignOps
January 8, 2024
"You have to understand how the business actually makes money to align UX with it."
Amy MarquezINVEST: Discussion
June 15, 2018
"Enterprise UX is still nascent—businesses worldwide are just beginning to figure out where UX fits."
Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian RohrerDiscussion
May 13, 2015
"Some needs proved full-time, so hybrid staffing models are often short term or mixed part-time."
Alicia MootyDesign Staffing Models
September 30, 2021
"We want to stay in the game no users cursing our name."
Ana Maria Montero Barrantes Aditi Dhar Michelle Kaplan Nate Osborne Matt LaurenceThe Authentic UX Talent Show
January 8, 2024
"Operations tends to be something companies only think about when they are scaling rapidly, but investing early is essential."
Lada Gorlenko Sharbani Dhar Sébastien Malo Rob Mitzel Ivana Ng Michal Anne RogondinoTheme 1: Discussion
January 8, 2024
"I didn’t want to be part of that as a founder, hacking attention just to fulfill engagement metrics."
Sofia QuinteroThe Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ
March 10, 2021
"Please don’t chop off that engine until the new one is built because you are not the only one on this plane."
Laura KleinUnique challenges of innovation in enterprises
April 23, 2020
"At Hotcho, we started with a qualitative focus, swung too far into quantitative, and then found a balanced middle ground."
Andrew MichaelBuilding a Product Insights Team
March 10, 2022
