Risograph print inspired by Vitezslav Maly, Czech Republic
A designer in one of our squads is leaving the team. I'm not backfilling the role.
The choice is unpopular in the way that all real choices are unpopular: it makes someone’s life harder in the short term so something else can happen in the medium term. Two existing designers on that squad will absorb the open scope. The line I’m freeing up funds a Senior Design Technologist hire I’ve been trying to land for two quarters. That’s the trade. It’s the kind of trade design leaders make all the time and rarely talk about in public.
I want to talk about it, because the move underneath it is the actual leadership job, and most design leadership writing skips it.
The standing question I get from my peers when they hear about the swap is some version of “how did you get that approved?” The honest answer is that I didn’t ask for the design technologist as a net-new line. I asked for it as a reallocation. The math was already done by the time the conversation happened. Two existing designers absorb the revenue cycle work. One new hire opens up a capability we don’t have today. Headcount is flat. The capability surface is bigger.
The harder part of the move is the part that doesn’t show up in the proposal. The two designers absorbing the work didn’t ask for it. The squad they’re now covering didn’t ask for less attention. The product manager on that squad watched a designer leave and got, in exchange, a fractional version of two designers split across more surface. Every one of those people is right to feel the absorption. That’s the cost. Pretending it isn’t there is how design leaders lose the trust of the team while the org chart looks fine.
So part of the work, the part nobody tells you about when you take the job, is being honest with the absorbing designers about what they’re absorbing and why. Not as a sales pitch. As a debt acknowledgment. The two designers picking up the revenue cycle work know I owe them. They know the new hire is what their absorption bought. They know I’ll be watching the load. They know I’ll trade back if it doesn’t work.
The other part is being honest about why the design technologist matters more than the backfill. The revenue cycle squad will continue to ship product. A backfilled designer would keep that squad’s velocity intact. What that squad won’t get is the system-level capability that the design technologist brings: the validation layer between what agents generate and what designers would themselves accept as craft-correct, the Figma library health work that’s already starting to fray under AI-assisted reads, the bridge between our design system squad and our engineers in CDMX. None of that is squad work. All of it is leverage work.
If I backfill, I get one more designer on one more squad. If I hire the design technologist, I get a capability that compounds across every squad we have. The expected value isn’t close. But the cost is concentrated and the benefit is diffuse, which is why this kind of move is so rarely made. The designers absorbing the load are visible. The capability we’re buying is two quarters out. You have to be willing to spend visible trust on an invisible bet.
The reason I’m willing is that the visible trust is recoverable and the invisible bet, if it lands, isn’t.
A design organization that doesn’t build its system-level capability now is going to spend the next eighteen months hiring more designers to compensate for not having the leverage. That’s the trade everyone makes by default, and it’s the wrong one. The squad-level designer is the easiest hire to justify and the least durable form of capacity. The system-level role is the harder hire to justify and the only one that bends the rest of the org’s productivity curve.
I’m not pretending the move is costless. I’m saying the cost is visible and the alternative cost is hidden, and the leadership job is to choose the visible cost on purpose so the team can see what you’re actually optimizing for.
The two designers absorbing the revenue cycle work know exactly where the work went. So does the squad’s PM. So do I. The design technologist hire, when they start in the next few weeks, will join a team that bought their seat with real load on real people. They’ll feel it. That’s appropriate. The work everyone is now absorbing is the work that’s going to give the entire design organization a capability it doesn’t have today.
The other thing you don’t get told when you take the job: the team will be watching to see whether you actually traded back when you said you would. So I’m writing this in part as a record. If the absorbing designers come to me in two quarters and say the load isn’t working, the trade has to be made. The backfill becomes the next priority. The design technologist will already be in seat, which means the trade isn’t a step back. It’s the next step.
That’s the deal. Headcount as a fixed envelope. Capability as the variable. Visible cost on purpose. Recoverable trust as the operating reserve.
It’s not in any of the leadership books. It’s most of the job.