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Designers! Designers! Designers! - by Carly Ayres

carly.substack.com · 899 words · saved by 8 readers

Spend five minutes on Design Twitter™ and you’ll feel the whiplash. Half of the feed is “we’re so cooked” gallows humor after each new AI model release as designers panic about disappearing jobs; the other is founders posting open roles, dangling referral bonuses, and asking how to land a great designer. Last week, Julie Zhuo wrote that the market for startup design talent “has never been more competitive,” sparking hundreds of replies and more than 250k views. So which is it—peak demand or mass extinction? The answer reveals a market drowning in candidates who can rearrange design system components, and starving for designers who can actually ship outcomes in an AI-driven world. The past year has been a bloodbath at the execution layer. Layoffs have hit big tech companies like Autodesk, Intel, Google, Salesforce, as well as agencies and studios. Full-time roles have been swapped for contract work. Budget-strapped teams are outsourcing basic visuals to AI or overseas shops. That’s holl

Designers! Designers! Designers! Why everyone’s hiring (and no one can find talent) Carly Ayres Aug 11, 2025 375 21 47 Share Spend five minutes on Design Twitter™ and you’ll feel the whiplash. Half of the feed is “ we’re so cooked ” gallows humor after each new AI model release as designers panic about disappearing jobs; the other is founders posting open roles, dangling referral bonuses , and asking how to land a great designer . Last week, Julie Zhuo wrote that the market for startup design talent “has never been more competitive,” sparking hundreds of replies and more than 250k views. So wh

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