151–160 of 187 posts
This is one of the most unprofessional things I've ever read. Giving callouts to people who passed you up for a hire is just... unacceptable.
The hate, the vitorial, the attacks, the arrogance, the lack of accountability, paranoid, passive aggressive, complaining intensely about event trivial things...
This is the type of person I would leave a project over, no matter how exciting the work.
@morganknutson, your writing style is on point.
Controversial opinion here. I know that exaggerating and complaining is a surefire way to get clicks, but it's hard to take the author's criticisms seriously when he complains about so many different things. Some as minor as the noogler orientation. Others as petty as putting down colleagues who haven't worked as designers before. Regarding the main event in question: I like that Google allows people to party in the…
> Anyhow, my wholesale redesign of all of Jim’s work was obviously making him feel bad.
> One day, he came up to me totally flustered in one of the micro-kitchens. He said “People aren’t liking these icons.” I said, “Oh, ok, let me know who and I’ll collect their feedback and we can make them better.”
...
> Me: “OK, no worries man. Would it make you feel better if I put something together that explains my decision making and then you and whomever else can punch holes in it, and give me direct feedback?”
> Jim: “Yeah, ok, sounds good. I’ll put something on the calendar.”
> 9am the next morning. A dick move.
> I went home and got to work.
> In the early evening I got a call from my dad. My grandmother’s health took a turn for the worst. They weren’t sure she’d make it past the evening.
> I couldn’t grieve. I needed to make this happen. These two designers were beloved by Greg. I had to win them over or they’d screw everything up for me. Everything I’d worked for could come crashing down due to their pettiness.
Like, holy hell. Jim is a _peer_. Nobody asked Morgan to do this work, Morgan volunteered to do it. And he decided to work through a major life event in the off hours for something that didn't come from anyone above him in the hierarchy? And then to blow the other guy up when he reschedules the meeting? Wow.
I'm sure Google+ is a dumpster fire, but reading this my only takeaway was... fuck, I hope I never work with anyone this toxic. The hate, the vitorial, the attacks, the arrogance, the lack of accountability, paranoid, passive aggressive, complaining intensely about event trivial things... This is the type of person I would leave a project over, no matter how exciting the work.
Controversial opinion here. I know that exaggerating and complaining is a surefire way to get clicks, but it's hard to take the author's criticisms seriously when he complains about so many different things. Some as minor as the noogler orientation. Others as petty as putting down colleagues who haven't worked as designers before. Regarding the main event in question: I like that Google allows people to party in the…
It was a hard lesson for me to learn in the past: if you care wildly more than the people around you -- so much that you work late into the night while your grandmother is dying and your coworkers are pounding drinks with their counterparts at a competitor -- you'll just end up really hurt and frustrated and they'll all think that you are the problem. The author seems like the kind of person that I'd love to do a 3-p…
This is clearly evident from when he mentioned his outrage that he:
"Never would’ve imagined that I was joining a team of 50+ designers where a bunch of them had never designed before.
And I was “evaluated” at about their level? These weren’t interns, these were designers in their very first roles ever...at Google."
From any UX design professional's perspective, he comes into their world, lacking any background in UX or basic understanding of user centered design methods, and just does the visual design portion of the work, not the actual hard work that goes into understanding human behavior, being curious and testing hypotheses and validating designs with quantitative and qualitative data via UX research methods.
Dude needs to check his ego in my opinion, design is a team sport and anyone can mock up random dribble worthy interfaces in an afternoon and think they deserve the title of designer then diss others who have a 4 year degree in fields related to understanding human behavior, not just art or graphic design (although art degrees are good if you solely focus on visual design due to color theory, typography, understanding design aesthetics, design critiquing etc.)
tl;dr
UI designer ≠ UX designer
Controversial opinion here. I know that exaggerating and complaining is a surefire way to get clicks, but it's hard to take the author's criticisms seriously when he complains about so many different things. Some as minor as the noogler orientation. Others as petty as putting down colleagues who haven't worked as designers before. Regarding the main event in question: I like that Google allows people to party in the…
I agree the writing style, it's not constructive. That said, I think the main point is that his manager and some of his colleagues ganged up on him because they felt threatened, and that resulted in him being let go. That does indicate a problem for Google if true. This is often the slow death people talk about when big company culture turns like this. This is made stronger by the fact Google+ failed, and they're shu…
>That does indicate a problem for Google if true.
I mean, if his writing is a reflection of how he behaves then why is this a problem for Google? Getting rid of toxic people in a company is a positive and not a negative.
This is clearly evident from when he mentioned his outrage that he:
"Never would’ve imagined that I was joining a team of 50+ designers where a bunch of them had never designed before.
And I was “evaluated” at about their level? These weren’t interns, these were designers in their very first roles ever...at Google."
From any UX design professional's perspective, he comes into their world, lacking any background in UX or basic understanding of user centered design methods, and just does the visual design portion of the work, not the actual hard work that goes into understanding human behavior, being curious and testing hypotheses and validating designs with quantitative and qualitative data via UX research methods.
Dude needs to check his ego in my opinion, design is a team sport and anyone can mock up random dribbble worthy interfaces in an afternoon and think they deserve the title of designer then diss others who have a 4 year degree in fields related to understanding human behavior, not just art or graphic design (although art degrees are good if you solely focus on visual design due to color theory, typography, understanding design aesthetics, design critiquing etc.)
tl;dr
UI designer ≠ UX designer
He’s a timid and generally kind person (running theme). But also not sure of himself. Not confident in his work. Also understandable considering it wasn’t the best. Often times he seemed anxiety stricken. This is the point at which you begin to realize the author is a bit of a jerk.