Image generated by ChatGPT, natch.

A year ago, I wrote that content engineering was the future of content design.

I still believe that. But I don’t think it goes far enough anymore.

Because what’s becoming clear now is that we’re not just engineering content systems. We’re designing model behavior.

From words to models

For a long time, content design showed up in the interface: button labels, onboarding copy, helper text, error messages. But the work itself was always bigger than the artifact. It was about making complex systems understandable. It was about shaping clarity, flow, meaning, trust, and a user’s ability to move forward with confidence.

Now AI-powered products have changed the artifact.

Instead of a fixed interface, we’re increasingly designing for generated responses, recommendations, follow-up questions, explanations, and conversations. The output is dynamic. The interaction is less scripted. And the communication layer is no longer something you fully write line by line.

Today, the most important content decisions are no longer about what a product says in a given moment. They’re about how the system communicates overall: how it interprets intent, handles ambiguity, sequences information, expresses confidence, explains itself, and earns trust.

That isn’t just a new toolset. It’s a new design layer. And it’s one we’re actively designing for at Thumbtack.

As the company moves further into AI-powered experiences, we’re shifting from content design to content model design because the highest-leverage content decisions are happening upstream. More and more, the work is about shaping the systems that generate communication, not just refining the output after the fact.

And that creates room for a different kind of impact.

Content engineering was the bridge

Content engineering gave us a way to talk about the move from static content to dynamic systems.

It gave us language for prompts, structured inputs, taxonomies, evaluation criteria, and all the messy in-between work that never fit neatly under “UX writing.” It helped explain why content designers were suddenly working closer to systems, logic, and model outputs.

That framing was useful. But as AI products mature, I think we need language for the next layer of the work.

This is content model design

Content model design is the practice of designing how AI systems communicate in product experiences. It includes the language itself, but also the patterns, rules, structures, and quality standards that shape that language over time.

• How does the model interpret user intent?

• When does it ask a follow-up question?

• How does it handle ambiguity?

• How does it explain a recommendation?

• How does it calibrate confidence?

• How does it recover when it gets something wrong?

• How does it stay useful without becoming overbearing?

If content design asked, What does the user need this interface to say?

Content model design asks, How should this system communicate?

Why naming this matters

I care about naming this shift because naming shapes how work gets valued.

If we name the work for what it actually is, the scope becomes harder to ignore. This is not just copy review. It’s not just prompt writing. It’s the work of shaping how AI systems communicate with people: how they create understanding, reduce friction, build trust, and make a product feel coherent, useful, and safe.

The future is systemic

I don’t think the most interesting question is whether AI will write for us. It will. It already is. And that’s fine.

At Thumbtack, part of this shift is about making it easier for teams to generate high-quality static content through shared tools and infrastructure, instead of routing every piece of content through a content designer by default. That changes the job in a fundamental way.

When content creation is democratized, the highest-value work is no longer touching every word. It’s designing the systems that make those words useful, coherent, trustworthy, and scalable.

Content model design moves the work from artifact creation to system design. From polishing outputs to shaping how outputs get produced in the first place.

This is the birth of a new discipline. One with more influence on product strategy, more impact on product quality, and more power to shape how AI actually works for customers.

Earlier this year, I boldly stated that content engineering was the future of content design. AI was here and it wasn’t going to take our jobs — rather, it presented an opportunity for our discipline to grow and expand our skillset and impact.

As we near the end of the year, I’ve been inspired to pause and reflect on those claims and whether it’s come to fruition the way I expected, and the lessons my team and I have learned along the way.

First of all, I was right (applause, please). My team’s work has rapidly transformed from traditional content design to content engineering with a side of traditional content design. But as usual, being right isn’t as satisfying as you expect it to be. This shift into content engineering has come with a variety of challenges.

• Learning a new skillset requires a massive investment in learning and development. I was lucky to get buy-in from leadership to fund a series of trainings and also to send my entire team to Button. However, we quickly found that there was no tried-and-true methodology we could leverage because the entire industry was learning these skills together. As a result, my team had to take on the enormous task of learning how to apply skills they already had to an entirely new world. The old adage of building the plane as they were flying it has never been more true. At times, this looked like a team balancing excitement with complete mental exhaustion. New skills, new ways of working, new partners. It was a lot for everyone involved.

• Not everyone wants to be a content engineer — or is equipped to be one. While traditional content design and content engineering share many of the same skills (which is why content designers are so well-suited for this work), there are certain skills that make content designers particularly effective at working with LLMs. These include product thinking, systems thinking, the ability to create very structured content, and the ability to work well with highly technical partners, such as engineers and applied scientists. When content is the product, content designers need to have a strong POV about how it’s positioned, designed and implemented — and work closely with product managers to ensure the product strategy reflects it. For now, we still have enough traditional content design work to make it possible for folks to opt out of content engineering but I don’t think that will be the case for much longer. That’s going to lead to some tough conversations and decisions for some people along the way.

• Content is the product — but no one wants to hire more content designers. All of our roadmaps are filled with new features that are driven by AI-generated content. Yet, even as we shift to a much more content-heavy set of product features, we’re not investing in additional content design headcount. In a world where the quality of the prompts and LLM-as-judges influence thousands of lines of copy — and the success or failure of our product features — it’s hard as hell to sit by and watch projects go out without content design support. We’ve already seen some experiments fail that might have been successful with CD support, and that’s only going to be more common as we accelerate our AI strategy.

• Cross-functional partners see the value of content engineering faster than leadership. In traditional content design, we often struggle to prove the value and impact of our work. In content engineering, our XFN see it, get it and want as much of our time as possible — but leadership still lags behind. As more and more generative AI projects hit the roadmap, we simply can’t staff them all. Figuring out how to successfully convince leadership of the importance and outright necessity of content design in AI-generated content features feels like the most critical task facing me as a leader next year.

All told, I am still excited about the opportunities content engineering presents for our discipline. We’re ending this year with some internal guidance and operating models that reduce some of the mental load of my team, and that’s a huge win. But we’re still in the infancy of what AI can and will do, and I suspect our work will look completely different by the end of next year.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how content design is evolving into content engineering. Since then, I’ve heard from content designers across the industry all asking the same question:

“How can I build these skills if I’m not working on AI right now?”

It’s a great question — and an important one. While some content designers are already deep in generative AI work, many others are still trying to figure out how to get started.

Here’s the good news: You don’t need to be staffed on an AI project to start building content engineering skills. There are real, actionable steps you can take today — and I’ve rounded up four that I think are especially impactful.

1. Take a class (and bring others with you)

There are high-quality, content design–specific courses out there that can help you get up to speed fast:

• The UX Content Collective offers a great series focused on AI and conversation design.

• UX Writing Hub also runs regular workshops with hands-on practice working with AI tools.

• Button has a whole day dedicated to AI this year!

If you’ve got a learning and development budget, ask your manager to cover the cost. If budget is tight, propose a shared learning model: have different teammates take different classes and run a skill-share series to scale the learning across your team.

2. Start using AI in your daily workflow

You don’t have to wait for permission to start experimenting with generative AI.

Use it to brainstorm. Use it to explore tone. Use it to check clarity, translate intent, or generate content variants. Try writing your own prompts, and then iterate and analyze what changes based on how you structure them.

Pay close attention to how your company’s voice, tone, and terminology show up in the output. Try refining the prompt until it matches. Keep a log of what works, what doesn’t, and how the model responds to different inputs.

Prompt design is a craft. The best way to learn it is by doing.

3. Find the AI work already happening around you

If you’re not working on an AI project, someone at your company probably is — even if it’s just a prototype or proof of concept.

Start asking around. Search your company Slack. Reach out to your PMs, engineers, or data scientists. Figure out who’s thinking about generative AI — and then ask if you can get involved.

Even if you’re volunteering a few hours a week, that hands-on experience matters. It builds credibility. It helps you learn fast. And it positions you as a go-to partner for AI work in the future.

4. Propose AI work yourself

AI is likely already part of your company’s strategy. If no one’s asked you to apply it to content yet, maybe you should be the one to bring it up.

• Are you producing long-form or repetitive content? Suggest using AI to generate first drafts.

• Are you doing large-scale content review? Propose using AI to automate or augment the process.

• Are your stakeholders experimenting with AI in other domains? Ask if you can help design the prompts or evaluate the results.

Look for problems content engineering can solve — and start solving them.

The mindset matters

Content engineering isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a real shift in how we design content for AI-powered systems — and it’s within reach for content designers.

It’s also not about having the perfect title or the perfect project. It’s about building the muscle. Practicing the skills. Raising your hand. Because this shift is already here — and we need more content designers ready to lead it.

As AI becomes core to how we build products, it’s also redefining how we design content. We’re not just writing for interfaces anymore — we’re designing systems that write for us. That shift is giving rise to a new sub-discipline within content design: content engineering.

Content engineering is the practice of designing scalable, model-driven content systems. It’s about writing prompts, yes — but it’s also about defining structure, constraints, and editorial strategy in ways that shape what AI creates, how it sounds, and what it does for users. It’s an evolution of the role we already play designing content systems — now extended to systems that generate content dynamically.

This work is already showing up in real product development. Recently, a content designer on my team spent weeks generating just a few sentences of AI content. Her time went into deep prompt iteration, cross-functional alignment, and testing to ensure the output reflected the intended experience. Another designer is mapping a model’s confidence levels to tone and UX — creating content patterns that respond dynamically to variable inputs, while still maintaining clarity and trust. These aren’t edge cases. This is what AI-native product design looks like.

And here’s the part that often gets misunderstood: AI content review isn’t separate from this work — it’s part of it.

You can’t review AI-generated content effectively if you don’t understand how it was generated. Review isn’t a final checkpoint. It’s a design function. When you evaluate model outputs, you’re actually evaluating the success of the system you designed — the prompts, the structure, the edge case handling, the tone logic. If you don’t know how those pieces work together, you can’t meaningfully assess the output.

So no, content engineering isn’t just writing prompts. And content review isn’t just copyediting. Together, they represent a new kind of design work — one that requires the systems thinking, strategic rigor, and language expertise that content designers already bring to the table.

But we can’t treat this as a “nice to have” or assume other roles can absorb the work. Content engineering is emerging as a critical function on any team building AI-powered experiences — and the need for trained, embedded content designers to lead it is only going to grow.

This is the future of our craft. And it’s already here.

You might think this is just because I’m another writer wringing my hands about AI taking my job. The truth is I know that AI can’t take my job because I know how much content strategy and design goes into AI-generated content. The problem is that many of my cross-functional partners don’t.

Almost two years ago, I wrote about how AI is creating opportunity for content designers. Not to say “I told you so,” but… I told you so. Every team I work with is actively using AI or exploring how they can and every team actually using AI is rapidly discovering just how much work it takes — and the importance of content designers at the helm.

But there’s a gap between the idea of “using AI” and funding teams appropriately to do so. While companies are quick to hire more ML engineers, they’re often overlooking the need to scale up content design too. I suspect this is because they view AI as replacing the need for writers rather than understanding that AI creates the need for more content designers (and lawyers, but that’s another topic for another day).

If you’ve ever worked on prompt generation, you already know how much time it takes to get it right. You also know how much iteration and review you need to do before you can actually publish this content, and how much collaboration is required between content design, applied science and the ML engineers to train the model. All of this is on top of the work required to set the content strategy, run the experiments, figure out the design and put it all in front of users. AI reduces the amount of writing content designers have to do but, if anything, it increases the amount of meaningful strategic work on our plates.

AI reduces the amount of writing content designers have to do but, if anything, it increases the amount of meaningful strategic work on our plates.

Content designers have long been plagued by the perception that we’re “just writers” and that misconception is rapidly leading us into a resourcing crisis. The good news is that as we expand our work in AI, our partners begin to see the value we bring in a completely new way. The bad news is that we’re being asked to take on AI efforts on top of our existing workloads and it’s simply untenable.

So what can we do about it? Content design leaders need to educate our partners about how content designers are driving AI efforts — and what it really takes to “get AI to write it.” When we see roadmaps with vague, hand-wavy references to AI, we need to call them out. We need to ensure our teams are upskilled and ready to drive AI efforts and position ourselves as leaders in this space. This is an opportunity for us to prove the value of our discipline in a tangible way and finally, finally, get recognized as the strategic partners we’ve always been.

But above all, we need to stop eying AI with suspicion and fully embrace it. When you hear someone say “AI will write it,” look at it at the opportunity it is — not a threat.

Almost every time I join a new content design team, I establish office hours. In fact, I’ve found that they’re absolutely critical in order to properly scope our work for impact. Not because office hours are particularly impactful (they’re not), but because they provide a place for us to send work that’s less impactful so we can focus on more impactful work.

Here’s an example. Let’s say a content design team is made up of 5 people working across 15 large areas of the business. Each content designer is covering multiple teams and pods, and is struggling to prioritize work, often ending up fielding last-minute requests for content. Even attending all of the meetings for their given areas would take 40 hours per week, and they feel like they’re on a hamster wheel that never ends.

Now, let’s imagine that we evaluate the work load of each content designer, look at their product teams’ roadmaps, talk to their partners, and identify 3-4 projects where each one can have the most impact. They’ll be leading one project, partnering closely with PD to drive another one, and taking a smaller but still significant role in the other 1-2. Once we do that across the entire team, we might find that we’re now only covering 6 areas of the business, instead of 15, and even in those 6 areas we’ve prioritized, we’re only covering some of the projects. What happens to the rest?

This, my friends, is where office hours are magical. If you walk in and tell your partners that you’re deprioritizing their work and removing all content design support, all hell will break loose. (Even if they agree that you’ve prioritized the most critical work, they still need some content support.) But, if you tell them the same thing AND that you’re establishing office hours to support deprioritized work, voila. Everyone is happy.

That’s only the first step, however. How you run your office hours is critical. Individual content designers should not be running them with teams for work they’ve deprioritized because that creates the perception that there is a CD who is responsible for their work. It leads to scope creep, lots of negotiations, and misunderstandings about the limits of support in office hours.

Setting up weekly office hours that are staffed by the entire team on a rotating basis ensures that teams have no designated CD and instead work with whomever is available that session. This naturally leads them to come back to office hours with new requests, rather than pinging “their” CD, and also helps cement the boundaries of office hours with them: You get 30-60 mins of help per session, and that’s it. Need more? Sign up for the next available opening.

Another benefit of office hours is that it enables us to discuss what we could do for them — if only we had more time. When you combine stellar work on prioritized projects with limited office hours, teams see the value of CD and want more of it. Cross-functional partners become advocates for content design, and rather than adding more and more to the plates of existing CDs, you start to have conversations about adding more CD headcount.

Before I dig in, I want to acknowledge the immense toll these layoffs have taken on myself and many of my friends and colleagues. I know this is a delicate subject, but it’s important to take stock even when times are tough (perhaps especially when times are tough) and learn what we can.

With that said, here are my top 5 takeaways:

1. Content design is here to stay. That’s right, we’re not going anywhere. It’s been fascinating to see just how many companies decimated their CD teams just to start rehiring a few months later. They may not always appreciate us — and they surely don’t adequately resource us — but when we’re gone, they notice.

2. As orgs get leaner, companies are leaning into principal IC roles like never before. One of the biggest pain points in CD has been the challenge of growing as a senior IC without making the move to management. Many people have gone into management simply to continue to grow, even when their passion was for IC work. Now, CD teams are leaner, and companies are recognizing the need for the strategic thinking principal ICs bring to the table. It’s been awesome to see the rise in L7+ roles coming open over the last few months and I think they’re here to stay.

3. And, as orgs get leaner, management opportunities are dwindling. The other side of that coin is that there are far fewer management roles available. There simply aren’t enough CDs left at many companies to justify multiple managers and those roles are hard to come by — and the ones that exist are extremely competitive. I don’t see this changing anytime soon, either, given how deep cuts were to CD across the industry. The only caveat to that is that some companies who eliminated their Head of CD in the layoffs are now looking to rehire for that role, but those are still pretty rare.

4. Salaries are in the shitter. Let’s be real here, salaries have tanked. I’m shocked on a daily basis by some of these comp packages and it’s clear that while companies may want CD, they don’t want to pay for us. This isn’t confined to CD by any stretch, but since we were often one of the lower-paid design disciplines, it hits us harder than some of our partners. This is the case across the board, with salaries taking a hit at every level. If you have to take lower comp due to a layoff, I get it, but if you’re looking while employed, I encourage you to take the recruiter call and let them know how far off they are. They’re only going to increase the comp if they have to.

5. AI isn’t coming for your job. Six months ago, no one could stop talking about AI, and some of the CD layoffs seem to have been based on the optimistic idea that our work could be outsourced to AI. Now, I think we’ve all accepted that AI is not going to replace content design, but it will provide writing support so we can focus on more strategic and impactful design work. I consider this a win, especially given how lean CD teams are post-layoffs, and hopefully you do too. As companies continue to realize this, they are also going to continue building out their CD teams.

All things considered, the last year was an absolute shit show for our discipline but things are improving. Job listings are picking up and if you’re in one of the tech hubs, you probably have a good amount of options. Like the rest of the industry, remote is getting harder and harder to come by, but is still out there (especially for IC roles at lower comp bands).

If you’ve made it this far in this industry, pat yourself on the back. It’s been brutal out there, whether you’ve been impacted yourself or watched your colleagues be impacted. It’s shaken a lot of beliefs people had about the security of their careers, and it’s had huge impacts on many of our lives.

Take time to process all of the hardship but know that things are finally looking up.

Unfortunately, I’m not unique. A review of 60+ studies in 2020 found that as many as 82% of people experience impostor syndrome. As a manager, this isn’t particularly surprising — I’ve found that the vast majority of people I’ve managed struggle with impostor syndrome at least occasionally. Especially women.

Common or not, impostor syndrome is self-limiting. It’s hard to do your best work when you have a nagging feeling that you don’t belong there. It makes you second guess yourself and keep quiet when you should do the opposite.

Often, when I talk to my directs about this, they describe it as lacking confidence. That’s often how feedback from peers comes in too. So we spend a bunch of time trying to build up their confidence in a variety of ways and, frankly, for most people it’s a waste of time. People rarely magically develop confidence.

That doesn’t mean that you should just give up and accept that you’re going to be stuck in self-limiting behaviors forever. But I do think it requires us to shift how we frame the problem.

When we think about impostor syndrome in terms of confidence, we’re often told to disrupt mental scripts and talk to ourselves differently. For example, instead of thinking “I’m not ready for this promotion,” tell yourself “I have been working hard to build my leadership skills and I am ready for this promotion.” And that can be really effective for people whose impostor syndrome is rooted in negative self-talk.

But most people I’ve worked with (myself included) don’t sit around mentally trash-talking themselves. They are very mentally aware of their strengths and challenges. It’s their feelings about themselves that create the impostor syndrome, not their thoughts. So a pep talk does absolutely nothing.

After talking to my therapist about this, she told me something that changed my life. She said that I will probably always feel this way. These negative feelings about myself were formed so long ago and at such a critical developmental stage that they are unlikely to change. BUT — and here’s the critical piece — they don’t have to linger. We can recognize our strengths and qualifications AND accept that our feelings don’t match those thoughts. And then we can let those feelings of inadequacy go.

Did you know that neuroscientists have found that the average emotional response lasts around 90 seconds? If you’re anything like me, when those feelings of inadequacy creep in, you immediately start trying to reframe them and change them and tease apart where they came from and… oh my goodness, that sure lasts longer than 90 seconds, doesn’t it?

There’s a fine line between helpful thinking and ruminating. If it helps you to reframe your thoughts when you feeling self doubt creeping in, by all means keep doing it! But if it’s not helpful — or maybe actively unhelpful — here’s something to try instead.

1. Recognize and acknowledge the feeling. Name it. Don’t try to change it or judge it.

2. Close your eyes and breathe for at least 30 seconds. Clear your mind as much as you can.

3. Imagine your chest opening and the feeling slowly leaving your body for around a minute. Take deep breaths and focus on that mental image. I like to imagine those feelings as big dark puffy clouds.

That’s it. You may have to do this before triggers like important meetings — maybe even every important meeting. But hey, it’s 90 seconds. We can do hard things for 90 seconds, maybe even forever. And then we can let our brains take the wheel and kick ass the way we know we can.

Let me know if you try it and if it works for you!

I wish this approach was an outlier, but it seems like a combo of PIPs and rolling layoffs has become the new normal in tech. We’ve long had stringent performance expectations but now it feels like we’re harkening back to a Steve Ballmer-era style of stack ranking and firing the bottom 10%. (Even when the “bottom” is just the least outstanding person in a group of outstanding people.)

Of course, PIPs make a lot of sense for employers. They can reduce or eliminate the cost of a layoff. PIP packages are generally less than severance, and many people try to work their way out of them and don’t take the package at all. And I suppose rolling layoffs make more sense for them, too.

But what about employees who are expected to churn out ever more impact while waiting to find out if they still have a job? Happy holidays to us.

The reality is that we’re never guaranteed a job. We can be let go at any time and layoffs are always a possibility. However, there’s something very different about being told that layoffs are imminent and being expected to just… wait and see.

I used to feel a lot of loyalty to my employer. I worked 100 hour weeks for two years to try to prevent Microsoft from being fined by the EU as part of the antitrust lawsuits in the early 2000s. I lived and breathed my work and felt like my work truly mattered to the company — until I developed a disability that left me temporarily unable to work. After 7 years of high performance ratings and unpaid overtime, I was on disability leave for about 7 months when I was informed that my role had been filled. It turns out, I was the only one in that relationship who was loyal.

Since then, I’ve worked at a number of companies (including Microsoft again) and I’ve worked hard but I’ve never lost sight of what that experience taught me: I’m fully, 100% replaceable.

In many ways, I find that knowledge freeing. I used to think I was the only person who could do my job (hell, I took work calls in Paris on vacation!). Now I leave my laptop at home when I’m out of the office. I used to hesitate to take vacation time and now I take every last day available to me. My employer gets what they pay me for — the rest of my life belongs to me.

In other ways, it’s been detrimental. I’ve left companies too soon and hindered my own career growth simply because someone else made me a better offer. I’ve been so sure every company sucks, deep down, that I’ve overlooked some real red flags in the hiring process and landed places I was desperate to leave.

Unfortunately, the current climate of PIPs and layoffs is only going to teach more people the same painful lesson I learned. Employers think they hold all the cards now and we should be grateful to RTO and have a paycheck. But are they really prepared for what they’re unleashing?

Maybe in the past, PIPs and layoffs encouraged people to work harder but I don’t think people are going to buy that bullshit anymore. If a CEO (or 12) hires recklessly, we’re not going to work ourselves to the bone just to keep our jobs. Anyone who can leave for greener pastures will — especially when we’re expected to sit with layoff anxiety indefinitely.

So if you find yourself in this situation, here’s some advice:

1. Take the PIP package. I can’t stress this enough. In different times, arguments can be made for and against but these aren’t normal times. Companies are making it clear they’re using PIPs to drive attrition. Take the money and run.

2. Do a good job — but no more. If you think killing yourself to impress people will save your job, think again. Remember that Twitter employee who literally slept in the office just to get shitcanned a few months later? Don’t be that person.

3. Apply elsewhere. If your company doesn’t appreciate its employees, find a better one. There are still companies out there that are treating people with respect and empathy. You might not get the big tech compensation, but it might be worth it for stability in this market.

4. Consider this aspect of culture when you’re job hunting. Pay attention to whether and how companies handled layoffs when you’re looking for a new gig. Did they do it compassionately with strong packages? Or did they lean on PIPs and lengthy, rolling layoffs? Pick your poison.

5. Prepare financially. At this point, there’s no real reason to think you won’t be laid off sometime soon and the market is garbage. Do whatever you can to protect yourself financially. When I was laid off from Pinterest, it took 30 days to get a dime of my severance — so even that severance package may not arrive when you expect it to. Make sure you can survive without a paycheck at any time.

I went into a little bit of detail in my last post, “Why I still believe in content design,” about what I look for instead. But if you asked 100 content design managers what they look for, I doubt you’d get the same answers. Even if you did, I’m not sure the hiring process accurately assesses many candidates for many of these other skills or makes it clear to them what their role will actually entail.

Unfortunately, I think this has created a fundamental mismatch between many content designers’ expectations of their role and reality. This mismatch has left pretty much no one happy — and makes it harder for the discipline as a whole to evolve and grow.

So where does that leave content design? I think it leaves us with a very clear set of skills and attributes that make content designers successful. I’ve seen this play out time and again, and it’s the difference between people who establish themselves as central members of their product teams and people who… don’t.

Sure, it’s not magic, and some teams are full of assholes, but if you bring these things to the table you’re far more likely to be successful.

• Proactivity: Do you scour roadmaps to find the opportunity for content design? Are you always thinking about how content design can step in and solve a user problem? Do you raise your hand and offer ideas?

• Advocacy: Ideas are great but are you comfortable advocating for them? Will you come to the table with data and research to argue against a bad user experience? Do you think of yourself as a user advocate and take that part of your role to heart?

• Influence: Are you able to convince people across disciplines to make the best choice for the user? Can you get projects on the roadmap? Are you able to convince cross-functional partners to join projects you lead? Are you able to impact product strategy?

• Collaboration: Do you work well with others? Even when you disagree? Even when you’re telling them they’re wrong? Even when they’re trying to shut you down? And let’s be clear, that doesn’t just mean shutting up — it means knowing when to keep pushing and when to stop.

• Impact: Can you look at a list of potential projects and identify which one is likely to have the most impact on business goals? Do you know how to prove the impact of your work? Are you comfortable running your own user testing or working with data science to establish metrics to measure impact?

• Scalability: Do you look for ways to go beyond a one-time fix and create a scalable solution? Do you seek out other teams and orgs to drive consistency and implement solutions more broadly?

You might look at this list and think someone must be pretty senior to demonstrate these skills. But I’ve seen new grads exhibit all or most of these attributes. Anyone can show up this way, regardless of experience or seniority.

In fact, sometimes it’s harder for people with more seniority, especially with experience in other industries with different collaboration models, to give themselves permission to ask the hard questions and push for the right user experience. But this is the kind of work that proves our value and cements the value of content design with our partners.

This is why I say that if this isn’t the job you want to do — that’s okay! It’s not the job many people were sold on when they became content designers. There are many people who want to focus on writing, not wrangling stakeholders. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But it’s simply not content design.

In her article, Nicole laid out a number of reasons why she’s no longer excited about content design:

• Product leaders aren’t aware of what content design is

• CDs are brought in way too late, essentially treated as overqualified (micro)copy-editors

• CDs create beautiful documents and design systems copy components that nobody looks at

• CD has low visibility, with no time for content-specific user testing or to set up success metrics

I’ve seen all of these in practice far too often. I’m sure anyone working in content design has too. But I don’t think we should use these challenges as evidence that we should throw our hands up and work as copy-editors while we wait for the world to change. Spoiler alert: It’s never going to unless we force it to.

The reality is that content design is a nascent discipline. If you aren’t up for educating people about what you do and why it matters, advocating for a seat at the table and changing minds along the way, you shouldn’t be a content designer. And I say that with all the love and compassion in the world. It’s exhausting and frustrating, but it’s necessary as we build out this discipline.

Content design is often, frustratingly overlooked and de-valued. But let’s be clear — we have done some of this to ourselves. At the risk of being tarred and feathered, I’ve watched plenty of CDs give up and become copy-editors and then complain that they aren’t included in important conversations. Look, I get it. It is so fucking exhausting to keep pushing. But I’ve also consistently seen CDs who don’t give up and keep pushing become integral members of their product teams (even the same teams that others weren’t able to break into). I’ve seen their cross-functional partners become some of their biggest fans — and help advocate for more CD headcount as a result.

The reality is that content design is best-suited for people with a certain skillset. Nicole’s article talks about the skills we need in content designers and I couldn’t agree more (resilience, stakeholder management, leadership, etc). When I hire for content designers, writing skills are the bare minimum. I expect that anyone who applies can write. What I’m really looking for are people who are proactive, comfortable advocating for the best experience for users, assertive but collaborative, with experience identifying impactful content design projects and using metrics to prove the impact of their work.

And, frankly, those skills are necessary to be successful in almost any role at a tech company. Granted, product managers and software engineers don’t generally have to prove the value of their work. But product designers were in the same boat we were until relatively recently. And they got to where they are by becoming tireless advocates for the value of their discipline and proving that value.

You can talk all you want about the importance of your work but it’s numbers that really talk. If you can’t measure the impact of most of your work, you’re doing the wrong work.

So here’s what I propose:

1. If you’re mentoring or hiring people who are considering making a move to the industry — be honest about what it takes to be successful. What one person finds draining, another person finds exhilarating. Help people make the best decisions for themselves.

2. If you’re hiring a content designer — be upfront about the maturity of the discipline and your expectations. Make sure it aligns with the skills and experience of the person you hire. Asking someone who’s only worked on established CD teams to create a discipline from scratch at your company may not be the best fit. Don’t bait and switch just to get someone in the door. You’ll set your entire discipline back at your company.

3. If you’re a content designer who’s sullied on the industry — don’t feel like it’s the only option for you. There are so many career opportunities out there for people with content and product experience. If content design isn’t for you, there’s zero shame in looking elsewhere.

4. If you’re a content designer stuck on a team that doesn’t understand what you do — stop telling them and start proving your worth. One A/B test or metric that captures the impact of your worth is more valuable than dozens of copy-edited sentences. When all else fails, UserTesting.com is cheap and easy to do yourself. Relentlessly prioritize the work that has measurable impact — at least for now. Say no to everything else.

If we give up on our discipline, it’s only a matter of time before there’s no discipline left. And ultimately we owe our users a better experience than that.

Absolutely. But the content design landscape is going to change.

In my role, I work with technologies like ChatGPT for conversational design every day. We’re already using AI for our chatbots but generative AI opens up entirely new possibilities. We’ll be able to shift away from laboriously created conversation trees and create conversational experiences that feel, well, human. For our users, it’s going to be a huge win. But it’s hard not to see the impact on content design.

ChatGPT and other generative AI are never going to replace content design entirely. In fact, it takes a huge amount of work to properly design and implement generative AI. Content designers will be at the core of that work. But there’s no escaping the reality that generative AI will reduce the number of people we need to do the writing itself.

In some ways, I think that’s a good thing. We never wanted to be seen as copywriters and as we continue to leverage ChatGPT for that work, it will help our partners understand the core value we bring. We are architects and designers, and that will become more apparent as we leverage generative AI for more of the writing itself.

But what does that mean for our community? It’s going to require us to adapt and embrace generative AI for how it can help us and to clearly communicate where it can’t. We need to have a point of view about the evolution of our role and the value we bring to generative AI experiences.

Some content designers thrive on the writing itself — for those content designers, I’d ask them whether content design is the direction they really want to go in. Do they want to be experience architects who implement generative AI? Because that’s the direction I think we’re moving in.

While we may not need as many content designers in this new paradigm, that doesn’t mean we won’t need content designers working in new ways. We’ll need people to engineer prompts and implement generative AI in ways we can barely even imagine today. And no one is better suited to these roles than content designers.

In a year or two, many content designers may have other titles — and that’s okay. Rather than fearing generative AI and trying to argue against its value, we can position ourselves as the discipline leading the charge.

One argued that UX writing isn’t creative and your copy shouldn’t be either — utility is what matters. The other argued that the power of UX writing is the use of voice and personality.

I’m here to offer a third perspective — they’re both wrong.

I’ve heard a lot of content designers argue the first point over the years and it seems to be picking up steam lately. The idea is that the job of good UX is to enable you to simply and easily complete your task. The writing is there to guide you along your journey, not to be clever or punchy. The more utilitarian the better since your goal is to complete a task not be entertained.

Here’s my problem with that perspective.

1. Every experience shouldn’t sound the same

   Imagine you’re signing up for TikTok. Now imagine you’re signing up for TurboTax. Do you want those onboarding experiences to sound and feel the same? Of course not. You’re in a completely different state of mind and looking for something different from each experience. The design and language you encounter in each one should reflect that — not just robotically usher you through the process.

2. Voice differentiates your product from the competition

   Imagine you’re choosing a product for your business. They both do basically the same thing and offer the same features. They even cost about the same and have similar reviews. If all else is created equal, your decision may very well come down to how you feel about each one. That feeling is influenced by voice and tone — and its role can’t be understated. Now you might think that’s important during consideration but not once someone becomes a customer. But what keeps someone loyal to one product vs. another? It’s certainly not an experience that feels generic.

3. Voice is how you connect to your users

   By and large, people dislike chatbots because they sound and feel robotic. Even if a chatbot is able to route you where you want to go, you probably still don’t enjoy the experience very often. While we all want to complete our tasks, we also want to feel good about our experience. One of my favorite UX was the Amazon 404 during Prime Day that featured employees’ dogs. Amazon isn’t a brand with a particularly punchy voice but they found a way to add a little bit of humanity to an otherwise frustrating moment.

You might be asking why I said both perspectives are wrong. After all, I just argued for the importance of voice. But they’re both wrong because they’re also both right.

Good UX writing is about creating experiences that people want to use. That means they have to be simple and easy to use, but they also have to feel human and unique.

What that looks like is different for every product but you can’t have good UX without incorporating both sides of that coin.

Over the years, I’ve let go of my need to plan and organize many things. I’m heading to Italy in a few weeks for the first time and I don’t even have a packing list! The old me would be horrified. But one place I’ve been reluctant to let go of planning is my career. I mean, you’re supposed to plan your career. Right?

Considering the circuitous route my career has taken, you’d think I’d be less inclined to try to plan it but I think those roadblocks and detours had the opposite impact. I’ve experienced major shifts often enough to know that nothing is certain and I’ve reacted to that by trying to take a very rigid approach to my career going forward.

For example, I went to Meta largely for the opportunity to manage larger teams and grow into an M2. I was promoted to M2 and immediately, as in that same conversation, set my sights on director. I didn’t stop and savor the moment. I didn’t celebrate. I didn’t even take a beat, I simply moved on to the next rung on my planned career ladder. And when it became clear to me that growth opportunities were drying up in my org at Meta (and there were no internal openings that fit the bill), I began to look elsewhere — even though I was really happy at Meta and loved the people I worked with.

I went to Pinterest for the opportunity to grow and scale a content design function and have the scope I’d been missing at Meta. But looking back, there were plenty of signs it wasn’t the right role for me. I’d interviewed for the head of content design role and they offered me a new role they created for me instead. At the time, I was flattered that they liked me enough to create a role for me. I didn’t stop to consider whether that role actually made sense organizationally (it didn’t) or whether there would really be the scope for two senior leaders on one small team (there wasn’t). When layoffs began to hit tech, I knew I’d be impacted if they came to Pinterest. Hell, I would’ve laid myself off.

You’d think that experience would’ve taught me to be less rigid about my expectations for my next role but instead I doubled down: this time, I was going to find that head of content design role. I wanted to work at a small (as in, not FAANG) but well-known company where I could really build and grow the content design discipline. And that was definitely an option. I got plenty of interviews and even some offers for those kinds of roles. But by then the remote market had pretty much dissipated. I could have the job I wanted but not without working in the office and, for me, that meant relocating too.

I’ve written before about the impact return-to-office policies have on disabled people so I won’t belabor that point but relocation presented even more challenges. I have a mortgage with a 2.7% interest rate; I’m pretty sure I’ll be buried in this house. Not to mention, I have kids in high school and middle school who already moved in 2021. An interstate move was not on my agenda.

If the only job options available to me all required relocation, it would’ve been another story. I’ve got to work. But I happened to get a ping from an old Meta coworker about a new role that was fully remote. It certainly wasn’t head of content design; it wasn’t even a manager role! But it was an interesting space at a company with an immature content design discipline I could whip into shape — and it was remote.

I agonized over the decision before I even got the offer. Not because the role didn’t appeal to me — simply because I was concerned that I was taking a step back. I was worried that my career was veering off-track. You know, the track I created for myself out of thin air.

Ultimately, I decided I was being silly. I took stock of my career and thought about what had made me happy and feel fulfilled at work over the last 5 or 6 years. I realized it was the people I worked with, unraveling complex, thorny problems, and the opportunity to grow and scale content design. All of which I could do in an IC capacity, even if that wasn’t what I’d planned.

The job market is tough right now, and I was lucky to have had options. But now more than ever, we need to let go of preconceived ideas about our careers and do what makes sense for us and our families — and what will actually make us happy and fulfilled at work.

In case you missed it, Halli resorted to tweeting at Elon when he wasn’t able to contact anyone at Twitter for nine days after he suddenly lost network access. He simply wanted to know whether he was still employed. Elon responded by demanding to know what Halli did for the company and disclosing details of Halli’s disability and accommodations. Not just disclosing, but implying that Halli was lying about his disability and even suggesting it played a role in his termination.

As someone with multiple disabilities, the exchange left me reeling. I suspect I’m not the only one wondering whether Elon was simply saying what others have the sense to keep to themselves. Are our disabilities playing a factor in the recent wave of tech layoffs?

Until recently, I had never submitted a formal accommodations request. Like Halli, one of my disabilities is a form of muscular dystrophy but working remotely for the last few years has given me the flexibility I need to take breaks or lay down during meetings as needed. However, when business travel began to pick up after COVID, I realized I needed travel-related accommodations. Specifically, I needed a seat with enough room to elevate my legs on flights and the opportunity to travel before or after meeting days.

At my last company, I applied for and was granted those accommodations plus some other smaller ones like permission to Uber between office buildings. Before finalizing the accommodations, they were shared with my management chain to ensure they had the budget to pay for them.

When layoffs started to sweep through tech, I noticed a disturbing pattern. Huge numbers of people I’d worked with on disability ERGs and projects were being laid off. Many of them were themselves disabled and had accommodations and/or had previously taken medical leave.

In my case, I was hired in to a role that never materialized due to hiring freezes so maybe it didn’t make sense to keep me around. But it’s hard to overlook the fact that I was the only content designer laid off.

It’s impossible to know whether disability plays a role in most layoffs (most CEOs are smarter than Elon). But watching my disabled colleagues get laid off has left me feeling unsettled. I’ve always encouraged people to request accommodations and companies have the legal obligation to provide them. But in this market, where people are being laid off in droves with no oversight, are those accommodations putting a target on our backs?

All of this is disturbing enough but when you combine it with the simultaneous push to return-to-office, it feels like disabled people are being shut out of tech entirely. I can’t work in an office without accommodations and, frankly, I’m not sure I can even with them. Where does this leave me and other people like me?

Tech has talked a lot of talk about disability inclusion in the last few years. If the industry wants to get real about it, they need to share disability data for layoffs and retention of disabled employees after enforced RTO. They need to take a data-driven approach to disability inclusion and adjust their policies in the face of that data — or stop pretending to be disability friendly at all.

Before I was laid off, I was exhausted. Like most people, I’ve been working nonstop for many years. Most of my roles have been fast-moving and high-stress. I take vacations but by the time I really, truly relax, it’s time to go back to work. I’m pretty much always overloaded and exhausted, no matter how much I enjoy my work.

I’ve often fantasized about doing literally nothing while dialing into my next Zoom call. I’m a very go-go-go person but nothing inspires me to do nothing like Zoom. On an average work day, I’m on Zoom at least 6 hours. All I want in between is a quiet stretch of time to be “off.”

So really unemployment should be a bit of a gift. I finally have time and space to do nothing. Sure, the prospect of utter financial ruin and homelessness is hanging over me, but is there really much I can do about that?

To a large part, what comes next for me is out of my control. I’m confident in my skills and experience, but there are only so many jobs. I’ll probably get a job I’m excited about. I might not. But realistically a random certificate or class won’t change my future.

LinkedIn is full of people telling me to hustle and grind. Especially since I’ve been laid off. We’re supposed to up-skill, apply for jobs and network 24/7. It sounds pretty exhausting and also pretty low ROI. Does any of that really help us find new jobs or does it just feed into our need to be busy to feel productive?

Personally, I’m opting out of all that. I need a job as much as the next person but I’m not a fan of work for work’s sake. If I’m going to be unemployed, I might as well try to… enjoy it. If you need me, I’ll be on the couch reading a book or doing absolutely fucking nothing.

That said, unemployment requires us to take a real, hard look at our lives. Here are a few things you should consider if you’ve recently been laid off:

1. Do you have life insurance? Although my employer is paying for some of my COBRA benefits, I realized when I reviewed my separation agreement that life insurance isn’t covered by COBRA. It also terminated immediately. Luckily, if you act quickly, you can usually convert your life insurance into an individual plan without a medical exam within 30 days after your employment ends. For a single parent like me, even going a few days without it was scary so I made sure to jump on that right away.

2. How long can you survive without a job? The reality is the majority of us need to work for money. Taking stock of your finances and setting a realistic deadline for returning to work can be scary but it’s important to know how much time you have before shit hits the fan. Part of the budget evaluation involves, sad to say, finding everything you can possibly cut. Does it make life a little less worth living? Sure. Does it help you extend your budget to last as long as possible? Also yes. Now is the time to be ruthless. If it isn’t absolutely necessary, let it go. Do you really need six streaming services, a gym membership, and a dog walker now that you’re unemployed?

3. When’s the time to panic? One reason it’s important to know your financial deadline is that otherwise it’s easy to panic and take the first job you can find. That can prevent you from finding the right job and cause a lot of churn for everyone involved. So I’ve added a second deadline for myself: the time to panic. I’ve set the panic date about a month before my drop-dead deadline. If I’m not employed by then, it’s time to stop being picky and take whatever is out there, whether a lower-level position or a contract role. Having these dates top of mind gives me a roadmap while I job search.

4. How are you taking care of yourself? Unemployment is brutal. It can take a huge toll on your mental health. Prioritize things like therapy that are vital to your mental health, but don’t buy into the idea that self-care requires spending a bunch of money either. Find ways to care for yourself that don’t cost anything. Eat well, exercise regularly, get outside and make time for things you love.

5. Are you treating job hunting like a job? Stop it. Job hunting isn’t a job and there’s really no way to spend all day working on it. I’m not suggesting that you blow it off but the reality is it only takes so long to search for new roles. Get your resume and portfolio in order, sure, but don’t spend all day online combing through the same jobs while becoming increasingly disheartened. Spend an hour a day MAX looking for new roles and then disconnect and do something that nourishes you instead.

6. What’s really important to you in your next role? All too often, we find ourselves sacrificing things that matter to us to be successful at work. Maybe that’s location, compensation, flexibility, opportunities for advancement, time with family, etc. A layoff gives us a chance to pause and consider what really matters in our next role. Maybe that’s a remote job or a job that offers a step up in terms of responsibility. No matter what that is, prioritize it as you job hunt.

7. What are you willing to give up? Sometimes, there isn’t a perfect role and there’s really no option but to sacrifice something. In this job market, that may be even more likely. So when push comes to shove, what are you willing to sacrifice for your next role? Again, don’t rush straight into a job that requires you to give up something vital, but if you’re staring down your deadline and it’s panic time, you need to know what you can live with.

Good luck, fellow job hunters!

In this climate, I knew it was probably a layoff. I hoped it wasn’t but I still lay awake almost all night wondering what the severance would be and how long I’d be able to keep my health insurance.

By the time the meeting rolled around, I wasn’t surprised when my skip was there too or it rapidly turned into a scripted layoff. As I tried to digest what was happening without sobbing, I thought to myself, “This should’ve been an email.”

Tech has come under a lot of flack lately for cold, impersonal mass layoffs. Google folks saw their access cut off from their bedside Nests. Meta peeps learned their fate via email. My company probably thought the meetings were kinder than the alternative.

When you get laid off, you have only two questions: why me and what’s next. It’s almost impossible to retain what’s next when it’s delivered within a minute of being told you were just let go. And when companies deliver the news from a script, there’s no real answer as to why either.

Economic conditions, blah blah, but the decision was made to choose me. Why? I’ll never really know. I’ll keep going over it, wondering what more I should’ve done and trying to learn from this experience. The meeting didn’t give me any closure.

We want to be let go with respect but maybe there’s just no good way to tell someone they’re disposable.

I know I’d have preferred an email.

Given the massive layoffs in tech, the job market is saturated with outstanding talent. Frankly, anyone who is hiring right now has dream candidates lining up at their door. This kind of talent glut can be disheartening but it’s never been more important to make sure your portfolio presentation is buttoned up. This is your chance to introduce yourself to the hiring manager and it sets the stage for your loop.

Throughout my career, I’ve participated in hundreds of loops. While at Meta alone, there were many weeks when I interviewed three or four people.

Here are five things I’ve taken away from all of those portfolio presentations.

1. Words matter, but they aren’t what wow me. If you’re interviewing for a content design role, it’s because I expect that you can write coherent copy. That’s the minimum requirement. I want to see how you approach your work. What questions do you ask? Who do you collaborate with? How do you use research and data to shape your content design? The portfolio presentation is your chance to walk me through your thought process and understand the way you work, and that’s the single most important thing I need to know.

2. Show me the impact of your work. Content quality can be subjective if we’re just talking about words on a screen. How do you know you’ve created quality content design? How do you measure user understanding? How do you know the impact content makes in the experience? Do you assume content is good if it ships or do you engage in rigorous testing and leverage data to determine quality? You can write the loveliest sentence in the world but if users are confused, it’s bad content. Show me how you measure impact even if your organization doesn’t have metrics at the ready. Do you engage in user testing? A/B testing? Articulate how you prove the impact of your work.

3. Tell the story of your work as a product owner. Content designers design experiences with information and often that means significantly influencing the product strategy and user experience. I’m always looking for examples of specific instances where content designers influenced their partners to change course or try a new approach. Some of the best content designers I’ve worked with pitched new features that became the organization’s P0 for the half and led to massive metrics wins. Content designers are part of the product team and should be able to identify products they’ve influenced.

4. Prove you can prioritize. Content designers often want to help everyone. They end up caught on the hamster wheel of copywriting and struggle to engage as designers as a result. When I see a content designer explain how they said no, what they used to determine prioritization and how they negotiated these discussions with their partners, I know that they’ll be able to have more impact simply because they know when and how to say no.

5. Show me who you are. Every team has a working style and it’s important that we hire someone who can work within that while also pushing us forward. Do you have a passion for DEI? Are you an accessibility or localization champion? Are you passionate about standards or mentorship? Do you love to plan morale events and always have ideas for bringing us closer together? Show me what unique value you can bring to our team and our broader organization.

And for the love of god, manage your time. Practice your presentation. Make sure you can hit everything in the time allotted. I’ll take one really well presented work example over four rushed through examples that don’t connect the dots.

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I’ve been watching “The Circle” on Netflix over the holidays and one of the participants this season, Raven, is Deaf. Unlike many disabled people in the media, Raven is depicted as a full-fledged person — she’s outspoken and funny and has a love interest. That might not seem like a big deal but disabled people on TV are rarely allowed to love and be loved.

Yet when another participant got the opportunity to meet her in person, he told her that she’s “inspiring.” Womp womp.

The term “inspiration porn” refers to the portrayal of disabled people as inspiring simply for existing. The idea is that having a disability is so terrible and hard that the sheer act of living is an inspiration. Have a job? Inspiring! Get out of bed? Inspiring! While people think they’re giving us a compliment, all of this inspiration really serves to other and alienate us.

Raven is a great example of that. She’s on a popular reality show living her life. She’s no more or less inspiring than any of the other participants unless you think that being Deaf is a hardship or tragedy.

Years ago, I worked as a freelance writer. I belonged to a number of writing groups and one of the most common debates was who should tell the stories of marginalized people. As a former journalist, the debate itself felt strange. The job of a writer is to tell stories, isn’t it? With sensitivity and compassion, of course, but to tell stories nonetheless.

Lately, I’ve begun to feel differently. I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with people and companies sharing stories of disabled people when they aren’t doing the real work of disability justice.

My current company doesn’t have a particularly active disability ERG. For National Disability Employment Awareness Month, they held an event to teach people how to sign “Let It Go,” which quite frankly made me die a little inside. I haven’t seen any openly disabled employees leading events or programming and my attempts to start a support group were quickly halted by HR due to privacy concerns.

Every now and then someone shares an article about a disabled person in the disablity ERG. The word “inspiring” is never used, but it still hasn’t quite sat right with me. It finally dawned on me why: The only function disabled stories can serve in these kinds of environments is inspiration. Inspiration to do the work perhaps, but inspiration nonetheless.

We are often told to amplify the voice of marginalized people. But doesn’t that mean that we’re still creating spaces where they aren’t innately amplified?

If disabled people were given a platform to tell their own stories, no one would have to share their stories. We wouldn’t need to post an article about a disabled person in an ERG at work because we’d have a lively discourse with disabled people to learn from.

Somewhere along the way, someone decided that we need to give marginalized people a voice by… talking for them. Marginalized people have always had a voice. We simply need the platform to share our stories. And in a corporate environment, that means creating the safety and space for us to do so without fear of repercussions.

No matter how respectfully and sensitively told, if someone isn’t doing the real hard work, they don’t deserve to share our stories.