Hello!
Today I'm thinking about job hunting, specifically that the world you're applying for a job in no longer exists. There are remnants of it in bigger, older companies, but not for long. Why? Because the job descriptions most people are applying against assume a workflow that's already gone. For years, designers worked "out ahead" of engineering in mockups. Now development teams are "out ahead" of design, with new features becoming code at a furious pace, and design's job shifts toward making all that output fit together. At the Design Futures Assembly this spring, close to half of designers had shipped AI-generated code to production, and at the best teams the "stack" was dozens of internal tools that change month to month. Try writing a stable job req for that. So the natural reaction is to grab every tool and try to do every role. Designers pick up coding agents, developers spin up layouts, and everyone ends up here: That approach spreads us thinly across multiple complex and important jobs. I can play a developer on TV, but in real life I'm a pretty crappy one. The better move is the lesson we taught designers at Yahoo! years ago: double down on the thing you're uniquely good at and apply it elsewhere. So if you're looking for work right now, don't optimize for the job posting. Get hands-on with the tools, figure out what they can and can't do, and show how your particular superpower reaches further because of them. That's the job that actually exists.
What skills should product designers be building right now?
The ground under product design has shifted fast. Close to half of designers have already shipped AI-generated code to production, so the question everyone's asking is: now that anyone can ship, what can I uniquely do? Here's where I'd put your energy.
First, get comfortable with a toolkit that won't sit still. When design leaders ask what stack their team should use, the honest answer from people closest to the frontier is there isn't one. At the best teams it's dozens of internal tools that change month to month. And designers are increasingly building those tools themselves. So the skill is using new tools constantly: experiment, build, learn. Generating an asset isn't enough anymore. You want to build the system alongside it that produces it consistently and keeps improving it.
Second, double down on craft. Knowing what good looks like (aesthetic sensibility, caring about the details) is still a critical skill, and the only way to grow it is to immerse yourself in high-craft work until you can spot what tips the balance. I'll be honest though: the consensus at Design Futures this spring was that choosing or generating a good UI is pattern matching, and models will keep getting better at it. So craft is table stakes, not a safe island.
Third, and most important, build editorial judgment. When everyone can ship, you get products where nothing makes sense together. Design leadership is heading toward deciding what gets made and making sure it holds together, and the skill of saying no is becoming one of the most important in the profession. Related to that is figuring out what to ask in the first place: reading between the lines in a research session, noticing the turn of phrase that reveals what someone actually needs.
Fourth, learn how to work alongside others when everyone has the same tools. In our own workflows, designers set up style and the design system, developers lay the foundation, and then designers, PMs, and developers all refine in parallel with agents, with developers reviewing what ships.
That works best when you know enough about adjacent disciplines to know what's possible, even if you're not an expert in them.
Finally, unlearn designing for approval. For years, most designers' main goal has been getting sign-off from PMs, engineering, VPs, legal (pick your combination). That muscle shows up in portfolios as "here's how I got everyone on board." But when everyone walks in with a prototype, the valuable skill is pulling signal from noise and pushing a point of view. Think of yourself as a one-person design agency. You're the creative director, and AI agents handle production and exploration.
So use the tools daily, sharpen your eye, and practice saying no. That combination is what makes you hard to replace.