UX pros: How much are you getting paid?

How does your UX comp stack up? Let’s check the data.

The Global UX Compensation Transparency Project (established in 2021 by yours truly) is a crowdsourced database containing 4 years of total compensation data from thousands of UXers around the globe.

This comprehensive dataset features 1,950+ anonymous entries from UX pros across industries, levels, company size, personal demographics, and UX specialties, including research, design, content, IA, strategy, operations, and people management.

Next time you apply for a job, get an offer, or go up for a promotion, give it a gander and strengthen your leverage with the power of data! Don’t forget to check the latest quantitative salary reports, too.

Your info can help others earn more of their fair share. 🥧

This is a grassroots effort with the goal of improving transparency, equity, and negotiation outcomes within a biased, competitive, exploitative and enshittifying job market.

Whether you're salaried, freelance, in-house, agency, junior, senior, or director and up, help keep this thing growing and add your info for any jobs within the past year. Hiring managers with broader access to compensation data are strongly encouraged to be an ally and submit.

Note: Due to mobile browser limitations, the spreadsheet is best viewed on desktop. You can find the data entry form on Tab 1, and the compensation data on Tab 2.

👋 Can you help take this project to the next level? I’m looking for someone to create a more accessible dataset with filters, trend analysis, and more. Hmu if that’s you!

Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor—August cohort starts soon!

Calling all IC design leaders! Learn to build a robust toolkit of techniques to level up your influence, scale your impact, and show value without direct authority, in this virtual workshop series taught by Catt Small, Staff Product Designer at Dropbox (previously at Asana, Etsy, SoundCloud, and Nasdaq.) The next cohort runs from Aug 25–Sep 26.

Lately I’ve been thinking about… 🧠 👀 

• Scaling job search advice: I spent a day on LinkedIn dishing out free feedback on resumes, portfolios, and profiles for anyone who asked. Maybe you’ll find some useful tips for your own job search materials.

• Thinking like a scientist to look objectively at job application rejections, which so many people internalize as a personal failure or reflection of self worth. Tease out the variables and you’ll likely see it has nothing to do with you.

• How Kickstarter’s workers union improved their severance packages after a mass layoff in 2020. Worker solidarity is The Way.

• The whole buffet of free career resources over on my website! Peep my repository of articles, podcasts, and event recordings of topics including UX careers, job search strategy, writing, consulting, and more.

• The pressure to act like a content creator just to get my ideas in front of people. It’s tiring and frustrating being gaslit by tech platforms and creators into believing that it’s me, not the algorithm.

• This crowdsourced reading list of 50+ books for people who want to move through work and life more strategically, intentionally, and in alignment with their values and goals.

Thanks for being here!

Curious about what my clients have to say before taking the plunge? Check out some testimonials here, or reply to this email and let me know what I can help with! ✨

They said you sound like an owl 🦉