You hired a wrong designer - by Misha Frolov

Note: Written by Misha, a product designer at Electric Capital. He works with founders in the Electric portfolio, bringing experience from Uber, Shopify, Stripe, and his own startup. Design hires fail when the person is brilliant in one setting but misaligned in another. A scrappy IC might actually drown in a 200-person org. A seasoned design-consultant can flail when asked to crank out Figma mocks on a daily basis. A pixel perfectionist can dazzle with polish, but might stall when your SaaS dashboard prioritizes shipping/learning over polish. That’s why hiring a designer can get so slippery. Not all designers are equal - there is a lot of nuance hidden in the craft. With designers, the right hire depends heavily on stage, type of role, ability, and relationships/culture. I use a simple framework called STAR to make sense of it: Stage → Are they the right fit for your company’s maturity? Type → Do they match the role you need (IC vs manager vs leader)? Ability → Do their core skills ma

Note: Written by Misha, a product designer at Electric Capital. He works with founders in the Electric portfolio, bringing experience from Uber, Shopify, Stripe, and his own startup. Design hires fail when the person is brilliant in one setting but misaligned in another. A scrappy IC might actually drown in a 200-person org. A seasoned design-consultant can flail when asked to crank out Figma mocks on a daily basis. A pixel perfectionist can dazzle with polish, but might stall when your SaaS dashboard prioritizes shipping/learning over polish. That’s why hiring a designer can get so slippery.