Startup designer vs FAANG designer

Sindhu Narasimhan

Nov 1, 2021

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I spent 3.5 years at Amazon as a FAANG designer before I dove into the land of startups. Here are some key differences I see between being a designer at each place

Stakeholders of a Startup Designer — CEO->CTO->Customer

Stakeholders of a FAANG designer — Your design team, your product team, broader design teams, broader product teams, design systems team, leadership team, customers

Focus of a startup designer — Will this stand out?, Will this appeal to new users?, Can I invent a new pattern?, Will we be alive as a company tomorrow?

Focus of a FAANG designer — How can I make this blend in? Will this appeal to our current users, Can I leverage existing patterns?, How does this look 2 quarters out?

Strengths of a startup designer — Ship fast, Direct contact with customers, Generalist, Will push design boundaries

Strengths of a FAANG designer — Detail oriented, thinks at scale, specialists, systems thinkers

Day in life of a startup designer — Team meetings, huddles with collegues, heads down design time

Day in life of a FAANG designer — Team meetings, cross org syncs, leadership reviews, mandatory training, design crit, product meetings, heads down design time, interviews and feedback

Success metrics of startup designers: Builds a unique design language, enables product success metrics ( acquisition, adoption, conversion), follows a light-weight design process, enables team to move fast (by writing front-end code)

Success metrics of FAANG designers — Building a lightning fast product (improving existing product speed), focus on internationalization & accessibility, Mentorship, running AB tests, leading with user research

Startup Lessons

Sindhu Narasimhan

Written by Sindhu Narasimhan

Lead Product Designer at Roku. I write about design and startups.

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