## Metadata
- Author: [[Mike Monteiro]]
- Full Title: Ruined by Design
- Published:
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- This book is for everyone who designs things, whether they claim the title or not. If you’re affecting how a product works in any way whatsoever—you’re designing. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600697) ^rw283600697
- What we choose to design and more importantly, what we choose not to design, and even more importantly, who we exclude from the design process—these are all political acts. Knowing this and ignoring it is also a political act, albeit a cowardly one. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600698) ^rw283600698
- Never do work you’re ashamed of putting your name on. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600699) ^rw283600699
- Secondly, you wouldn’t read a dry academic book about ethics. Not to piss you off, but that book’s been written a thousand times—and you didn’t read it. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600700) ^rw283600700
- Doctors, lawyers, journalists, Omar from The Wire, even our design cousins the architects all have ethical codes they agree to follow. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600701) ^rw283600701
- If you believe you need to do what your boss wants because they’re paying you, you also need to believe the doctor should provide the oxycodone if the addict is willing to pay for it. The exchange of cash for services doesn’t supersede ethics. Following unethical orders won’t keep you out of jail. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600702) ^rw283600702
- The work we do has become astonishingly complex in the last twenty years. I don’t just mean technically complex, that was the easy part. I mean ethically complex. Our field has matured and we need to mature along with it [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600703) ^rw283600703
- Crime is more organized than design. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600704) ^rw283600704
- People don’t look at our interfaces to appreciate them, they use them to get things done in their lives. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600705) ^rw283600705
- Design does not exist in a vacuum. Society is the biggest system we can impact and everything you do, good and bad, is a part of that system [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600706) ^rw283600706
- Nothing a totalitarian regime designs is well-designed because it has been designed by a totalitarian regime. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600707) ^rw283600707
- A broken gun is better designed than a working gun [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600708) ^rw283600708
- Your job is not just to produce that work but to evaluate the impact of that work. Your job is to relay the impact of that work to your client or employer. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600709) ^rw283600709
- If your work is so fragile that it can’t withstand criticism, it shouldn’t exist [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600710) ^rw283600710
- Design is the intentional solution to a problem within a set of constraints. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600711) ^rw283600711
- A team with a single point of view will never understand the constraints they need to design for as well as a team with multiple points of view. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600712) ^rw283600712
- Empathy is a pretty word for exclusion. I’ve seen all-male all-white teams taking “empathy workshops” to see how women think. If you want to know how women would use something you’re designing, get a woman on your design team. They’re not extinct. We don’t need to study them. We can hire them! [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600713) ^rw283600713
- Tags: [[blue]]
- Note: I always balk at the word empathy in ux processes, something about it sounds hollow.
- A designer does not believe in edge cases. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600714) ^rw283600714
- Facebook now claims to have two billion users, one percent of two billion people, which most products would consider an edge case, is twenty million people. Those are the people at the margins.
These are the trans people who get caught on the edges of “real names” projects. These are the single moms who get caught on the edges of “both parents must sign” permission slips. These are the elderly immigrants who show up to vote and can’t get ballots in their native tongues. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600715) ^rw283600715
- Just as a rising tide affects all boats, taking a shit in the pool affects all swimmers [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600716) ^rw283600716
- Never throw another designer under the bus to advance your own agenda. This includes public redesigns of someone else’s work, spec work, unsolicited work, and plagiarism. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600717) ^rw283600717
- Not hiring someone because they’re not a good cultural fit is either elitist, racist, or sexist, or all three [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600718) ^rw283600718
- Your job is a choice. Please do it right. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600719) ^rw283600719
- As teams across the major platforms attempted to eradicate the video from their services they found out how difficult it is to get a system to stop doing what it’s been designed to do [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600720) ^rw283600720
- Grindr, with 3.6 million daily active users as of that date, was sharing users’ HIV status with two other companies. Their status was included in a larger data dump simply because no one thought not to include it. It was designed that way [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600721) ^rw283600721
- Facebook ran an experiment on over 600,000 human beings using their service. Facebook filled those users’ newsfeed with overwhelmingly negative news to see if it had an effect on those users’ mental health. Facebook ran a human mental health experiment on its own users without their consent. Obviously anyone with mental health issues had no opportunity to opt out. Neither did anyone else. It was designed that way.3 [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600722) ^rw283600722
- Facebook upped the ante and did an emotional study by analysing the usage patterns of 6.4 million Australian youth on their platform, including 1.9 million high school kids as young as 14 to figure out when they were feeling their most worthless, in order to target them with higher-value ads. It was designed that way.5 [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600723) ^rw283600723
- We are gatekeepers. Nothing should be making it through the gate without our labor and our counsel. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600724) ^rw283600724
- Russian bots [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600725) ^rw283600725
- Note: Russophobia
- That’s exactly what he did. He put up a fence. The foxes figured out how to get under the fence. He then dug a moat and filled it with concrete. The foxes found another way in. His neighbors, who are used to my Dad going to war with the local wildlife, suggested poison. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600726) ^rw283600726
- Note: Maybe alesson here is work with a fox, not against an ecosystem
- One of the things I learned along the way was that clients (this goes for bosses as well) need to know who they are hiring and what it’s going to be like to work together before they actually agree to work together. Because I’ve had one too many arguments with clients that ended with, “I sign your paychecks and you will do what I say, [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600727) ^rw283600727
- You may be hiring us and that may be your name on the check, but we do not work for you. We’re coming in to solve a problem, because we believe it needs to be solved and it’s worth solving. But we work for the people being affected by that problem. Our job is to look out for them because they’re not in the room. And we will under no circumstances design anything that puts those people at risk.” [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600728) ^rw283600728
- Tags: [[design]]
- When you hire me as a designer, I do not work for you. I may practice my craft at your service, but you haven’t earned the right to shape how I practice that craft. One, you don’t want me designing at your level, you want me designing at mine. That means you don’t get to pull the strings, I do. Two, you’re hiring someone who performs a service, not a servant [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600729) ^rw283600729
- doctors take an oath before they begin practicing. This doesn’t ensure they’re all going to behave ethically, but if they’re going to behave badly, they certainly can’t claim ignorance [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600730) ^rw283600730
- we have total [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600731) ^rw283600731
- balance. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600732) ^rw283600732
- Small successes built incrementally over time don’t make for dramatic stories or good ethical lessons [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600733) ^rw283600733
- they were “born on third base and think they hit a triple.” [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600734) ^rw283600734
- some pseudo-philosophy called “objectivism,” which can be summed up in five words: I got mine, fuck you [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600735) ^rw283600735
- Venture capital is like startup cocaine [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600736) ^rw283600736
- There’s no way that saving ten percent of the world while destroying ninety percent of it turns into anything close to a net positive. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600737) ^rw283600737
- In 1971, American philosopher John Rawls proposed an idea for determining the ethics of a situation, he called it a veil of ignorance. He later expanded on the idea in his book A Theory of Justice. In short, a veil of ignorance is a way of determining whether what you’re designing, be it a startup, a dinner plan, or a system of government, is just. It’s very simple: when designing something, imagine that your relationship to that system gets determined after you’ve made it. For example, if you’re designing a system of government that allows slavery, you might end up being enslaved. If you’re designing a ride-sharing service, you might end up as the driver or the rider. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600738) ^rw283600738
- There is no such thing as neutral software. We all bring our own biases to the things we design—our own ethical code, and our own garbage. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600739) ^rw283600739
- Tags: [[software]] [[design]] [[ethics]]
- If this were as easy as not working for unethical industries, I wouldn’t be a writing you a book. I’d be making you a list. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600740) ^rw283600740
- When we are brought in to our work, we need to come in with all the tools. That includes an ethical code that goes beyond and above anything else that you might find waiting for you at your cubicle, in your company’s “vision statement,” or the cafeteria. A doctor’s ethical code doesn’t ebb and flow depending on what hospital employs them. The code is the code. It needs to be the same with designers. We need to do our job at an ethical level that goes beyond that of the people for whom we work. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600741) ^rw283600741
- James Liang was an engineer at Volkswagen. He designed the software that lied about Volkswagen’s diesel emissions. During the subsequent trial, a group of experts reverse-engineered James’ software and concluded that it couldn’t have been designed to do what it did without James being aware.
On August 25, 2017, James Liang was sentenced to forty months in prison for bad design. (Sadly, I’m guessing the reason he ended up in jail has more to do with deceiving shareholders than lying to customers or destroying the environment.) James was a middleman. He accepted orders and he fulfilled them, like most of us. James Liang was following the orders of unethical leaders and in doing so, he became unethical himself. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600742) ^rw283600742
- Tags: [[design]] [[ethics]]
- accepting payments in rubles to insert fake foul news [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600743) ^rw283600743
- Note: Why wouldn't a multinational not accept the Russian currency. Pure Russophobia
- whether we want to wait until the government steps in and does it for us. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600744) ^rw283600744
- Note: Mike uses both reactionary liberal and reactionary anti government rhetoric in the same argument.
- Whenever I post a design job, I end up interviewing two kinds of people: ones who went to design school, and ones who got into design through the side door. The ones who took the scenic route into design show up with degrees in poetry, English, Russian literature, computer science, journalism, and every other branch of the liberal arts tree. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600745) ^rw283600745
- What all of these people had in common was a well-rounded curiosity, the good sense to know when something wasn’t working, and good social skills. Not only could they design well, they could write, think analytically; and they were curious about every job in the shop. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600746) ^rw283600746
- Working ethically is a skill [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600747) ^rw283600747
- Tags: [[design]]
- UX design was defined first by engineers because, let’s be fair, they’re the ones who invented the internet. They were designing stuff before anyone calling themselves a designer ever showed up. I guarantee they didn’t call it design. But design it was. I have no doubt that the first “designer” ever hired in Silicon Valley was hired to do a skin job [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600748) ^rw283600748
- Engineers’ definition of design — the people in the bunny hats who make the colors — is still widely accepted by a large majority of designers working in the field today [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600749) ^rw283600749
- Design is a verb, an act. Anyone is free to pick up the ball and run with it. If you’re not doing the job you’re being paid to do, you can’t be upset when someone else starts doing it. You cannot not design. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600750) ^rw283600750
- Tags: [[design]]
- Even those doing good research can only ask questions they think to ask. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600751) ^rw283600751
- Their suggestions were to write the job description so that it emphasized the work they’d be doing; to talk about the people they’d be working with, the community they’d be joining, and why that work was important to be doing. They suggested talking about how this hire would be complementing an already great team [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600752) ^rw283600752
- Today’s design isn’t done by rock stars. It isn’t done by ninjas, and it isn’t done by solo supermen. It’s done by teams who know how to work together, to look at a problem from multiple points of view and a diverse set of experiences. So, let’s stop writing job descriptions to appeal to solitary boy geniuses with hero’s journey damage—and start hiring grownups. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600753) ^rw283600753
- You put people from different backgrounds together, and they can see things from multiple points of view. They cover each others’ blind spots [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600754) ^rw283600754
---
tags: books
aliases: Ruined by Design
date created: 2022-03-31
publish: true
---
## Metadata
- Author: [[Mike Monteiro]]
- Full Title: Ruined by Design
- Published:
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- This book is for everyone who designs things, whether they claim the title or not. If you’re affecting how a product works in any way whatsoever—you’re designing. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600697) ^rw283600697
- What we choose to design and more importantly, what we choose not to design, and even more importantly, who we exclude from the design process—these are all political acts. Knowing this and ignoring it is also a political act, albeit a cowardly one. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600698) ^rw283600698
- Never do work you’re ashamed of putting your name on. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600699) ^rw283600699
- Secondly, you wouldn’t read a dry academic book about ethics. Not to piss you off, but that book’s been written a thousand times—and you didn’t read it. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600700) ^rw283600700
- Doctors, lawyers, journalists, Omar from The Wire, even our design cousins the architects all have ethical codes they agree to follow. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600701) ^rw283600701
- If you believe you need to do what your boss wants because they’re paying you, you also need to believe the doctor should provide the oxycodone if the addict is willing to pay for it. The exchange of cash for services doesn’t supersede ethics. Following unethical orders won’t keep you out of jail. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600702) ^rw283600702
- Tags: [[ethics]]
- The work we do has become astonishingly complex in the last twenty years. I don’t just mean technically complex, that was the easy part. I mean ethically complex. Our field has matured and we need to mature along with it [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600703) ^rw283600703
- Crime is more organized than design. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600704) ^rw283600704
- People don’t look at our interfaces to appreciate them, they use them to get things done in their lives. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600705) ^rw283600705
- Design does not exist in a vacuum. Society is the biggest system we can impact and everything you do, good and bad, is a part of that system [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600706) ^rw283600706
- Nothing a totalitarian regime designs is well-designed because it has been designed by a totalitarian regime. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600707) ^rw283600707
- A broken gun is better designed than a working gun [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600708) ^rw283600708
- Your job is not just to produce that work but to evaluate the impact of that work. Your job is to relay the impact of that work to your client or employer. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600709) ^rw283600709
- If your work is so fragile that it can’t withstand criticism, it shouldn’t exist [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600710) ^rw283600710
- Design is the intentional solution to a problem within a set of constraints. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600711) ^rw283600711
- A team with a single point of view will never understand the constraints they need to design for as well as a team with multiple points of view. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600712) ^rw283600712
- Empathy is a pretty word for exclusion. I’ve seen all-male all-white teams taking “empathy workshops” to see how women think. If you want to know how women would use something you’re designing, get a woman on your design team. They’re not extinct. We don’t need to study them. We can hire them! [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600713) ^rw283600713
- Note: I always balk at the word empathy in ux processes, something about it sounds hollow.
- A designer does not believe in edge cases. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600714) ^rw283600714
- Facebook now claims to have two billion users, one percent of two billion people, which most products would consider an edge case, is twenty million people. Those are the people at the margins.
These are the trans people who get caught on the edges of “real names” projects. These are the single moms who get caught on the edges of “both parents must sign” permission slips. These are the elderly immigrants who show up to vote and can’t get ballots in their native tongues. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600715) ^rw283600715
- Just as a rising tide affects all boats, taking a shit in the pool affects all swimmers [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600716) ^rw283600716
- Never throw another designer under the bus to advance your own agenda. This includes public redesigns of someone else’s work, spec work, unsolicited work, and plagiarism. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600717) ^rw283600717
- Not hiring someone because they’re not a good cultural fit is either elitist, racist, or sexist, or all three [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600718) ^rw283600718
- Your job is a choice. Please do it right. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600719) ^rw283600719
- As teams across the major platforms attempted to eradicate the video from their services they found out how difficult it is to get a system to stop doing what it’s been designed to do [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600720) ^rw283600720
- Grindr, with 3.6 million daily active users as of that date, was sharing users’ HIV status with two other companies. Their status was included in a larger data dump simply because no one thought not to include it. It was designed that way [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600721) ^rw283600721
- Facebook ran an experiment on over 600,000 human beings using their service. Facebook filled those users’ newsfeed with overwhelmingly negative news to see if it had an effect on those users’ mental health. Facebook ran a human mental health experiment on its own users without their consent. Obviously anyone with mental health issues had no opportunity to opt out. Neither did anyone else. It was designed that way.3 [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600722) ^rw283600722
- Facebook upped the ante and did an emotional study by analysing the usage patterns of 6.4 million Australian youth on their platform, including 1.9 million high school kids as young as 14 to figure out when they were feeling their most worthless, in order to target them with higher-value ads. It was designed that way.5 [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600723) ^rw283600723
- We are gatekeepers. Nothing should be making it through the gate without our labor and our counsel. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600724) ^rw283600724
- Russian bots [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600725) ^rw283600725
- Note: Russophobia
- That’s exactly what he did. He put up a fence. The foxes figured out how to get under the fence. He then dug a moat and filled it with concrete. The foxes found another way in. His neighbors, who are used to my Dad going to war with the local wildlife, suggested poison. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600726) ^rw283600726
- Note: Maybe alesson here is work with a fox, not against an ecosystem
- One of the things I learned along the way was that clients (this goes for bosses as well) need to know who they are hiring and what it’s going to be like to work together before they actually agree to work together. Because I’ve had one too many arguments with clients that ended with, “I sign your paychecks and you will do what I say, [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600727) ^rw283600727
- You may be hiring us and that may be your name on the check, but we do not work for you. We’re coming in to solve a problem, because we believe it needs to be solved and it’s worth solving. But we work for the people being affected by that problem. Our job is to look out for them because they’re not in the room. And we will under no circumstances design anything that puts those people at risk.” [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600728) ^rw283600728
- Tags: [[design]]
- When you hire me as a designer, I do not work for you. I may practice my craft at your service, but you haven’t earned the right to shape how I practice that craft. One, you don’t want me designing at your level, you want me designing at mine. That means you don’t get to pull the strings, I do. Two, you’re hiring someone who performs a service, not a servant [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600729) ^rw283600729
- doctors take an oath before they begin practicing. This doesn’t ensure they’re all going to behave ethically, but if they’re going to behave badly, they certainly can’t claim ignorance [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600730) ^rw283600730
- we have total [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600731) ^rw283600731
- balance. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600732) ^rw283600732
- Small successes built incrementally over time don’t make for dramatic stories or good ethical lessons [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600733) ^rw283600733
- they were “born on third base and think they hit a triple.” [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600734) ^rw283600734
- some pseudo-philosophy called “objectivism,” which can be summed up in five words: I got mine, fuck you [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600735) ^rw283600735
- Venture capital is like startup cocaine [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600736) ^rw283600736
- There’s no way that saving ten percent of the world while destroying ninety percent of it turns into anything close to a net positive. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600737) ^rw283600737
- In 1971, American philosopher John Rawls proposed an idea for determining the ethics of a situation, he called it a veil of ignorance. He later expanded on the idea in his book A Theory of Justice. In short, a veil of ignorance is a way of determining whether what you’re designing, be it a startup, a dinner plan, or a system of government, is just. It’s very simple: when designing something, imagine that your relationship to that system gets determined after you’ve made it. For example, if you’re designing a system of government that allows slavery, you might end up being enslaved. If you’re designing a ride-sharing service, you might end up as the driver or the rider. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600738) ^rw283600738
- There is no such thing as neutral software. We all bring our own biases to the things we design—our own ethical code, and our own garbage. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600739) ^rw283600739
- Tags: [[software]] [[design]] [[ethics]]
- If this were as easy as not working for unethical industries, I wouldn’t be a writing you a book. I’d be making you a list. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600740) ^rw283600740
- When we are brought in to our work, we need to come in with all the tools. That includes an ethical code that goes beyond and above anything else that you might find waiting for you at your cubicle, in your company’s “vision statement,” or the cafeteria. A doctor’s ethical code doesn’t ebb and flow depending on what hospital employs them. The code is the code. It needs to be the same with designers. We need to do our job at an ethical level that goes beyond that of the people for whom we work. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600741) ^rw283600741
- James Liang was an engineer at Volkswagen. He designed the software that lied about Volkswagen’s diesel emissions. During the subsequent trial, a group of experts reverse-engineered James’ software and concluded that it couldn’t have been designed to do what it did without James being aware.
On August 25, 2017, James Liang was sentenced to forty months in prison for bad design. (Sadly, I’m guessing the reason he ended up in jail has more to do with deceiving shareholders than lying to customers or destroying the environment.) James was a middleman. He accepted orders and he fulfilled them, like most of us. James Liang was following the orders of unethical leaders and in doing so, he became unethical himself. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600742) ^rw283600742
- Tags: [[design]] [[ethics]]
- accepting payments in rubles to insert fake foul news [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600743) ^rw283600743
- Note: Why wouldn't a multinational not accept the Russian currency. Pure Russophobia
- whether we want to wait until the government steps in and does it for us. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600744) ^rw283600744
- Note: Mike uses both reactionary liberal and reactionary anti government rhetoric in the same argument.
- Whenever I post a design job, I end up interviewing two kinds of people: ones who went to design school, and ones who got into design through the side door. The ones who took the scenic route into design show up with degrees in poetry, English, Russian literature, computer science, journalism, and every other branch of the liberal arts tree. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600745) ^rw283600745
- What all of these people had in common was a well-rounded curiosity, the good sense to know when something wasn’t working, and good social skills. Not only could they design well, they could write, think analytically; and they were curious about every job in the shop. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600746) ^rw283600746
- Working ethically is a skill [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600747) ^rw283600747
- Tags: [[design]]
- UX design was defined first by engineers because, let’s be fair, they’re the ones who invented the internet. They were designing stuff before anyone calling themselves a designer ever showed up. I guarantee they didn’t call it design. But design it was. I have no doubt that the first “designer” ever hired in Silicon Valley was hired to do a skin job [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600748) ^rw283600748
- Engineers’ definition of design — the people in the bunny hats who make the colors — is still widely accepted by a large majority of designers working in the field today [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600749) ^rw283600749
- Design is a verb, an act. Anyone is free to pick up the ball and run with it. If you’re not doing the job you’re being paid to do, you can’t be upset when someone else starts doing it. You cannot not design. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600750) ^rw283600750
- Tags: [[design]]
- Note: [[everyone is a designer]]
- Even those doing good research can only ask questions they think to ask. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600751) ^rw283600751
- Their suggestions were to write the job description so that it emphasized the work they’d be doing; to talk about the people they’d be working with, the community they’d be joining, and why that work was important to be doing. They suggested talking about how this hire would be complementing an already great team [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600752) ^rw283600752
- Today’s design isn’t done by rock stars. It isn’t done by ninjas, and it isn’t done by solo supermen. It’s done by teams who know how to work together, to look at a problem from multiple points of view and a diverse set of experiences. So, let’s stop writing job descriptions to appeal to solitary boy geniuses with hero’s journey damage—and start hiring grownups. [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600753) ^rw283600753
- You put people from different backgrounds together, and they can see things from multiple points of view. They cover each others’ blind spots [◊](https://readwise.io/open/283600754) ^rw283600754