Hello! I have around 40 days in my new job. I joined a startup in the financial industry, they trade companiesā shares, and have a very simple web platform. I took long to understand it, since I got shown Figma files before the environment system, and said files were outdated. My boss took a bit more than a week to realize.
#Help, I don't know what to do :(
exotic pollen
This became a constant. I came to realize that I was the only Product Designer in a 40 people company, with no notion of the product. They also did not give me any input about similar interfaces, any research or previous data (they had none). My boss and his boss and basically everybody is running around, and although I had an onboarding on the product and how it work, it took a few weeks to understand how it exactly worked. Also, my boss told me to work on the staging environment, thatās where I could look at the functionality of it, but I came to realize that the Testing environment was much more complete, but he didnāt know that.
This is context for what comes next. I got tasked with developing a new block trading feature, my bossā boss made a lucidchart out of it, they wanted it to implement said feature within the look, feel and functionality of our current system so that it wouldnāt be hard to implement.
I got many blockers, because my boss would leave me for the whole day, (we use Slack but came to realize he preferred I met with him to go over things, but was almost never available to chat unless every morning I ran into him at our standup, but I feel like, for someone who is only getting into the ropes of it, it was not a lot of time to discuss things with). So I tried to work with that and maybe thought it wasnāt time sensitive, but I noticed they got frustrated with my deliverables. They wanted me to copy exactly the current system, but there are things that are not user friendly and they wanted me to remove them, but never told me, and everytime I tried to propose new options they shut me down, so I tried only copying, which they also didnāt like.
They were frustrated but I figured out that maybe that was the overall environment, my bossā boss is apparently famous for yelling at people in meetings. He said he was āa bit frustratedā with the result but, in a meeting with a Product Manager (which, by the way, Iām not working with neither a Product or Project Manager, Iām solo basically) he said my design was shit and for the first time in a month I heard useful feedback on how to change some of the elements, whenever I asked they would tell me things like āI donāt know itās not workingā. I feel like I am in a catch 22 situation, where they want me to figure out a product we have no input about (my boss has never worked at Block Trading either) and the only one who knows that is my bossā boss but he is always angry and on the move.
Today, my boss told me that they are not happy with my work and theyāre thinking about letting me go, which I replied āI feel like Iām working with no directionā and he said that they donāt have time for me, that Iām a professional and that I should know when Iām making a UX UI mistake, but they also get angry when I outright copy something from the system (which they told me to do).
Help ā¹ I donāt want to lose my job, but then again, they seemed like they are worn out with me and I joined on November 27th.
wicked flume
Iām no design expert atm, but some of this sounds a little abusive and a violation? I wouldnāt want to work with a boss who lashes out at their employers and gives harmful and overly brutal feedback on their work, but I do understand wanting to keep your job
i just wish this can be reported