You company has too many fucking designers.

Your company has too many goddamn designers.

If you build a product with fewer discrete screens than it has designers, you have too many goddamn designers.

If you’re embarking on your nth site redesign in as many years, despite none of your users asking for a change, you have too many goddamn designers.

If 50% of the projects your design team works on never see the light of day, you have too many goddamn designers.

If you spend all your time and energy working towards ever-slimmer margins of improved conversion rates, eking the tiniest bit more profit out of your customers for the sake of pleasing mercenary shareholders who will sell your stock without a second thought the moment it suits them, you have too many goddamn designers.

If it takes you years to realize that your product’s usability is improved tenfold by simply adding labels to your “simple, clean, elegant,” icon-only controls, you have too many goddamn designers.

If you can afford to redesign your icons every six months but can’t afford content moderation, anti-abuse policies, or an ethics code that prioritizes human dignity over engagement and ad revenue, you have too many goddamn fucking designers.

To my designer brethren:

You deserve better.

You deserve to work on a product that needs you, not one that sees you as window-dressing. The software that drives the systems that keep us safe, warm, and healthy — the software that keeps our democracy even slightly just — is in desperate need of your skills.

Software that predicts the weather. Software that monitors power grids. Software that operates farm equipment. Software that parses research data. Software that counts votes. Software that enables social services. Software that stores medical records.

It’s not sexy and they don’t have beer fridges and it’s not based in the Valley and you probably can’t tell your mom, “Hey, I designed that thing you used to share the QAnon meme that caused us to have a screaming argument over FaceTime last week.” But it needs you. And it might make you feel a bit less queasy about your impact on the world at the end of the day.

Your company has too many fucking designers. Do it a favor, and leave.