You are responsible for the effect your work has on the world.

Review

I loved this book, but it frustrated me.

It gets repetitive and it’s hard to guess what the chapters are about from their title. That said, the standards in non-fiction are so low that I wouldn’t consider this a bad book.

The book badly needs an editor. It pins Design and Technology as a global, societal problem (rightfully so) yet uses American jargon everywhere. There are obvious typos.

But, the message is important, and the point of each chapter is compelling. I think the book needs to be spread.

Some chapters are a must-read for everyone working in or with technology. Without the repetitions and a good editor, it could be the manifesto that our industry needs.

If you do buy it, put on a table and read from time to time, not in one setting.

Highlights

Design’s Lost Generation

“An engineer for Volkswagen, was sentenced to 40 months in jail. A court in Detroit, Michigan sentenced him for knowingly designing software that cheated federal emissions tests.”

“I’d argue there are paychecks not worth earning.”

“We are about how much money a movie makes on opening weekend.” Note: Different to how much influence eg Moby Dick

“Architecture is the hardest design profession to study and to get into and has incredibly high standards. Architects can debate style and aesthetics all night, but at the end of the day, their shit has to be up to code.”

“Not only do you need licenses, you need a union.” Note: What about making easy for entrants? Is there an industry that does both well?

“Not only do you need licenses, you need a union.”

“Imagine the power of a professional organization having our backs. We’ve never had that.”

“Designers are tasked with moving fast and breaking things. How has become more important than why.”

“Even the cafeterias of Silicon Valley’s most disruptive companies have to hang health department grade sheets where diners can see them.”

“There are two words every designer needs to feel comfortable saying. No and why.”

“If you’re not doing the job you’re being paid to do, you can’t be upset when someone else starts doing it.”

“Twitter’s profit came at the cost of democracy.”

“Almost every professional I interact with is licensed.” Note: License vs rent seeking

“Turns out we enjoy regulations. When they’re in our interest.”

“If we cannot ask “why,” we lose the ability to judge whether the work we’re doing is ethical.”

“Everyone who influences the final thing, be it a product or a service, is designing.”

Ethics Offsets are Bullshit

“There’s no percentage of your time that can make up for building facial ID software, also for ICE, while working at Microsoft. (In fact, those employees rebelled and forced Microsoft to cancel that contract.)”

“You’re looking for an ethical offset. In other words, Does the good I do over here make up for the bad I do over there? The idea of ethical offsets has been around for a long time,”

“Only you can clean up the place where you work, and if you want to take a stand, if you want to make a difference, it needs to start at the place where you draw your paycheck.”

“Franz Kafka spent his days working at an insurance company, and his evenings working on his passion projects. He wrote about turning into a roach. I don’t think Kafka successfully compartmentalized.”

“As my grandfather once told me, you don’t need to push a stone that’s rolling downhill.”

Ethics and Paying Rent

“By all means, don’t starve! Just be honest with yourself about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and for how long you’re going to do”

“Not putting what you’re designing through an ethical test is not just lazy, it’s dangerous.”

“Can you be successful by throwing ethics out the window? Yes you can. You can also eat three burritos in one sitting. But in both situations, that act is coming back up on you and it won’t be pretty.”

“Feel free to substitute “rent” for student loans, childcare, medical costs or any other very real and very valid concern.”

“Where does this idea that you have to be open to tossing your ethics out the window to be successful come from?”

Beware the Judas Goat

“For all we know, the Judas goat thinks it’s taking the sheep for a nice walk. The biggest issue here isn’t individual character, but the design of the system.”

“Judas goats are used by ranchers to herd goats from pasture to pasture, and eventually to slaughter. The goat is trained by the ranchers to follow their commands, then gets in with the sheep, who accept the goat as one of their own.” Note: The cray trivia I didn’t know i needed

“Imagine if a worker who was asked to do unethical work felt empowered to say no because they knew they had the support of an organization who represented their best interests, not the company’s.” Note: Maybe he’s got a point about unions

“When Susan Fowler bravely described her harassment while working at Uber, HR was very much a key player in the story.” Note: Reference: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber

The Road Back

“The world was broken on our watch. Non-negotiable.”

“Projects were carved into tasks, and tasks were carved into stories, and everyone got really, really good at making their little part of the whole while having no idea what the whole was, or how the whole affected society.”

“Being good at the technical stuff doesn’t automagically make you a savant in socio-economic policy.” Note: Welcome to the Internet

“This job isn’t about creating shareholder value. It’s about creating human value.”

“The promise of the internet was that it was going to give voice to the voiceless, visibility to the invisible, and power to the powerless. That’s what originally excited me about it.”

What If We Get Through This?

“doctor who gets busted working unethically loses their license.” Note: They don’t, and thats the prob

“Imagine having someone who’s been stalked in the room when you suggest adding places of employment to dating profiles.”

“A country that purposely under-educates its electorate in order to maintain its power structures loses the right to call itself a democracy.”

“The stuff we’re designing now is deeply enmeshed in the social fabric of our lives.”

“it’s time to start placing more value on how your work is affecting the world around you than on your own your own personal wealth.” Note: Dafuq, get an editor

Yes, I Will Shame the Workers

“Leadership will not change. They have no reason to. The current system is working great for them! WeWork founder Adam Neumann got a $1.7 billion payout for failing.”

“[Smoking] went from something most people did (I’ve smoked on planes!) to something that people tolerated others doing, to something we now ban.”

“The pressure to quit smoking came from society shaming me for smoking. And I am grateful for that. I am alive because of that.”

Stop Covering Your Ass

“The most important thing about bad work isn’t whose fault it is that the work is bad. It’s that it is bad work. The most important thing to do is to fix that”

Ten Things You Need to Learn in Design School If You’re Tired of Wasting Your Money

“Being able to say no without coming across as a petulant asshole is a skill. A skill many people don’t have. Ask your professors to teach you how.”

Getting Your First Design Job

“You’re gonna meet a lot of people on your first week. Be fascinated with them! You’re a pair of ears with feet.”

Stop Adopting Other People’s Anxiety

“What the client really wants isn’t to make you anxious—it’s to be heard. So hear them. And then repeat their concern back to them in the calm voice of a professional.”

“Don’t promise more work. Don’t promise you’ll work all night to solve it.”

“But let’s not make project-altering decisions with a person screaming in our face.”

“Rule One is simply: ‘Don’t adopt anxiety.’ Clients get anxious. You’d probably get anxious in their position too.”

How to Pitch a Project

“they’re looking for their new website in your portfolio. So go ahead and show them a couple of recent projects but tie them to problems they have.”

“The key to every good pitch meeting is to get the client talking.”

“pitching work is nerve-wracking. It sucks.”

“I’ve gone to plenty of pitch meetings where the client asked me to bring spec work. And I use it as an opportunity to tell them why I didn’t bring it, and how it would have been detrimental”

“Is their brother-in-law in trouble again? Do they have a buddy at a competing agency? You can nail a pitch, and still lose a job for some crazy-making reason.”

“No one cares you won a Webby six years ago. No one cares if you wrote the book on client services. (I know this to be true personally.) People want to know if you understand and can fix their problems.”

“No matter how easy you might think it is to fix someone’s problem, remember that their pain is real. Acknowledge it first. Then fix it.”

“Your first mistake is to believe you’re pitching against them. You’re not. You’re pitching your ability to do the project right.” Note: Against competitors

“If you have stickers, T-shirts, pens, give them some. But don’t hand them a bespoke craft project to remember you by. They’ll feel awkward as they throw it in the trash.”

“The sooner you’re not paying attention to the deck and just having a normal conversation the better your chances of landing the project.”

“They’ll hear a lot of bad pitches this day. They’ll talk to a lot of nervous people. Have some empathy for what they’re going through as well. Don’t be boring. Be the pitch that doesn’t suck.”

“Make the pitch meeting the first step of the discovery process. Someone mentions Sam in engineering? Ask when you can speak to Sam in engineering.”

Get Paid!

“If you’re getting a feeling that you’re going to be left holding the bag, get the hell out.”

“If he didn’t get that 50% up front he’d be putting his own money up for buying wood and other supplies. And taking a huge risk you’d weasel out of the deal after he did the work.”

“Design is done for money. Get comfortable with that.”

“No one likes to be asked for money when they weren’t expecting it, so don’t be surprised if your client registers some discomfort with the situation.”

“You need to get paid before you start. Every time. No excuses.”

“Since resources allocated to a specialized project are no longer useful for anything but that specialized solution, they need to be paid for before they are allocated.”

Everybody Leaves

“A company that exploits either its workers, or its customers, or the ecosystem in which it operates, doesn’t deserve to exist.”

“Finish strong. Wrapping up a project is a natural point for closure and you won’t leave your coworkers in a bad spot.”

“I even helped a few employees negotiate a better offer from their new workplaces. At the same time, I was interviewing their replacements.”

“Some people like to build things from scratch, some people like to work on mature products. Some people thrive in chaotic environments, some people need a ton of structure. None of these are right, and none of these are wrong. And sometimes you don’t know which type of person you are until you find yourself in the wrong environment.”

“Every worker deserves a safe workplace. Free from harassment. Free from abuse. Free from exploitation. Labor is an exchange. And when it’s respected, everyone benefits.”

“Because I was that boss once. But this is how I believe leaving should be handled: out in the open, with honestly, and as a normal part of work. Sadly, not all bosses understand this, so I get why employees don’t want to trust them.”

Thank you

“Thanks to the people working in grocery stores, who risk their lives every time some jackass decides to pull his mask down to use ApplePay.”

“Thanks to the nurses. Thanks to the doctors. Thanks to all the front line workers. Thanks to the postal workers.”

“Thanks to Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jack Dorsey for making sure none of the rest of us could ever be called the biggest asshole in our industry.” Note: Lolz