r/uxcareerquestions

For someone time ago I came across UX however I never made the move despite getting ux job offer. I got this by building my own portfolio and self learning. It wasn’t amazing but I knew at the time they valued my thinking. the circumstance was a little different but I did regret not taking the offer but alternative I do think the experience I did gain did broader my thinking. Long story short I have recently been unemployed for about 13 month. I did manage to get a job in risk, making another career change however I found the role to be limiting my ability to think and create and didn’t appreciate the manager for not recognising for what I was bringing either. So I lasted for all but two months but I was glad to leave it. But then I got me thinking about ux about restarting, but reading on Reddit seems people are struggling or unhappy with the direction of field. What are the key issues and what do you think o should consider before making the change ?

How many months its going to take? What is the probability of landing a job.

Hi all! Maybe this question has already been asked and answered, but I wanted to ask again given how the market has evolved. I am a UXR with eight to nine years of experience. I have worked in FAANG companies and other cutting-edge startups, but now at a SaaS company. I am exhausted with the job market and just the lack of interest in the role or its outcomes from product teams. I also don’t see a world where I can actually grow in this career. The constant threat of layoffs and being on the chopping block always has completely drained me. I am debating moving into a Product Design role and see a possibility of doing that in my current job itself. Is this a good idea? I started my career as a service designer and pivoted to UXR. I love the idea of being able to create again and having tangible outputs.

I know being part of product design function has been tough too with AI and many are looking for alternative career paths. Would you recommend this pivot?

I’m a 28-year-old Graphic Design graduate. I have 1.5 years of formal, insured design/branding experience, but spent the last couple of years helping run my family’s burger restaurant. My insurance lapsed, and I only get daily cash.
I’m at a crossroads: Should I stay and continue in the family food business, or is it worth fighting to get back into design (employed vs. starting my own business/freelance)?

If I return to design:

1. Is it better to get a corporate/agency job first or go straight into freelance/building my own client base?
2. How do I frame this restaurant management gap on my CV for design roles?
3. Is transitioning back at 28 fully worth the risk?

as most designer are scared of getting replaced by ai. is it good to start learning

I moved to Poland almost 3 years ago after leaving Ukraine because of the war. Getting out was not simple. I spent around $10,000 to arrange my departure and start over in another country.

Since then, I've been looking for a Product Designer position in European companies, on and off, for almost 3 years.

I have around 8 years of experience in design. I started with web design and spent most of my career working pretty independently. I never really had a big design team around me, so I learned most things myself. UX, UI, prototyping, design systems, new technologies, new industries. I made a lot of mistakes, learned from them, and kept going.

I did work as part of a product team for about a year, but most of my career has been as the only designer.

My current company is project-based and works mainly with VR/AR, mobile and game development. I can be involved in several projects at the same time. My job is much more than designing screens. UX/UI, prototypes, design systems, stakeholder presentations, developer handoffs, solving ambiguous problems, and basically doing whatever is needed within the available time and budget.

This company also introduced me to AR/VR, which is actually the direction I want to pursue further: XR, VR, spatial computing, IoT, embedded products and robotics.

But here's the problem.

For almost 3 years I've been applying across Poland and Europe. I've done interviews, technical interviews, take-home assignments and reached final stages multiple times, but never got an offer.

I've completely lost count, but it's 400+ applications.

I've messaged recruiters, HR people, designers and employees directly on LinkedIn.

I even tried working with a career consultant as an experiment. We reviewed and reworked my CV specifically for the European market and the positions I was targeting.

So I don't think the problem is simply that I've been sending the same CV over and over again.

Still, nothing really changed.

I'm not saying I'm an amazing designer who should automatically get hired. I know there are plenty of people better than me.

But after 400+ applications, interviews and several final rounds, I honestly expected to have at least one offer by now.

And I'm trying to understand why.

Maybe my portfolio isn't strong enough.
Maybe my experience is too broad.
Maybe my positioning is wrong.
Maybe I'm caught between mainstream Product Design and specialized XR roles.

There is also the language issue.

I live in Gdańsk, and there are companies here working with interesting technologies, but my Polish is around B1. I can communicate and work in Polish, but I'm not fluent enough for some teams that expect strong Polish communication.

I also sometimes wonder whether being Ukrainian affects my chances. I don't know if it does, and I'm not trying to make that assumption. It's just another variable I can't really measure.

I'm not looking for sympathy or "keep going, you'll get there."

I'm actually starting to ask myself a different question:

>Is the European design job market simply so bad right now that the time I'm investing into finding another Product Design job would be better spent learning a completely different field?

I've already been interested in XR, IoT, embedded systems and robotics, so maybe this is the time to seriously invest in one of those directions instead of spending another year sending hundreds of applications.

I'd genuinely like to hear from other designers who went through something similar.

>How many applications did it take you to get your next job? How long did it take? Did you have to completely change your positioning, portfolio or career direction?

And if you were in my position today, would you keep investing heavily into Product Design, or start building a second career direction alongside it?

I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm trying to figure out where my time is actually worth investing.