When “career growth” hits your roadmap

👋 Hey friend,

Three weeks ago, we kicked off the biggest initiative my team has tackled in years.

Sixty days to address long-standing customer pain points and feature requests that have been in our backlog forever. Company-wide push. High visibility. The kind of sprint where you prove what your team can do.

I was ready. My team was ready. We had the groove.

Then, within two weeks, my design lead moved to another group. My tech lead went back to being an IC on a different team. And I found out my other tech lead is moving teams in January.

Oh, and there are whispers of more moves coming.

So here I am, trying to ship the most design-heavy work we’ve done all year, without a designer, with new tech leadership, during a 60-day sprint where everyone’s watching.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Here’s the thing: I’m genuinely happy for all of them.

Career growth is good. Internal mobility is 1000% encouraged. These moves make sense for where they want to go.

And also…The timing is spectacularly terrible.

We spent months building a rhythm. I knew how my design lead thought about problems. My tech leads knew our codebase inside and out. We had shorthand. Trust. Momentum.

Then, right when we need that most, everyone scatters.

It’s like training for a marathon with your running crew, and the week before the race, they all join different teams. You’re still running the marathon. You’re just doing it alone now, figuring out the route as you go.

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When your embedded design lead leaves during a design-heavy sprint, you have two choices: stop shipping or figure it out.

So I’m figuring it out.

Here’s what “figuring it out” actually means:

I’m making prototypes myself. Not to the same quality a dedicated designer would produce, but good enough to move forward.

I’m going to design office hours to get feedback and learn on the fly.

I’m doing customer research that used to be a partnership. Now it’s just me trying to synthesize patterns while also managing two front-end teams and keeping the roadmap moving.

I’m spread across multiple projects, so prioritizing this work means something else isn’t getting the attention it needs.

And I’m doing all of this while onboarding new tech leadership and trying to maintain momentum on a sprint that doesn’t care about my staffing problems.

UX is so much more than visuals.

It’s research. It’s customer insights. It’s pattern recognition across hundreds of conversations. It’s knowing when user feedback is pointing to a surface problem vs a deeper structural issue.

I can make a decent prototype. I can’t replace the partnership of having someone who does this work full-time.

The quality gap is real. But more than that, the prioritization gap is brutal.

When design was someone’s full-time job, they could focus. Now it’s one of seventeen things I’m juggling, and it shows.

Here’s what I’m learning: you can be genuinely happy for people and also devastated by the timing.

Both can be true.

I want my former teammates to grow. I want them to take opportunities that excite them. I want them to build their careers.

And I also want to scream into a pillow because why did this have to happen NOW?

The trick is not letting the second feeling make you bitter about the first one.

Movement is normal in tech. People leave teams. ICs who’ve been in place for years get shifted around. It’s how organizations stay dynamic.

But “normal” doesn’t mean “easy.” And “healthy for the org” doesn’t mean “convenient for you.”

I don’t have a perfect playbook for this. But here’s what’s helping:

1. Ruthless prioritization

I made a list of everything that needs to happen in these 60 days. Then I cut it by 30%.

Not because I want to ship less. Because I have to be realistic about capacity when I’m filling multiple gaps.

The team that’s left needs to know what’s actually critical vs what’s nice-to-have.

2. Over-documenting everything

I’m writing down context that used to live in people’s heads. Decisions we made. Why we made them. What we tried before.

It’s tedious. It’s also the only way the new people coming in have a fighting chance.

3. Asking for help loudly

Design office hours. Slack messages to other teams. “Hey, can you review this prototype?”

Making sure leadership is bought in, early and often.

I can’t do this alone, and I’m done pretending I can.

4. Protecting the new relationships

My new tech lead didn’t ask to join during chaos. Neither did the one starting in January.

I’m investing extra time upfront to build trust and give them context. It’s slowing me down now, but it’s the only way we build momentum later.

5. Being honest about what’s not happening

Strategic planning? On hold. Roadmap for Q1? Barely started. That side project I wanted to explore? Not even close.

I’m in survival mode, and I’m okay admitting that.

If I could go back, here’s what I’d do differently:

Document the obvious stuff. I assumed everyone knew our design principles and the reasons behind past decisions. Obviously not 🤦. Decision logs are great for getting people caught up quickly.

Build redundancy. I relied too heavily on specific people. When they left, there was no backup.

Create transition runbooks. Not for if people leave, but for when they do. Because they will.

Invest in relationships across teams earlier. The design office hours I’m attending now? I should have been building those connections months ago.

If you’re about to go through something like this (or you’re in it right now), here’s what I’d tell you:

Lower your standards temporarily. Not forever. Just for now. “Good enough to ship” is better than “perfect but stalled.”

Communicate more than feels necessary. Your new team doesn’t have the context. Your old team is moving on. Over communicate.

Protect your energy. You can’t fill every gap. Pick the critical ones and let the rest wait.

Give yourself permission to be sad. Even if the moves are good for everyone, it’s okay to grieve the team you had.

Remember this is temporary. New people are coming. You’ll build new grooves. It just takes time.

See you next week,
– Stef

P.S. One of my former teammates messaged me yesterday: “How’s the sprint going?” I said “We’re shipping. It’s messy, but we’re shipping. 😅 ” Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.

💬 Want to talk product? I’m mentoring on ADPList! If you’re navigating team changes, transitions, or just need someone who gets it, you can book a free session with me right here.

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