Design Systems Is the Good Fight
More often than not you're going to find yourself defending the goals and purposes of your design system
I often think about this Robin Rendle article:
He calls it grumpy, but I'll call it "cathartic" for a positive spin.
...when it comes to design systems work you often have to explain to folks why your job is worth doing in the first place. As a product designer or engineer you might have to argue for a feature or even fight for the existence of a team if you’re unlucky, but you rarely have to deal with the existential threat that your whole career shouldn’t exist.
Becoming someone who works on a company design system full-time causes somewhat of a meta effect; you become part of a company within a company. A company with one product, the design system, which you constantly have to validate your customer (the actual company) that their expensive subscription is worth renewing.
It's hard work, especially compared to other teams, which often have the luxury of lifting hard metrics from their analytics tools to back up their cause. "As you can see, the number has gone up." Can you tell how professional I am?
But this fight for the design system is the good fight, Robin goes on:
...design systems is work worth doing. Every part of an interface is worthy of our care and attention! Every line of code and every button, every duplicate card component that needs to be thrown in the trash and replaced with a singular, better one. Worth it. Do it. Go.
I can't help but note the climate in the tech industry right now and how much of an impact it's had on design system teams. It's not a surprise that people can become burned out from the opposing thoughts of "my work isn't valued" and "I know my work is valuable".
If you've been impacted by all of this *gestures vaguely* in any form, then I've linked a couple of job boards below that focus on design systems work:
Credit to Donnie D'Amato and Geri Reid for these links
Ps. Look after yourself.