How To Evaluate Company Culture for Product Design Roles
Company culture impacts your day-to-day design work in a few key ways.
Hey there! I’m Nicole, and I’m a product designer. I write this newsletter to share my experiences and lessons learned through my work as a product designer.
You’ve likely heard plenty about the importance of “company culture.”
In the professional world, those two words are ubiquitous. They’re tucked into job descriptions and etched on company mission statements. They’re praised by executives, hashtagged on LinkedIn posts, and even debated on Twitter. Awards are administered for companies who have the best ones. But what exactly is it?
I first heard the phrase when I was 19, interviewing for my first internship. I thought it had to do with people being nice to each other in the workplace. And while that’s true to some extent, over the years I’ve found that there’s a lot more that goes into it. For product design roles in particular, an array of factors weave into the fabric of what “company culture” actually looks and feels like. Because of that complexity, it can be hard to evaluate what kind of company culture is a good fit for you — as a candidate or employee.
In this post, I’ll be describing a few factors of company culture that impact product design roles. Whether you’re actively interviewing for a new role or just considering what your next career step might be, paying attention to each of these points can illuminate more than what’s addressed in the job description, mission statement, or social media posts.
How to apply these points (with a FigJam template!)
Regardless of where you’re at in your career or job hunting process, identifying what qualities you want out of a workplace is a great career-planning exercise. There are immediate benefits, as you can start taking steps now toward pursuing that ideal environment, and long-term benefits, as you can start to design your career path around those features and values.
It’s also helpful to note that you might not know everything right now, and what you think you want might change as you get further into your career and have different experiences — and that’s perfectly normal!
For a hands-on activity to go along with this post, jot down notes and ideas for each of these points by using my FigJam template below. This file can even be adapted over time and help you plan your career long-term.
Now, let’s dive into the details of company culture! 👇
The size of the company
Company size is one of the most important components influencing how your day-to-day work will look and feel. Having worked at organizations ranging from 25 employees to over 4,000, I’ve seen company size translate to some key areas related to design:
Pace of work and deliverables. Smaller companies tend to ship designs, features, and products faster than what might be expected at a bigger company, where more people and processes are involved. When I worked at a company of around 100 people, I was juggling many different projects and shipping multiple designs each quarter; but now, at a bigger company, I’m working on designs for longer periods of time and shipping less frequently.
Processes. Smaller companies might have more fluid or work-in-progress processes, whereas larger companies might be more structured (which also impacts the pace of work). This can be especially prominent in the design process, design-to-developer handoff, and processes around collaborating with different teams.
Resources and variety of work. Smaller companies tend to have fewer resources, so you might find yourself wearing multiple hats and doing multiple jobs, from conducting user research to creating a design system. On the other hand, in larger companies you might find yourself more focused on a specific domain and working with others outside of that — like product marketing managers, UX researchers, and data scientists to name a few.
How information is communicated and how decisions are made. Smaller companies might have a more casual approach to sharing and distributing information, while bigger companies will usually have more structure around this. Larger companies also include more roles and hierarchy. In some instances, the decision-making power might be consolidated to a few key individuals — as in, you might have to formally run decisions by certain leaders or stakeholders, rather than having more leniency in a smaller company.
These points also depend on other factors, like the size of your team and the maturity of the product you’re focused on. For example, my experience working on a newer team within a company of several thousand employees is comparable, and quite similar, to my experience working at a startup. It all comes down to how you’d like to work and in what degree of rigor you feel comfortable working.
The design team structure
The organizational structure of the design team within a company impacts both the kind of work you’ll do as well as the overall design culture.
There are different approaches to structuring design teams, and the practices around design operations continue to evolve. But generally, these aspects of the team structure can contribute to and define the design culture:
Who the designers report to. In an ideal scenario, the design team is led by a design leader, like a head of design, design director, chief design officer, VP of design, or another kind of design manager. Conversely, there might be a scenario where the design team is led by someone outside of the discipline, like a product or business executive. In my experience working on different teams, those that lack a defined design leader struggle with different challenges than others that have organizational design representation at a high level. Those challenges, like proving design value or getting additional resources, can often impact your day-to-day work.
Presence of design leadership (or lack thereof) can also impact your opportunities around mentorship and promotion/leveling. If there aren’t more senior designers or design leaders at the company, your chances of pursuing or receiving specific design-related opportunities might be more limited or ambiguous.
How many designers are on the team. If you’re the only designer in the org or company (as can often be the case in smaller companies or startups), your opportunities around design skill building, mentorship, and promotion might be more limited. On the flip side, when you’re in a team of other designers, there’s more opportunity to “talk shop” about design-specific matters in addition to having more of a collaborative environment.
How designers are staffed to product areas or projects. Some teams have designers organized into triads with their own respective product manager and technical leads, whereas others might have designers more dispersed across domains. The former allows for more focus within a specific product area, while the latter offers more of a cross-disciplinary approach.
There’s also the potential for these points to evolve over time. In a previous role where I was the only designer, I had the opportunity to gradually grow the design team, mentor junior designers, and craft the processes around how designers were staffed to product areas. So if you’re evaluating an opportunity that might not check every box here, it’s worth considering if the role could change over time — and how you could have a hand in that.
Availability of leveling or promotion framework
Choosing a company with a design career leveling structure — or, at the very least, a transparent and standardized promotion process — makes the difference between the role being a good fit for you presently versus continuing to be a good fit for you over time.
When the promotion process is unclear, it puts the responsibility on you to carve out your own career path at the company. When I’ve found myself in this situation in the past, I had to dedicate a lot of extra time, work, and research to figure out what the next step in my current role would be — and then I had to justify it to my manager and other executives who would ultimately make the decision. This makes the promotion process unnecessarily challenging, especially for women and underrepresented groups in the workplace.
Whether you’re certain about what you want in your career or you’re still figuring it out, look for roles where the future growth opportunities are clear. You can usually gain insight on this from the company’s blog or from your recruiter or interviewers during the interview process.
What kind of industry you’re passionate about
Industry acts as the backdrop for product design roles: from a bird’s eye view, affecting how your product area fits into the larger market, to the details, influencing what design decisions you might need to make (based on competitors or the industry standard).
I’ve also found that industry impacts a few other aspects, such as:
The company’s design culture. My experience of design culture looked dramatically different when working in a non-technology industry than how it does now working at a tech company. Previously, I spent more time focused on negotiating resources, managing stakeholders, and justifying the value of design. In a technology-oriented industry, the value of design tends to be more socially and organizationally understood — there might be more resources dedicated to support product design and the company might be more likely to view design as a competitive advantage.
Competitors and the larger market. Whether you’re doing competitive research for a project or studying why users use a competitor’s product over your own, a big part of your role will be focused on understanding and unpacking the competitive landscape.
What kind of problems you’re focused on solving. Healthcare, finance, education, entertainment — each industry presents its own unique users, opportunities, and challenges. Often, industries are subject to their own regulations and external economic factors as well.
Because industry is so intertwined with your day-to-day product design work, it’s worth choosing one that excites you and aligns with your values. You’ll be spending a lot of time studying the industry and competitive landscape in order to design successfully for its users and problems.
Diversity
You can evaluate a company’s diversity across many different dimensions. I try to pay attention to factors like the demographic composition of the team and executive leaders and the company’s approach to diversity and inclusion. These are usually aspects that you can investigate from the outside and dig deeper into as you start to interview.
The presence of women and other underrepresented groups on the team(s) I work with closely is also important to me. I feel more comfortable in teams that are more diverse, which helps me to do better work and to feel more empowered to just be myself — which can otherwise be pretty difficult in the workplace!
Diversity also makes the company culture more vibrant. My coworkers who come from different backgrounds than me have a different range of interests, hobbies, and perspectives, which broadens my own.
That being said, it can unfortunately still be challenging to find a diverse workplace, especially in product design teams. Your options might be limited, or you might even have a dream opportunity in front of you — but the team might not be as diverse as you’d like. In these instances, I’ve found it important to look at how people address diversity (or lack thereof). A great quote from Mariah Driver, Head of DEI at Webflow, illustrates this:
“Trust is earned through humility and not through perfection. The leaders who have the highest levels of trust and psychological safety on their teams aren’t the ones who have all of the answers — they’re the ones who are courageous enough to not have the answers, to make and acknowledge mistakes, and engage authentically across differences.”
Remote work policy
The company’s remote work policy impacts not only your day-to-day work, but it can impact your time outside of work as well.
As someone who’s been working fully remotely since the start of the pandemic, remote work has allowed me greater work flexibility than ever before. Not having to commute, being able to work from anywhere, and having greater choice over my hours are huge positives. It’s also improved my productivity and confidence — for example, virtual meetings are less frequently dominated by the loudest person in the room.
Remote work introduces its own unique challenges, however. Separating work and life requires more discipline and structure. Connecting with others necessitates more intentional effort than when you could just run into someone in the office or meet over lunch.
As more companies are transitioning into hybrid or fully in-person work, deciding what style of work you prefer can direct you toward which opportunities (industries, companies, and teams) to pursue.
Other benefits or perks (like unlimited paid time off)
Some companies have their benefits package (including perks and vacation policy) listed on their careers page or in the job description. It’s a good sign when the company is transparent like this, as it’s often out of awareness that benefits are a competitive hiring advantage. If an overview of the benefits isn’t available publicly, you can inquire about them during the interview process. I’ve also found that recruiters will send over more thorough documentation of the benefits once you get past a certain stage.
Regarding paid time off (PTO) specifically, there are ways to assess how well the company culture reflects this benefit. During the interview process, you can gain insights by asking questions about how often members of the team take time off, if employees are encouraged to take vacations, or generally what the work-life balance looks like on the team.
Other factors as listed above, like company size and design team structure, can also influence whether employees are able to comfortably take PTO — or if it’s more challenging. For example, if it’s a smaller team with fewer resources, it might require more coordination if a team member is out.
Company culture is a complicated equation — but as you can see from these factors, choosing the right fit for you ultimately comes down to your own preferences, goals, and values. By drawing on your past experiences and future goals and understanding what you like and dislike, you can start to brainstorm where your interests lie in terms of each of these factors.
Have you found any other factors to be important when evaluating company culture? Leave a comment below! 👇
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