Scaling Design Culture
Summary
When design teams start to grow within hyper-growth startups, there is often a natural fear that the design culture will change as a result. It doesn’t have to. By encouraging best practices on recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and interviewing for “culture fit” you can benefit from a more diverse and culture rich team. Join Meredith Black for a talk on the vision and values of scaling the design culture at Pinterest while also designing for 175 million users.
Key Insights
-
•
Pinterest’s co-founder Evan Sharp, a designer, ensures design has a strong seat at the company’s decision table.
-
•
The design team at Pinterest grew over 650% in three years, from 10 to 75 members, emphasizing diverse global representation.
-
•
Cross-functional teams combining designers, engineers, and product managers work collaboratively on roadmap and launch decisions.
-
•
Internal events like NITCON inspire employees with classes, keynotes, and social activities, supporting culture and learning.
-
•
Non-glamorous tasks such as design standard updates are gamified using events like Bash Bingo Days to maintain motivation.
-
•
The Workshop program acts as an innovation incubator where designers collaborate away from their desks to solve product problems.
-
•
Hiring focuses on portfolio presentation, deep product knowledge (both strengths and flaws), and cultural fit prioritizing humility.
-
•
Program managers (called producers) buffer designers from meeting overload and distractions, improving focus and productivity.
-
•
Diversity is a key pillar, with one in three designers from international backgrounds, to better understand users worldwide.
-
•
Maintaining culture at scale involves deliberate slow hiring, integrating diverse skill sets, and evolving shared learning programs.
Notable Quotes
"Design always has a seat at the table at Pinterest because our co-founder is a designer."
"We call our collaborative decision-making process knitting — it’s one of our core values."
"Burnout isn’t caused by working too much; it happens when people aren’t stimulated."
"When hiring, we want candidates who know the product well — both what works and what doesn’t."
"We will not hire an asshole. Culture trumps even exceptional talent."
"The Workshop is an outlet for innovation, pushing designers out of their day-to-day to solve problems quickly."
"Fika is our weekly tradition where designers share projects inspired from Pins over coffee and dessert."
"One in three designers on our team is from another country — diversity improves relevance for our global users."
"Instead of flashy outings, the team prefers simple park days with rosé, blankets, and games that build trust."
"Hiring is hard, but firing the wrong person is harder — so we must be thoughtful and deliberate."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"You need both a bottom-up and a top-down approach to achieve organizational alignment for information architecture."
Bram WesselEnterprise Information Architecture
January 10, 2020
"Learning and knowledge management isn’t just about quality of work, it’s deeply tied to retaining people and motivation."
John DevanneyThe Design Management Office
November 6, 2017
"Product managers are going to have to say no to roughly 95% of everything that comes in."
Rich MironovHow Can Product Managers and UXers Help Each Other (and Why are Product Folks so Annoying Sometimes)?
December 6, 2022
"Designing for change means focusing on learnability and product consumability, not just ease of use."
Malini RaoLessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey
June 9, 2021
"Sometimes leadership clings to single metrics that later prove inadequate because a research function is too small to offer broader insights."
Iulia CornigeanuQuantQual Book Club: Small Data
March 8, 2024
"It’s worth explaining your new communication approach to stakeholders to save their time and foster discussion."
Bruce GillespieLearning from journalism: Balancing impactful communication with compassionate storytelling
March 13, 2025
"Numbers drive conversations, numbers drive decisions. That is the executive language."
Rima Campbell Amrit S BhachuIncrease Productivity and Drive Business Impact
September 24, 2024
"Evals are everywhere, right? Everybody's talking about evals. It is like one of the key things in developing useful AI products."
Peter Van DijckHands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge
October 15, 2025
"Mirror neurons are triggered when we listen to a story, allowing us to empathize by identifying shared commonalities."
Bilan HashiThe Tension Between Story Collecting and Story Telling in Research
March 10, 2021
