Hey Reader

If you’re doing senior-level work but still getting mid-level recognition, this week’s issue will help you spot the real gap and fix it.

In today's email:

• ​Leadership Ateliers: 2-day, hands-on workshops in Europe for ICs + leaders to level up on leadership, strategy, and influence (led by leaders from teams like Apple, Adidas, Monday.com). €100 off with code: FEMKE100.​
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• Tools + resources for showing up sharper in 2026: From a notch teleprompter for better presentations, to portfolio presentation examples, to practical AI workflows, plus takes on where product design is headed and how to add more personality back into interfaces.
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• From “I did the work” to “here’s the impact”: Why the problem usually isn’t your performance, it’s visibility. How to document impact in a way your manager can actually advocate for, and the simple habit that changes promotion conversations before review season hits.​

🏆 Leadership Ateliers: Leadership Ateliers hosts 2-day, hands-on workshops for ICs and leaders who want to level up leadership, strategy, and influence. You’ll work in small groups of 15 with leaders from companies like Apple, Adidas, The New York Times, Monday.com, and more.

Design gems of the week

• ​Moody: A discreet teleprompter that lives in your MacOS notch, so your script sits right by the camera and you can keep eye contact while staying on track (great for presentations, demos, recordings or calls). The best part? No subscription needed.
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• ​5 Hard Truths about Product Design in 2026: A reminder by Matt Przegietka, that "design" is getting democratized fast and that differentiation is shifting toward designers who can build: prototype in code, ship small tools and use AI to move from pixels to production.
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• ​Jedmund - Portfolio Recording: Justin Edmund (currently a Product Designer at Grammarly) shares a real practice run of a "principal product designer" portfolio presentation. Great for seeing what strong storytelling looks like, plus a simple rule of thumb: show, don't tell (keep slides visual and let your talk track do the explaining).
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• ​Boosting Designer's Productivity with AI (Maven): A practical course on using AI without the hype: get better and faster results, what workflows are worth adopting, and where human judgement matters most. Taught by Vitaly Friedman (Senior UX Lead at EU Parliament) and Christine Vallaure (Founder of moonlearning.io).
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• ​Claude Code for Designers: A Practical Guide: A hands-on walkthrough of how designers can use Claude Code to ship.
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• ​Design Critique Template (Figma Community): A ready-to-use critique framework that keeps feedback focused and actually actionable: prompts for context, goals, constraints, and clear next steps.

Open design roles worth a look

• ​Senior Product Designer (Adapty)
• ​Product Designer (Phia)
• ​Senior UX Designer (Second Nature)
• ​Senior Designer (Gumroad)

Doing senior work. Getting mid-level recognition.

I had a session recently with a designer who'd been contracting at a company for over a year. She was doing data analytics, writing user stories, filling in for a UX Architect who'd quietly left the team. When they hired her full-time, they leveled her as a mid-level designer.

She was frustrated. "I'm already doing the senior work. I'm demonstrating it every day. Why don't they just recognize that?" I've heard this so many times. And the answer is almost never what designers expect.

Here's what was actually happening: her impact was living in Slack threads and Figma files. Her manager — a PM, not a designer — had no structured way to see what she was contributing beyond what landed in the weekly standup. She was doing the work. She just wasn't making the work visible.

These are two completely different skills. Most designers are taught one of them.

When I told her this, there was a pause. "So I have to self-promote?" she said — and I could hear the reluctance in it. A lot of designers feel this way. Talking about your own work feels uncomfortable, even a little gross.

But here's how I reframe it: documenting your impact isn't self-promotion. It's accountability. It's giving your manager the evidence they need to go to bat for you. They want to advocate for you — make it easy for them.

The practical shift is simple. Start a running doc. Not a portfolio, not a case study — just a weekly habit of writing down what you worked on, what changed because of it, and what the business outcome was. Bring it to your manager a few months before review season, not during it. Make the conversation proactive rather than reactive.

One more thing she didn't know: most companies want to see you operating at the next level for around six months before they'll make it official. Not to exploit you — but because sustained performance is different from a good month. Once she understood that, the frustration shifted into something more useful. She knew what to do. She started the clock.

If this sounds familiar — if you're doing the work but not getting the recognition — you probably don't have a performance problem. You have a visibility one.

This week, open a blank doc and write down three things you've shipped in the last month. For each one, ask: what changed because of this? If you can't answer that easily, that's your gap.

And if you're navigating this right now — hit reply and tell me where you're stuck. I read every response, and honestly, these conversations are where my best content comes from.

Have a topic you'd like me to write about? Reply to this email and let me know! I read every reply.