Designer's Exploitation

For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think the biggest concern is people stealing your work. While I admit it’s possible, I’ve never actually seen a verified account of this happening.

My biggest concern is from an ethical standpoint. I recently came across a guy that spent 30+ hours on a project for a job with Google that he didn’t get. He was not paid, did not get any feedback, and was just given a “Sorry, we’re moving on with other people” spiel.

How can companies possibly justify this?

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@Sridhar I can see how this could benefit your portfolio, but I wouldn’t send it to them. I’d complete the task, wait for the interview process, and then post it on my portfolio. Why should they be getting something I’ve worked on without any compensation? A spot on the portfolio, in my opinion, is just not good enough. There’s hundreds of other big brand digital products I could rework and post as a “redesign concept.”

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Of course what you say is right. My suggestion holds true when you are up against the wall and have no other options. Feel free to ignore/improvise.

It’s true but we do not live in an ideal world so just making the most of the situation.

Based on the conversation we had here, I followed up with the design community and many shared similar experience. I wrote an article on Medium about it. Do have a look.

Another recent experience:

I told the interviewer specifically before doing the assignment all I ask in return is some feedback if I am to do their assignment. They were in full agreement.

Then, the generic pass. I ask again via email. No reply.

This is getting abusive and I’m trying really hard to give these companies the benefit of the doubt, but it’s getting more and more difficult.

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I am so sorry that this happened. :frowning:

Wow, talk about unprofessional! I’m really sorry that hiring managers are being such jerks to you. You don’t deserve that kind of treatment - honestly, nobody does. In my opinion, you dodged a bullet - anyone that would do that to you is not someone you want to work for.

I don’t know what to tell you at this point, except that this is something that has to change. We really should start calling out companies that do this.

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I know. At this point, I’m just sharing my stories, I should create a blog dedicated to just this :laughing:

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I tweeted out a link to this thread yesterday, and it really struck a chord with my UX Twitterverse. From Palestine to Hungary to the US, this is surprisingly and unfortunately common.

It’s a small consolation, but it may help to know you are not alone.

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I’ve been reading some Tweets on this very subject as well. Jared Spool asked on Twitter (link):

Questions for hiring managers of UX design & research positions:

If you do in-interview design challenges, what do you hope to learn about the candidates you can’t get any other way?

For those who don’t do them, why not?

I enjoyed the responses from Peter Merholz:

Design challenges are a scourge. There’s literally nothing you can learn in a design challenge that you can’t learn by having them walk you through the decision-making of a project in their portfolio. It sets up an exceedingly false context, and favors a narrow band of thinker.

The language is telling. A design “challenge” suggests a suspicious, even adversarial relationship in the interview process, and many of these responses demonstrate that. Which I feel is a horrible mindset. “Prove your worth to me!!!"

Design challenges only arose within tech companies, where engineers typically have engineering challenges. To prove design was ‘rigorous’ like engineering, design teams started this practice. But design != engineering.

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My thought on the topic is that obviously there is some confusion when it comes to the nomenclature where UX and UI Designer are used interchangeably. That’s wrong.

And another thought is that, unless you want to be a UI Designer, don’t do the assignments that involve creating beautiful interfaces. UX is about usability, not about interactions in the sense what color hovered button should be (correct me if I’m wrong). I know I’m limiting myself in my search but I pass on these tasks. I want to do UX, not UI.

And I had an opportunity to take part in the best job interview ever, where the company was searching for a UX designer, asked basic questions via phone and invited me for the interview. They wanted to see how I think so they asked questions and gave me exercices during an interview.

And a disclaimer. If anybody read my post in a topic that talked about being a generalist, I’m past that phase now. I’m thinking about specializing, even though wide scope of tasks is sometimes nice too.

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Exciting! What area are you thinking of specialising in?

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I’m taking baby steps and decided to exclude UI for now. It’s not as fun as thinking and concluding. And we’ll see what future brings :slight_smile:

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That’s really brave. Good on you. I look forward to hearing how it goes.

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6 posts were split to a new topic: Who owns the rights to our work when we leave an organisation?

How did you manage to say ‘no’ to them? I have complteted two stages of recruitment process and now I’m asked to do an assignment for 3 to 5 hours. I need to say no for a simple reason I don’t have time after work to spare, at the moment. I really don’t know how to say ‘no’ but still keep the door open (maybe they’ll come up with a different idea of checking me out, who knows).

Cheers,
Magda

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I’ve been there … when I wanted to apply at one of the best UX companies of the Netherlands I’ve spent 2 days of each 10+ hours to create my portfolio website (this is for myself of course), they asked me to write a case study to show my skill, did that … another 2 days of each 10+ hours. After that, they were impressed, cool … now they had to check if I was a culture fit. Another 3 days working at their place internal working on a real project for them.

Guess what they said: We need somebody with some more experience … which they could have known up front since I told them and they had seen my cv, portfolio website and application letter.

Never again I will do an assignment since I now have my portfolio website. Just have a good and solid portfolio website which shows how you think and come to solutions. But also give them an alternative if you don’t want to do the assignment. For example that you’re more open to doing a brainstorm for an hour or so (which also shows your process, but also how you work together with others). There is also value in there for you, you can see how the company works and how they think. Now you also can decide if the company is right for you.

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It flaps me off. This one individual semi famous youtuber, complaining about hiring consultants, in his how to make money advises, use a chop shop (starts with an F) as his consultants cost 10x as much. I was so annoyed that he is consulting on how to make money but doesnt appreciate the work behind SDLC that he would recommend all business people use chop shops. The other thing is he clearly either hired cowboy consultants or he didnt hire somebody like myself that can do everything to manage the project and do the roles that need filling. Either way it was 100% insulting to the IT industry as a whole.

If UX and Ui design was taken from the Business Analysis section of the SDLC as specialist roles, how much more specialist can you get? I presume you live in the States, because I cant imagine a city under 8mill + providing much work for somebody who dissects a specialist role into something even more specialised :-). Cant wait to find out. Good luck either way.