How to get promoted to staff designer - Kathy Zheng (Dive Club S6 | E9)

This week’s episode is with Kathy Zheng (x.com/pifafu) who is currently the Head of design at a Web3 protocol called Optimism. But before that she was the first designer at Patreon and went on to spend over 6 years at Github.
So the goal of this conversation is to look at how Kathy grew as a designer while at Github and identify the specific milestones on her journey to reaching senior and eventually staff designer.
We get into the weeds about:
- How the role of staff and senior designers differ
- The traits shared by the best designers at Github
- How to give your ideas a chance to become memes
- How to avoid conversational spinout on your project
- How to identify opportunities using systems thinking
- How Kathy is growing as a design leader at Optimism
- Specific techniques for storytelling and presenting ideas
Some of the people mentioned in this episode:
- Max Schoening - x.com/mschoening?lang=en (former Head of design at Github)
- Brian Lovin - x.com/brian_lovin (bookmarking repo project)
- Kat Fikui - x.com/katfukui (coworker at Github whose .readme we mentioned)
- Connor Sears - x.com/connors (old manager at Github)
- Jack Conte - x.com/jackconte (Cofounder of Patreon)
Chapters
0:00 Raycast
0:34 Intro
1:48 Joining Github
4:03 Combatting conversational spin out
6:16 Getting promoted to senior designer
10:01 Getting momentum on an unstable idea
19:55 How to break out of the execution box
24:41 Different mediums to communicate ideas
28:21 Meming your ideas
31:39 Kathy's transition to web3
36:41 What makes designing for web3 unique
40:45 Advice for Kathy's younger self
45:08 How Kathy wants to grow as a leader
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club
🐦 joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
#productdesign #podcast #design

[@tatiannalandry]

This was SO HELPFUL! Thank you!!!

[@thetimgale]

Really high quality advice

[@joindiveclub]

🙌

[@emanules]

She’s absolutely awesome!

[@joindiveclub]

couldn't agree more

[@azharhabeebmohameds7920]

24K Gold

[@joindiveclub]

🪙 🙌