Catt Small

And I just really literally didn't understand what they meant.

And that's when I realized, OK, something is here.

and nobody's really like there was a book called like the staff engineer but there wasn't anything for design there was the making of a manager but like that's about management so i was just like okay i'm going to keep this in the back of my head and then eventually um i did actually so basically about a year passed and i was like okay i don't know what's going on here but i'm going to kind of start looking around for a new job and then i did get a staff position at asana and so then i was like okay now i've got the role

And it was very quickly apparent what my manager meant by influence.

And so I was like, OK, now

I can understand in a little more detail what they were saying now that I'm experiencing it.

So I'm gonna take notes.

And then if nobody else has written a book on this in a couple of years, then I will contribute that because I do think that this is something that's missing.

So it's honestly like my lived experience of struggling and not really finding very many resources.

There was a period in 2021 where Brian Loven, who did write the forward for my book,

He had been interviewing people for his website staff.design and that was a lifeline for me, but that was the only resource that I'd had at any point that actually talked about staff design.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think a lot about the concept of like these, the different types of work that we do, essentially.

I think when I initially started trying to build influence while I was still a senior designer, I was taking on a lot of

team culture work, which is really valuable and critical work.

But that tends to fall into the category of what Tanya Riley called glue work, where you're kind of like filling in the gaps.

But if you are doing things that are outside of the realm of what's defined in the career ladder as valuable, then you can end up in a situation where

You are making an impact, but it's not the kind that will actually get you promoted or be seen as particularly valuable.

And so a lot of the things that I reflect on in the book do touch on how you prioritize your energy to actually