Life after Tech: Why Being a Design Imitator is Better
Why being a design innovator can suck, and life outside the tech bubble is great
One of the hardest lessons I had to learn, going from academia into industry, is likely what many Designers (or potential Designers) in Tech are going through right now.
You are likely not going to be an innovator. Once you accept that, your work life can become much more manageable, less stressed, and much happier overall.
That’s not even to say you will never come up with anything new. Instead, it’s about realizing you don’t always have to.
It’s essential to break that myth while people wake up to Life after Tech.
The tech bubble and the dream of innovation
The tech bubble has been booming for the past decade, and designers were no exception. They eagerly poured out of schools to try and land that fancy job at MAANG or other Silicon Valley companies.
However, despite what you may think, it wasn’t all about the money. Sure, Tech was where you went for high salaries and fantastic benefits, but also because it was a “cool, innovative place to work.”
As someone destined for a “non-cool, less innovative” field (HealthTech), I quickly saw the difference between job fairs and recruiters. Silicon Valley companies had all the crowds and swag, showing off all the cool projects they were creating and telling designers they could be the next Jony Ive. In contrast, HealthTech had serious-minded, quieter people doing the opposite: improving lives through “Imitation.”
But, in many cases, the actual work that people would have been hired to do would have been the same, except life is much easier on the Imitation side.
Innovation vs Imitation: how companies make money
Companies only make money (and can pay a Design salary) in two ways:
Being an Innovator: The company is first to market a product or develop a new solution to a problem, reaping all the rewards
Being an Imitator: A company enters a market with existing problems and solutions, imitating others but finding a unique selling point to make money.
If the “Design Innovator,” in our analogy, is Jony Ive, who helped design pivotal Apple products like the iMac, the “Design Imitator” in our analogy is a plumber.