Polly D'Arcy

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A lot of people actually like show static Figma stuff in their presentation, which I feel like is unacceptable at this this the stage we're at. It's like we got to see prototypes.

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it's really helpful to get people off script and see how they react and how they think on their feet. And that's going to give you a much more accurate idea of like what is it like to actually work with this person day-to-day.

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you have to hire people that you would want to work for. When I like think deeply about the people on my team, I actually want to think about like would I want to report to this person? You should be able to hire really strong talent and feel like you can trust them to go do the work and do it really well.

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you should start as a generalist so you can identify the spike. Like what is the thing you're going to bring to the team that nobody else can bring that you're so exceptional at? That like you get energy from and can really lean into.

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I'm a believer in small teams. Like I want to keep my team as small as possible and that's because I just have seen that smaller teams are more effective.

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Not every team has to have the same composition of people and skill sets, which I think has been a big unlock for for me and how I think about like designing an org.

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a team will always make everything better. Like, working with other people to challenge your assumptions or your way of thinking to like contribute to those ideas. Like, you just need that.

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When everybody can build anything, it becomes super clear who has great judgment and who doesn't. And that's why I think everyone has sort of started to talk about this idea of like judgment and taste being everyone's spike I guess

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people are are skipping to think and like skipping the design altogether which is kind of dangerous. You know, you have to go slow to go fast. That's still true.

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I have seen people ask Claude to do the thinking for them and it's like garbage in, garbage out. You you still got to do all the thinking and the strategizing

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regardless of your spike, you can absolutely be using these tools. I don't think it's just for people who like are trying to build high quality front end or ship high quality front ends code to production.

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I think it's like really dangerous to like identify a spike and then put somebody on a part of the product or a team where they can't actually lean into that thing.

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I don't I don't want to build a team of all the same people who are good at the same thing. It's like not going to help us deliver the best product experience.

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if you open our app and you see a bug and you feel like it's janky then you're like I don't trust these people with my money. That framing has like really helped the team I think level up and realize that like oh these like small UI bugs really do matter because over time they're paper cuts and they wear down that trust battery

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But we only really can really dig into those details and make the experience excellent once those foundations are in place. And if we do it the other way around, it can sort of be a waste of time.

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we can't be debating in pixels in Figma, which already I know seemed like pretty archaic given everyone's clouding everything. Everyone has like their fleet of cloud interns. We really like want to I think most often like bias towards building something so that we can just make sure it works

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they have to be collaborating and sharing and trying to sort of build on what one another is doing and not feel like they are like going off into their own silos and doing their own stuff cuz that's how you ship the org chart.

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It's really dangerous when design operates in a silo outside of product and engineering and they feel like they have a different goal and they don't need to work with those two groups to be successful.

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when you see potential in people on your team, you need to give them opportunities and and support them and and help them grow.

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it's one thing to like test something in staging and it's another thing to actually like use a product with your own money because you just you like are going to like very deeply feel the the pain points and the friction and and the frustration.

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I really believe that if you as someone who is a sort of maker and owner of the company building this product do not want to use it with your own money, it's not good enough.