Episode 3: The start of OnlyFAANGs

Welcome to the start of OnlyFAANGs! It wasn't my intention to coincide with 'Labor Day' which became a federal holiday after ~70 protestors were killed in the Pullman strike of 1894. And here I am starting to work 12-hour days, 6 days a week (big yikes).

Truth be told, I could barely sleep last night. I’ve dealt with anxiety issues my whole life and while I am still very susceptible to the negative symptoms of it (like insomnia and worsening ADHD symptoms), I've become comfortably numb thanks to my permanent anxiety baseline of 100 since age ~10.

What I'm clearly neglecting right now is my mental health, much to my detriment. It'll be interesting to see how this will rear its ugly head with accrued interest in the coming weeks. ADHD is also another major challenge, something that I no longer actively treat. I do have a month's supply of Adderall left in case things really go off the rails, but for now I'm trying out Sunsama as an ADHD-friendly task tracker based off Lex Roman's recommendation. If it gets worse, I'll chat with my doctor and look into an ADHD coach.

Please, please do NOT be like me. Take care of your mental health during your job search. This should be your number one priority followed by managing your financial runway. Everyone thinks that landing a job means getting better at design skills X, Y, and Z, but the truth is your mental and financial health are far more vital to your success. Do as I say, not as I do.

We have an exciting line up of live stream guests. The first is going to be Catt Small on Tuesday, September 2nd, at 9AM ET (Register for free here), where she will teach us how to land a staff level role. 293 have registered since yesterday at the time of this writing!

Her new book ‘The Staff Designer’ is slated to come out in December of this year, and can be pre-ordered. I read the draft a few months ago and can wholeheartedly recommend it to any designer wanting to jump from senior/lead to the staff level.

Next, we have Michael Riddering, the host of the most advanced design podcast ‘Dive Club’ on Friday, September 5th at noon EST (Register for free here).

Ridd has interviewed some of the top designers in the world on his Podcast with designers at all the companies I want to work at (Perplexity, Notion, Airbnb, etc.), and he's done it at an insane clip of 1 episode per week for over 2 years now; what an achievement! I can't wait for him to distill his vast knowledge into how he would approach the 180 day OnlyFAANGs challenge.

I'll be hiring career coaches for the next 6 months and live-streaming all our sessions. First up is Jibran Kutik, who was most recently a senior director of product design at Toast, director at Twitter (now X), and also a lead designer at Netflix back in the day. Stay tuned for the announcement of that session on my LinkedIn.

None of this content would be possible without the support of my sponsor/partner Mobbin (affiliate link). I’ll be using their tools extensively in the coming weeks to get better at visual design. Signing up for their $12/month pro plan via my affiliate link is a big help as I’ll be forgoing a paycheck for the next 6 months.

According to the latest poll, most folks think that my unfair advantage as a design content creator is my ability to land job referrals from my network:

I disagree; I believe my real unfair advantage is probably my understanding of the perspective of the hiring manager and design recruiter, which I was for almost 3 years. Regardless, I'll acquiesce to public demand and remove my ability to ask for referrals; every job I target will be through cold-applications. Wish me luck you sadists!

But folks are correct that my network is important. I'll just be leveraging it in a different way by getting the most knowledgeable designers to teach me what they know and live streaming it all.

Every piece of advice given to me will be publicly available for others to learn from so it'll be like getting a top tier design career coach without paying thousands per month.

Several folks have DMed me about forming cohorts or a community for mutual support and accountability. Unfortunately, I do not have the time or energy to manage a community on top of up-skilling, making a portfolio and content creation 12 hours per day.

The solution I've come up with is to potentially hire Erika Flowers as a community manager to run this independently. If 100 people sign up by Sep 5th, we'll kick it off. If we don't hit the 100 signups, we'll cancel it. I think we’re at 30-40 so far?

Erika will run the program, match people into cohorts, distill what I do each week into short-form assignments for participants, and host Q&As with hiring managers and recruiters to name a few.

The cost will be $20/month solely to compensate Erika for her time and to provide a $150-$250 stipend to guest speakers.

Because this is an experiment that we’re doing for the first time, I want this to be as low-risk as possible for everyone. At any point over 30 days, you can get a refund for the last month, no questions asked. $20 is also the lowest we can go to keep it affordable without losing considerable money. If we can sign more sponsors, we’ll be able to remove the cost altogether.

Please note that this does NOT change anything from my side in terms of free content offerings. The newsletters, live streams, LinkedIn content and everything else I've promised will remain 100% free for the duration of the 6 months. You do NOT need to sign up for this to get access to my content, and this is not necessary or vital to learning how to land a design role.

There are also amazing free alternatives available like Phyl Terry's Never Search Alone, which in my opinion is superior in many ways.

If you're interested, DM Erika Flowers to learn more and/or sign up here.

I’ll be joining the Figma Make-a-thon from September 3-7. It’s definitely an expensive distraction but it does serve a few purposes:

So far the AI output is a bit rough if not comical across Figma Make, Claude and ChatGPT. I’m trying to map out the NYC subway map which has 472 stations as an experiment.

Yikes. Wish me luck!

As always, please keep the feedback about the newsletter coming, especially critical ones. DM me on LinkedIn (preferred) or email me at [email protected]