Hiring & team — Field Notes

FIGMA

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

Taste Is Care, Not a Gift

Figma's chief design officer reframes taste as care, not gift, and names three things she screens for when hiring.

BY LOREDANA CRISAN / JUN 8, 2026

You never stop cultivating taste

Great designers have language for things most people only feel.

Why it matters

— Taste is care: for the user, the craft, and the result.

— It grows from love of the craft plus care for people.

— She hires for discernment: can they name what's not working, and why?

— Empathy and creative energy round out the three signals she looks for.

— Even Dyson ran 5,127 prototypes; the first output is never final.

Read on Figma →

Craft & detail Hiring & team

THE FOUNTAIN INSTITUTE

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

How senior design hiring changed

Jeff Humble gathers a hiring playbook where every tip is from this year, aimed at senior designers rethinking their career strategy.

BY JEFF HUMBLE

7 Ways Hiring is Evolving for Senior Designers

Shipped, traceable work beats case studies.

Why it matters

— Get comfortable with live problem-solving, not just polished case studies.

— Shipped, traceable work now carries more weight than a portfolio narrative.

— Advice pulled from various experts, all of it dated to this year.

— A good moment to experiment with how you position yourself.

Read on The Fountain Institute →

Hiring & team Craft & detail

MARTYN REDING

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

The design leadership reckoning

Martyn Reding argues the old shape of design leadership is gone, and lays out what changed and how to adapt.

OCT 24, 2025

How to survive the design leadership reckoning.

Design leadership as we know it, is over, but it's going to be OK.

Why it matters

— The market's appetite for elaborate design-thinking practices has clearly cooled.

— Over 70% of 2024 leadership roles wanted craft skills and a portfolio.

— Fewer leadership techniques in the feed, more posts about burnout.

— The path forward mixes shape-shifting with a few solid foundations.

Read on Medium →

Hiring & team Cross-functional & process

UX.RASPBERRY

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

From producing to deciding

A blunt read on where designer value sits in 2026: production is getting automated, so strategy and judgment are what stay human.

MAY 1, 2026

UX Design 2026+: From producing to deciding, from craft to operation

It's no longer about what you produce; it's about what you decide.

Why it matters

— The tedious middle of the job is being automated away.

— Value moves to the before (strategy) and the after (judgment).

— The "Junior Paradox": one senior plus AI replaces two juniors.

— Survival looks T-shaped, with one deep, hard-to-automate strength.

Read on Medium →

Critique & decision-making Hiring & team

VANESSA BELENO

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

What Ambiguity Reveals About You

An early-career designer notices she keeps reaching for connective work wherever structure is missing, and asks what that instinct reveals.

JUN 18, 2026

Cross-functional & process Hiring & team

DESIGN MAVERICKS

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

Design is becoming leadership literacy

Forty design leaders in Amsterdam reach the same conclusion: the role is dissolving while the capacity becomes foundational to leadership.

JUN 4, 2026

When AI Builds Everything, Design Becomes Everything

We are training people for a job. We should be cultivating a capacity.

Why it matters

— Intercom now ships over 90% of pull requests authored by Claude Code

— When execution costs nothing, judgment about direction becomes the product

— Atlassian runs 64% ICs, every designer a platform designer, demo before memo

— Frigieri's upstream conditions: workflows, data pathways, decision rights, controls

— The Frozen Middle: everyone experimenting alone without strategic guidance from above

Read on Design Mavericks →

Hiring & team Critique & decision-making Systems & primitives

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

AI is the new workplace confidant

Employees increasingly turn to AI for advice, support, and friendship. The researchers argue leaders must protect human connection at work.

BY CONSTANCE NOONAN HADLEY AND SARAH L. WRIGHT / MAY 1, 2026

Employees Are Relying on AI for Personal Support. That's Risky.

Research shows how AI can weaken human connection at work.

Why it matters

— More than half of 1,545 surveyed knowledge workers feel lonely at work

— Workers seek career advice, emotional support, and friendship from AI

— AI conversation can quietly substitute for, then erode, human connection

— The authors call on leaders to intervene before reliance hardens

Read on Harvard Business Review →

Hiring & team Research & validation

THE MERHOLZ AGENDA

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

The Layoffs Are Social Contagion

Merholz reads the layoff wave through decades-old org theory: under uncertainty, executives copy each other, then call it AI strategy.

MAY 23, 2026

Monkey see, monkey mandate

The uninformed copy the foolhardy.

Why it matters

— Pfeffer named it years ago: layoffs spread by imitation, not evidence.

— Mimetic isomorphism, copying peers under uncertainty, explains RTO, AI mandates, and cuts.

— Token-spend quotas reward activity over impact, like counting lines of code.

— CEOs trust peers in other contexts more than the teams who know their own.

— The cost lands on people who were never in the room.

Read on The Merholz Agenda →

Critique & decision-making Cross-functional & process Hiring & team

MEDIUM

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

The Senior Path Isn't Linear

A short, honest reflection on stalls, rebuilds, and why recalibration, not uninterrupted success, is what separates senior designers.

MAR 16, 2026

The Hidden Part of Becoming a Senior Designer

Sometimes the comeback is where the real designer is formed.

Why it matters

— The clean junior-to-leadership arc is mostly a myth; progress stalls and restarts.

— Rejection feels personal when your work is visible, subjective, and always evaluated.

— Rebuilding fundamentals and portfolios is a reset, not a backward step.

— What separates seniors is resilience and a willingness to keep evolving.

Read on Medium →

Craft & detail Hiring & team

SLACK DESIGN

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

How Slack's Design VP Leads Through AI

Slack's VP of Product Design on guiding roughly 70 designers through AI without mandates: stay curious, stay skeptical, and keep the bar high.

BY WILL MINER / MAY 21, 2026

Cross-functional & process Hiring & team

LINEAR

LDLR DESIGN FIELD NOTES

Linear's hiring playbook, written down

Most companies don't write down how they hire because writing it down forces honesty about what they actually value. Linear did the work and published it.

BY DOUG PARKER / APR 28, 2026

Hiring & team Cross-functional & process Critique & decision-making