The day I became a design manager at EA, I made every mistake possible.
I redesigned other people's work. I jumped into every critique. I kept doing the job I was good at instead of learning the job I was hired for.
It took six months to realize: the skills that made me a good designer were actively hurting me as a manager.
The Shift
Management is a different job. Not a promotion that lets you keep designing with more authority—a completely different set of responsibilities.
What you're giving up: Direct control. The satisfaction of craft. Clear output at the end of each week.
What you're taking on: Other people's careers. Political navigation. Ambiguous problems with no right answer.
If that trade sounds bad to you, stay an IC. Seriously.
The First 90 Days
Weeks 1-4: Listen.
Your instinct will be to add value immediately. Resist. Have 1:1s focused on understanding, not fixing. Map the stakeholder landscape. Learn what leadership measures.
Weeks 5-8: One quick win.
Find one thing you can improve that: matters to your team, is visible to leadership, and you can ship in 30 days.
Weeks 9-12: Establish rhythm.
Regular 1:1s. Critique format. Communication patterns. The boring infrastructure that makes everything else possible.
The Hardest Part
It's not the workload. It's the identity shift.
For years, your value was the work you created. Now your value is the work you enable others to create.
Some days you'll go home wondering what you actually did. No pixels. No prototypes. Just conversations.
Those conversations are the work now.
When to Stay an IC
Not everyone should manage. Stay an IC if:
- The craft is what energizes you
- You resent time spent away from designing
- You struggle to celebrate others' wins as your own
There's no shame in this. The industry finally has senior IC paths. Use them.
Related: