Last week I posted that every Senior PD job description hires the same imaginary person. It pulled more reactions than anything else I've put here. It's a nerve, and for a lot of us it hurts.
Here's the part I left out, and why I read those 21 JDs in the first place.
I have a job. I'm not firing off applications. But I keep a steady read on the market — Senior/Lead, remote — because the seat you're in now is never as permanent as it feels, and you see clearer when you're not desperate. Same pattern every time: each posting measuring candidates against a person who doesn't exist.
Then a hiring manager I trust reset the frame: "I don't read my own JD. HR wrote it."
The JD isn't written for you. It's a legal document, a filter, a copy-paste from the last hire two years ago. It protects the company, it doesn't find you.
So what do they actually screen for?
I read all 21 for patterns, not requirements.
10 out of 10: B2B SaaS or fintech, design-system work, cross-functional collaboration. If your portfolio doesn't show a complex system you helped build — not screens you made pretty — you're filtered before a human sees you. I shipped Kazakhstan's first interbank Unified QR and built for 40K+ merchants, and half these JDs would still bounce me on a keyword.
6–8 out of 10: user research, AI tools in workflow, data-heavy interfaces. The wording matters — "AI tools in workflow," not "AI visionary." They want someone who ships faster with AI, not someone who tweets about it.
And the irony no JD will print, the part that keeps me up: they told us AI was coming for our jobs — true about the outcome, lying about the mechanism. Companies train models on the work their own people produce, then thin the team with one all-hands and a press release. Your best work becomes the asset that makes you optional. I use Claude Code every day, faster than ever — and still haven't decided how I feel about feeding the thing pitched as my replacement.
What none of the 21 said but every one meant: someone who says "no" to a PM with data, not opinion. Who closes the gap between research and shipping — not "I ran 12 interviews" but "I changed the flow, here's the metric."
The decoder ring
- "Fast-paced" — no processes, you'll build them.
- "Ownership" — one designer per product, no cavalry.
- "Competitive salary" — we hope you won't ask first.
- "We move fast" — the last designer burned out in 8 months.
- "Flat structure" — no growth, but we called it culture.
- "AI tools" — we don't know what we want, but you'd better have a story.
Sounds bleak? It's not.
Once you read JDs as rough signals from imperfect systems instead of gospel, you stop disqualifying yourself from roles you'd crush. The best designers I know would fail half these on paper. They got hired anyway.
