u/fragmendt

sorry for the length but i really really hope someone with experience can read this and give me some support bc i'm lost and i really need help 😓

I'm a junior level UI/UX designer. Probably less than junior level, I started my first tech job as a mobile dev intern, but they moved me to design because they liked my eye for aesthetic, most of my tasks in mobile dev were design related anyway due to my art background, and i was struggling in the dev environment. i ended up as their in-house designer and did basically everything design related; ui/ux, branding, social media ads, etc.

They threw me in, I'm like completely self taught, no college degree, never had a mentor and I would say that my skills are mostly raw and unrefined at best. I would design mostly based on instinct and struggled to articulate my design decisions to our executives. i eventually got better about that but we did not have a proper ux system in place, so they basically just told me to use my best judgment on things and I had to do a lot of ux research myself. none of them knew or cared about wcag guidelines so i would have to do frantic ad hoc research on a thing and then school them on it before i even had a firm grasp on it myself. I would repeatedly push for implementing literally any kind of industry standard ux practice-- case studies, research, useability testing-- so i could keeping growing within my position and that would get shrugged off because we didn't have the money/time for it.

when ai was gaining momentum in 2023 one of our executives wanted to just use chat gpt to make all of our content, i objected to it because it looked terrible, and it basically blackballed me within the company for the rest of my time there. my input was deprioritized, the marketing team steamrolled me, and i was relegated to making pretty pictures and pallet/branding swaps for our flagship app so we could make customized pitches to potential customers. i was no longer growing and my pushes for growth opportunities or at least standardizing our design processes continued to be ignored in favor of just going as fast as possible to get deliverables out the door.

in 2025 they had funding issues and laid me off along with most of their staff, and now as i hunt for a new job i'm quickly realizing that i barely learned anything from my first job and i know basically nothing about the science of design. i had a passion for it when it was my job, i cared a lot about accessibility and aesthetic and our customers would somehow sing praises about my work, but i'm struggling to motivate myself to skill up now that i'm out. my instincts tell me all the time that this whole thing was just a fluke and i'm not qualified to even try re-entering the field.

the market is really strained right now obviously and even if/when the ai bubble pops it's just endemic at this point, not going anywhere and i understand that. but i want to hold out hope that the market will eventually equalize and jobs will start flowing again. i really like ui/ux and graphic design, i consider it to be a great middle ground between tech and art, and i'm wondering if i should work on skilling up with online resources and learning ai so i can be prepared when/if the market comes back, or if i should just accept this whole thing as a fluke and try something else? am i being naive for wanting to keep going?