There are two major career paths for young designers in Serbia:
a/ established marketing/advertising agencies
b/ freelancing

Just in the recent five or six years there’s been a new trend where tech companies are hiring for in-house designers.

For freelancing, I didn’t have enough experience — I still think that I don’t. Advertising is not my cup of tea, due to the nature of the work and the way advertisers do it today. I don’t even want to start with the fact that most of the agencies here in Serbia are still focused on print and TV. 

On the other hand, I was constantly surrounded by engineers, so it was somehow natural for my “first real” job to be in a tech company. A couple of years and projects later, I went through enough to feel competent to share this piece of advice.

Leave your ego at the doorstep

This is a bit of generic advice, not necessarily tied to collaboration with engineers.

I get especially frustrated when a designer has this specific “designer” ego — ranging from egomaniacs full of themselves, over those who are not willing to take criticism and accept other people's thinking while warming it with passive aggression. 

The ego will make it harder for you to understand and then accept your shortcomings. While designing for people who’ll use the thing you are making, it’s important to be objective and always question your decisions first, and only later the decisions of others.

Training can eradicate ego. That training can consist of always approaching things as if you were seeing them for the first time, and to be the one who will listen first, and speak second. Start to train. Understand that you aren't a super special snowflake, and be a team player.

Learn to understand them 

Most of the engineers have never worked with designers before. Naturally, they have  “prejudices” such as that designers spend their days painting pretty pictures and playing with colors — at the same time, they’re coal miners, grinding to optimize the API. But that’s totally OK.

It’s less likely they’ll start adjusting their language to you, which automatically means, you’ll need to adapt. That’s also inevitable because in most cases you’ll be the one who’s surrounded by the engineers and not the other way around.

In order to understand them, you should be (a bit) like them. This means that sometimes you should get into your mining boots, take a pick and get down to the pit. At first, it will be very dark, but you’ll eventually learn how to use the headlamp. Shortly after, you’ll learn the difference between API and SDK, why some of your fancy designs with too many DB calls are not sustainable and what they think about when they say “a single page app”.

Learn to communicate

Now once you understand them, it’s time to actually start using the new language. Be clear, when needed abstract and broad, concise and precise, always patient. Full of understanding. Learn to tell stories, make parallels and show on simple examples.

The same way you didn’t know some stuff up until this point, be aware there are others who don’t know stuff you know. They won’t know the difference between mockup and wireframe, nor how to “read” that same wireframe. With clear communication and mutual understanding, every piece of noise should be ironed out eventually. Of course, new waves of noises will appear over and over again.

It is an incredible feeling when you realize someone learned something new from you. For example, when a colleague comes with a story about critiquing his friend’s blog typography. Win-win.

Be prepared to fight

Like in any match, you lose a round, you win a round, the clock ticks away. Ideally, in the engineer’s nest, there should always be parallel matches in different rings. 

It is important to understand why it is important to fight for yourself. Like I said, in most of the cases you (or your small team) are going to be outnumbered, which will often mean that ideas and processes of the majority are always going to be better. It is on you to prove them wrong. This requires a lot of strategy, wittiness, and work.

This is not about the “us versus them” fight, whatsoever. It is about the fight of designers to always push themself forward. To improve and optimize their environment. To ease the work for them and others. To earn their seat at the table. To become leaders.

Also, it is important to fight for properly doing your job, true values for the users and for saying “no”.

When a round is tough, be sure to get back to your corner of the ring and let your coach know if you are going to lose the match because of a short deadline or work overload. Don’t misuse this and they’ll always make sure to throw a white towel for you at the right moment.

Be trustful and trust

Like in every healthy relationship, a big chunk of it is about trust. How to gain the trust of your comrade engineers depends on many factors.

Here’s a couple of them I learned from my own experience:

Having said this all, I didn’t take the time to write about how I gained these learnings. I’ll try to do it some other time.

So far, I had an awesome time in engineering nests, but we should also think about some future designer nests. Until then, go and hug your closest engineer. 
 

✦