The overall theme, stick to your gut and chase what you like to do

I started out as a CS major and I never took an art class before. However, I knew enjoyed the creativity and wanted to chase it. Took me 3 years to realize it, but I ended up leaving my senior year to go to art school. Seriously the best decision I have made for myself. I wanted and needed that time to learn the basics.

I thought I wanted to be like Don Draper right out of art school. I had the chance with an ad agency and I realized I reallllly suck at creativity. I'm not an out of the box thinker and edgy marketing wasn't my strength. I had a lot of opportunities to do amazing things in my life that I would never believe I could. However, the constant struggle made it the most depressing time of my life. This humbling experience helped me understand what are my interests and strengths, which was web design.

The last one was in 2012, just when the term UX was starting to get trendy. I started to work in the web design space and I knew I found my niche. However, my projects started to move from simple sites to complex ones. We never did wireframes, sitemaps, user flows, or even talk to users. I knew there was a better way, so I started to read up and implement UX methods. I wanted to know more but felt like an outsider because I never had an HCI education. I remember applying as a UX intern when I had 4 years of design experience (They laughed at me). I chased jobs to get me in the right atmosphere. Going on my 4th year on my current job and I love it. I learned so much through trial and error.... I don't know what my next step is... however I know what I don't want.

Create a company with good product. Sell it for millions. Enjoy life creating schools and living off-grid.

For me the big crossroad came a few years ago when I realized my designs were never coming to life the way I envisioned them. I could make the best concept in the world, but for various reasons (implementation, coding, business pressures) it would always have to change before becoming reality – if it ever saw the light of day.

So that led me to learn more about the other parts of the stack (development, marketing, sales, etc.) and focus more on launching my own products. And I think the industry has evolved the same way over the past couple years, with so many designers learning prototyping, front-end coding, etc. instead of staying in the land of static mockups.

The current goal is to grow my vision, strategy, and delegation skills. Having been designing for almost 12 years, I'm now starting to notice that my ideas are outpacing my ability and time available to get those ideas produced/made. I'm ready to transition from an Individual Contributor to a director/manager role so I can produce work at scale.

Since many people have already provided good answers within the industry, I will leave my 1cent talking about how I came to handle it by moving away from the industry.

A few years ago, I started wondering the same as you. I have been in the "design umbrella" for about 8 years by that time. It wasn't 8 intense years like the ones you read on Medium, but it was 8 years doing design stuff. I changed my focus a lot, which made me what we call today a Designer Generalist. It was a nice ride, with lots of curves and much more good moments than bad ones. Still, I felt like I wasn't fulfilled. It wasn't entirely "design" the problem. I felt unfulfilled by the community and industry I was living in: ego, people trying to sell themselves as if they were products (still see many people arguing this is healthy), more tools being released and this strong feeling that if you don't learn it you will get behind, articles made up to look smart but far from reality, little honesty... and the one that made me change: too many people believing they were changing the World (spoiler alert: they were not).

I took the decision to step back and leave any project related to the tech world. For about 8-10 months I didn't check articles about design, didn't study it, didn't open a tech project. My idea was not to just rebel. I honestly needed this time to see things the way most of the people see it (i.e. non-tech people).

After many months and lots of new learnings in the offline world, I started missing the projects. Then, I realised what kind of project and career I wanted: I wanted to make an impact on people's live. Not change the World, which would be nice but less likely. I went for it. It's been 3 years since I started designing again and now I can answer most of the questions I had back then (on the other hand, I have plenty more ethical and health-related questions than I used to have before it :P).

I may hit a career crossroad very soon... but, to sum it up, I believe I don't have a design career goal. Design is my profession and it helps me achieve my life goals. As far as I am having fun and helping my colleagues/company progress without harm... it's all fine :) And if it's not, luckily design is only one of the infinite professions out there.

Hope you all are having a nice day :) Cheers!

To get out of the industry. In the last few years I've been largely successful in doing that.

Learning to code

Pay attention to what aspects of your job you like and what you don't and find opportunities that challenge you while letting you pursue what you enjoy! You're still relatively early in your career. If you were to retire at 60 you'd still have 38 years left!

Design has a number of end games. You can pursue management and become a people manager to build teams and help build careers. You could become a design director and lead a UX or product design org. You could pursue a pivot to business or development which would both benefit from UX skills. The key is to continuously evaluate what you enjoy doing and why.

I think I'm at the same stage in my career as you, although sticking to a full-time role for now. Recently, I've been put off design as a career itself (for a variety of reasons, big and small) and become more interested in tech and business—for that reason I'm more drawn to either starting my own company (long-term) and potentially becoming a Product Manager (mid-term).

Previously I have dealt with this problem by getting a new job or new freelance project... but I feel like I'm in a career crossroads still because I want more in my future. Im a web designer, and I know I can make other companies look amazing. My new goal is to start something for myself and make my own company or products look good (while keeping current job).

My first step is to learn some coding so Im not reliant on anyone else. We will see what I start (online business, drop shipping, youtube, idk)

I was always want to be designer but I was dont know what need to do at first. I ended a courses in the Internet and decided makes a portfolio when I was ended this part I taked a my first customer It was really wonderful expiriance for me. And now Im work on freelance and last my work was site for barbershop where they describe all hairdresses, jewfro, comb over, short haircuts for men https://menshaircuts.com/short-haircuts-for-men-guide/ and so on. Its interesting work.

I believe in expanding horizons and hope to work within many different industries with design. Right nowI mainly do so through online courses or powering through books.

As design is so broad there is a constant compound effect at play where principles from e.g. Product Design are applicable elsewhere. I hope my approach will allow me find work by through curiosity and inspiration.

One concern with this approach is becoming a generalist and not building a vertical of expertise. I will have to look for unique overlaps or select themes to work on for an extended period of time.

just started in the design, would love to grow to Product Designer one day...

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