Ep 293: Fire People Who Declare Their Industry Dead

Let's read and discuss my article at https://rbefored.com/fire-people-who-declare-their-industry-dead-55e1d168645f

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Check out my free webinar about better product-market fit and using AI thoughtfully in UX qual research! It's a preview of my new course. https://atomicpmf.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Welcome, low ego action heroes and phoenixes. This is episode two ninety-three: Fire People Who Declare Their Industry Dead. This was a spicy topic that uh went slightly viral for me on LinkedIn and I uh because I'd written an article about it. And today we're gonna read through that article and take questions or discuss it if anybody shows up live. If not, it is the voice-acted version of the article that I hope you will read and share with other people. Uh welcome to the people joining us on the audio-only podcast, which is available on most major podcasting platforms. And uh as always, you can follow us on Twitch and uh YouTube, and we've got a free Discord and Patreon. Again, you can find all the links, as always, at dcx.to. That's it. That'll drop you right there. You can also check out some of our upcoming live courses taught by me. So lots of stuff cooking here in the Delta CX hive. So episode 293. Let's talk about what we should do with all the people who are out there declaring everything is dead. So uh I'm just gonna jump into my article. If you're listening or watching live and you have some comments or questions, put them live in the chat and I will be sure to respond to them. Hello to Anna Lucia, who always joins us live somehow. Amazing. Um, okay, I've got my screen share ready. Um, and I'm just going to read this article and let's discuss it in the middle of the end. Yes. Um, so you can find this article on uh Medium. I found it today by searching uh Fire People, Industry Dead, Levitt, my last name, Medium, came right up. Uh, my Medium stuff does tend to rank well in the searches. So you can find it easily there or head to our publication at rbeford.com. Here we go. This uh article is from mid-March 2026. This may be a spicy take, but I am so tired of X is dead. Agile is Dead, said by Agile trainers and coaches. Scrum is dead, said by Scrum Masters and Scrum thought leaders. Product management is dead, design is dead, research is dead, the AI is dead claims seem especially funny. People who want attention love to jump straight to the most clickbaity and rage baity thing they can say. The thing they do that pays their bills is dead. If I'm a design leader and I announce that design is dead, I shouldn't have a job, right? Design is dead. Companies don't need me. Can you imagine working for a leader who declared what you do dead? What kind of support do you get at that job? Who applies for those jobs? I then have an image in this article, and it's where the head of design for Claude from Anthropic says the design process is dead. This is a direct quote from her, I believe, from Lenny's podcast, and that graphic was going around. Oh, she said the design process is dead. Well, what's that? Which process? Design thinking was controversial, but some people use it well. Double diamond can work if you actually invest in doing it well. Same for human-centered design, user-centered design, service design, and all of the other variations of the scientific method. They work well when you do them well. They're not dead. Which part of first we should understand problems, then we should solve them well is dead. That's every design process. Understand people, understand their tasks and needs, solve those well. How is that dead? Is this just another you need to use more AI sales pitch? Or is this another you don't need a process or framework, just use your intuition sales pitch? I've seen that one a lot lately. Dirty Secret, a course on how to use your intuition, gut, or vibes more is still offering a process or framework by definition. As soon as your task has one step, you have a process. But this must be the technique I'm missing to promote my new book. Woman Who Writes Atomic Product Market Fit gleefully announces that product market fit is dead. Oh wait, she's announced that products are dead. All of them, no more products, y'all. It usually comes with no advice about what to do next. The head of design announces that design is dead. Cool story. What do we do about that? Should we all become farmers? What's your advice here? You got our attention. Now what do you want us to know? Guy who writes monster famous product management book says most companies don't need product managers. Cool story. What do you want PMs to do now? They can't all become career coaches. Sometimes it's a trademark grab. Oh, I said design or the design process is dead, but I want to introduce you to my new Zuzek model trademark symbol, which replaces the design process. And let me guess, it's a variation of the scientific method where we'll understand and solve problems. Books and trainers who told people not to bother with researchers or designers tell people that research and design work needs to be done. Just use this author's new framework, map, and template to understand customers, the market, see the opportunities to serve them, consider solutions, experiment and test them, determine to do what's next. It's the same thing every time, which is why the design process will outlive design jobs. There will always be good and bad processes, techniques, approaches, methods, and models for problem finding and solving. The entire design process from understanding people and problems to potential solutions and prototypes, testing, iteration, rethinking, etc., that process exists even when people say it's dead. That process lives on even as jobs are cut. That process informs other things we do. We're thinking about buying a car. We understand our needs and standards. We research models that might fit us. We test drive ones to experiment and evaluate. We narrow down possibilities. We select what best solves our problem or needs. You might not think that you designed a solution, but it's the same old process. Do you want a spicy quote that makes a great shareable graphic? How about this one? I made it for you. Then it's a graphic with that has a picture of me, and it says, the design process will outlive design jobs. They're gonna lay off all of us and continue to reduce hiring design-related jobs, but the process will live on. We'll use it in other ways. Lots of things are broken. Design isn't dead, UX isn't dead. Design processes aren't dead, but a lot of stuff is broken. The problem is in how companies design or avoid designing. Company processes are broken, toxic leadership breaks things, teams with the wrong ethics, deadlines, KPIs, and goals break things. And the more we allow these to be broken, the closer companies will be to their dream of laying off most of us so that AI can do the work. But AI is also broken. Not dead yet, but certainly broken. Why aren't we fixing any of this? Why declare the patient dead when they are alive, trying to live, and should live? What do we wish leaders would say? The palpable need or craving to be heard, admired, pressed like, and talked about can lead a lot of people to say a lot of things. Some they mean and stand by. Some they have to apologize and try to undo later. But we need fewer games and people playing games, especially with our jobs and livelihoods. Every leader declaring their own industry, process, role, etc. dead hurts your ability to make money. Why would anybody with care, sympathy, or empathy do that to others? Is the social media dopamine worth doing that to other humans? The message I hear when the head of design at Claude says the design process is dead, that's a deliberately chosen statement. She didn't say it's in trouble, it needs to be redefined, it's important, but here's how to improve it, etc. She says it's dead. I take that to mean that she is actively killing it through words, actions, and inactions. And suddenly every UX problem and deceptive design I see in Claude makes sense to me. And I'm a Claude fan with a paid account. It's the only AI I use. But your head of design says that. Yep. I see it reflected in the product, and I really hear what you're saying. Working to make Claude better is a dream job for me. If I could pick, I would be working with ethics, Claude's personality, how it responds to people in distress and its understanding of current events. I'd like to research people using Claude, and I'd like to research Claude itself, which I've been doing for a long time, but informally and unpaid. I wouldn't want to report to someone who says that ethics are dead or who cares about dealing with people in distress. I wouldn't want to work for someone who says the research process is dead. Walk away from these people and posts quietly. These things are said for attention, engagement, and debate. And we fall for them, but we don't have to. We can look at these things call bullshit and not engage. They want the engagement, but don't give it to them. Support, report, share, comment to agree, comment to disagree, or comment to ask. Now what? Ignore and keep going. Maybe they will notice their numbers on that post didn't do very well, and rage baiting that the core of their livelihood is dead might not be the best message. And I say fire them. If you have an agile coach blogging that agile is dead, fire them. They are unlikely to be the agile coach you need. If you have a UX research leader saying research is dead, fire them. They're the wrong person to lead research. Do you have a design leader saying design is dead or the design process is dead? Fire them. They might be better suited at a company hoping to kill design. If you want to raise it up, then a minimum standard would be to find an effective leader with many years of doing the work who believes in the aliveness of what they do. And where they think it's struggling, in trouble, or gasping, they are the leader who can fix, improve, and revive this, not make a death announcement. I can't believe how low the bar is, but I expect a leader to understand the value of their own industry and specialty, and to promote that industry and specialty. I expect them to not declare it dead, especially because they would want to keep their job and support all the people working for them. And that is my article. Thank you for joining and listening. Let me know if you have questions, comments, agreements, disagreements. I'll just check in quickly on LinkedIn to see if there are any questions there that didn't show up in my interface. Thank you for some reactions on LinkedIn that I'm just seeing now. Um, so we do have some people watching live on LinkedIn, but let me know if you have any questions or comments or thoughts. If you're watching this later, please leave a comment under the YouTube video. I always respond to them personally. Um, hello, LinkedIn people. If you feel similarly about this, please feel free to share this video. It'll be archived uh on YouTube as episode 293. It's sometimes tough to share uh LinkedIn uh live archives because it's hard to find them later, but you will be able to find this as soon as the stream ends on the Delta CX Hive YouTube channel. Um, episode 293. Uh that should be easy to search and find. So let me know if anybody has any questions or comments. I'm trying live streams at different times, so sometimes we might get more people or fewer people. I'm curious if this 3 p.m. Italy time is better or worse for us, but either way, I'm always happy to record my articles as videos so that uh, hey, accessibility and also people can hear them read in my voice. Anna Lucio says, when I see X is dead, I immediately think, so what will this person try to sell? Because yes, most of the time it's bait to sell you something. I do tend to agree with that, and that was in the article that very often it's you know, uh design is dead or design is dying, but if you take my course, you'll stay relevant, be more strategic, speak the business's language, work more efficiently. And I feel like if you have a course of high quality, then you can just promote your course without any of the rage baiting or click baiting or whatever baiting of something is dead. Let the quality of your material speak for itself without clickbait, without rage bait, without hope bait. These are all baits we've talked about many times on the channel. So uh that would be and I think the other piece of what Anna Lucia is saying is then be careful because it's very easy to be wound up when we see these graphics and see these sound bites and clips from podcasts, and then we go, oh, I've gotta fight this person or do something about it. Sometimes people start tagging me in these posts. Chevy, fight this person. No, I don't want to be your personal fighting person. Um, we shouldn't even don't tag me, don't comment, don't respond. Remember, every comment, even if the comment is, I hate this, you suck, you're completely wrong, tells the algorithm, ooh, this is good. This is so good. People took time out of their day to write a comment. And so you are actually adding to a fire you're hoping to put out. The best way, as I've been saying for years, is to let it sink to the bottom of the algorithm ocean. If you exit out, don't uh, you know, there's no thumbs down on many of these platforms anymore. But even so, if they saw thumbs down, they'd probably boost it in the algorithm because it created engagement. So algorithms that are tuned for engagement are looking for engagement. They don't care if it's positive or negative, they don't care if the post is true or false. They only care that you are still on that platform and engaging. So um that is uh that is the show. Um oh, and Anna Lucia says they want people to feel fear of missing out. Yesterday I was reading UX Design's Roadmap at roadmap.sh and instilling FOMO is something they say is good. I'm guessing someone added that. I think it's a volunteering platform. Yeah, that to me, trying to instill fear of missing out goes in the bucket with trying to make people hooked, sticky, addicted, engaged more, spending more time, you know, slot machine casino feel. All of these go in the bucket of are you still doing something ethical? Are you still doing something human-centered, customer-centric, user-centric? But mostly are you still doing something ethical that goes with your company values? Um, so in making people feel like they're missing out does not feel ethical to me. I can't think of a situation in which that would feel ethical. I think the only way that fear of missing out feels ethical to me is if there is genuinely a time crunch in which someone has to take action. Your uh subscription expires in three days. If you don't act now, you're not gonna have that subscription anymore. Could be fear of missing out on whatever the subscription offers, but you were a subscriber and you could be missing it out. Hey, your favorite artist is touring and next week they're gonna be in London. Hey, buy that ticket or you're gonna miss out. These seem like more reasonable ways to use fear of missing out, but I don't want us to use these things and play psychological games with people. We don't like it when it's done to us. We shouldn't do it to others. Um, Anna Lucia says, for me, this is deceptive design. People don't want to feel something negative. You want them to feel like they will gain something from paying for your product or service and not through fear. And to bring this back to the the to the beginning of our show, since we'll be winding down, I'll play the winding down music. Um, we want to make sure that every statement we make on social media, on a podcast platform, if we're doing a talk somewhere, remember, all of this is clippable and quotable, and you don't want to have to apologize for it later. It is important to be very careful about what you're saying, and especially if you're in leadership and someone who is publicly speaking or doing interviews, you don't want to if you're saying design is dead, I'm going to assume you mean it, and that you are actively pushing for that. If you don't mean it, you're gonna have to be a lot more careful about what you say. And that is the lesson. Remember, everything is quotable, the internet is forever, screenshots don't go away, and we want to make sure that anything we say raises other people up. That's it. Um, let's see. Uh today was, I don't know what day it is anymore. Tuesday? Hey, I guess I'll catch everybody tomorrow for asking me anything. Still Tuesday? Yeah. Thanks everybody. Um, and please pass this article around and convince your leaders to stop talking crap about their own industry. Raise it up, support it. Thanks. Have a great day.