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Facebook's Method for Hiring Designers

firstround.com

38 pointszt15 comments

Facebook is missing something here that's key. There are a lot of "yet to be great" designers out there who aren't working to their full potential due to their employment circumstances.

I've found absolutely fantastic designers who are struggling through go-nowhere jobs in the depths of enterprise companies that don't care about design, design agencies that are structured like puppy mills, and the like. When finally given the opportunity to build their vision, they excel.

The designers who have "designed apps you admire" are just the obvious, low-hanging fruit.

Finding developers wasting away in cube farms is quite a similar experience--there are a lot of strong hires out there that have simply been underemployed.

This is exactly how i feel right now. I am, by unfortunate circumstances, the only designer in one of the offices of an enterprise company being ran by dev-minded people. I know my weaknesses and strengths, but I need a design-influenced team and company for me to better than what I'm outputting right now.

If I were to look for a job now with a portfolio of the products I've worked on at the company over the last year, it would definitely be an uphill battle.

You're not the only one. I wouldn't categorize my current place of employment as "enterprise", but it sucks not being able to design to your full potential. It's an agency, so you can't give the client the best you can do unless they're willing & able to pay for that (and many aren't).

I'd recommend doing as many side projects as you can. I know it can be hard to find the time (I have a one year old son so I'm familiar with the struggle) but if you can put something together over a few nights/weekends, and really design the hell out of it, it'll make stomaching your day-job constraints much easier. Just remember the Sex and Cash theory: http://gapingvoid.com/?s=sex+and+cash+theory What you do at work is strictly to pay the bills. If you happen to enjoy it sometimes, great; but remember that what really matters is what happens outside of that.

Another example: I used to flip burgers, but I enjoy cooking at home. I wasn't ashamed of the nasty food I pumped out of that fast-food kitchen, because I knew it wasn't a representation of my cooking abilities, it was just what I did to pay the bills. Apply the same thinking to your situation.

Is Facebook today that unlike those enterprise companies? How much freedom do designers have to experiment?

From firsthand experience I would have thought their designer hiring strategy would have read something like this:

Buy a company of 30, fire most of them and use the severance pay as leverage to force the designers into staying with Facebook. Wait a year or so until all those designers you strong armed into joining your company quit, then repeat.

Has anyone actually figured out what the retention rate is for FB acqui-hired employees? I'd be interested to know how many people hang around after their shares vest.

Every time I use FB I swear at whoever designed the damn sort. Either it picks some useless articles to show you as "Top Stories" or it sorts the articles by the latest comment date. Plus it keeps switching on its own back to "top stories." Maybe it's not designers but whoever made that design decision pisses off everyone I know. Designing for users and designing to enhance income is not usually the same.

Does this have anything to do with this article?

I don't know about you, but they must be designing something right, because I know a ton of tech challenged people that know how to use Facebook better than their Cellphones, TV's and DVRs. Whether this is a testament to their design, or permutation is another story, but I purposely picked those 4 examples because they all have equally permeated our society.

that design decision pisses off everyone I know

I bet you it doesn't. All the tech-inclined developers you talk to about how terrible it is, maybe. But your siblings, parents, non-tech friends? No.

Facebook are not stupid. The feed is ordered very deliberately and they carefully monitor what gets the most clicks. It's just that you (and I) are outside of the majority here.

Actually, most of my friends and family are technically inept, and they complain about seeing "the same old junk" all the time.

They're all heavy Facebook users, so I'm not sure how much they deviate from the norm, but they're not remotely technical.

Most of the non-technical users I interact with feel the same way about the feed as the upthread complaint. I do think the feed is ordered very deliberately based on Facebook's data, but not around pleasing users, instead around assuring the marginal value of spending money for reach so that more people will do that. That's why "get stories sorted by our in-house secret-sauce algorithm" keeps getting pushed forward while "most recent" keeps getting made less useful and harder to get to (to the point where it is no longer possible to have it the default feed display on the Android app.)

I took a poll of my friends, most of whom are not technical at all and most found it annoying.

Designing for users and designing to enhance income is not usually the same.

It's not an either/or choice.

Basically Marc created a super successful company

And now there are a lot people profiting from that

I don't say that she might not be a great designer or that her contribution isn't awesome or that the job is easy. I am just saying, that some people are fortunate and manage it onto successful projects that others created and became wealthy and important too

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