I Was a 'Unicorn Designer' at an Enterprise Company. Here's Why Senior Designers Are Burning Out.

I spent four years as a "Senior Product Designer" at a large enterprise company. On paper, that's what I was hired to do: design products.

In reality, my job description looked like this:

• Conduct user research (including all the scheduling, contact legal team, and list maintenance and verifying with team if we can contact them)

• Design the actual product (somewhere between meetings)

• QA my own work

• Present to stakeholders weekly

• Innovate on future concepts

• Contribute to design system governance

• Track and report success metrics quarterly

With the core design work—the thing I was actually hired for—expected to happen in whatever time was left over.

When I questioned whether this was three different jobs, I was told: "This is just what senior designers do now."

But here's what nobody was saying out loud: This wasn't a senior designer role. This was a senior designer expected to do the work of three people with zero support—what some call a "Super IC." I didn't have words for what was wrong until I was laid off and could finally have time to think to even unpack this.

The Evolution of "Unicorn Designer"

The term "unicorn designer" has morphed significantly over the past 15 years, and tracking that evolution reveals exactly how we got here.

Version 1: Designer Who Can Code (Early 2010s)

The original unicorn: someone who could both design interfaces and build them. This usually meant front-end development skills—HTML, CSS, maybe some JavaScript. It was a rare combination, genuinely useful in small teams and early-stage startups where everyone wore multiple hats.

This version made sense. Having one person who understood both design decisions and implementation constraints created efficiency.

I lived this version in my freelance web design days. I touted "designer who codes" as my competitive edge—even though toward the end I was outsourcing the actual development while focusing on design. The value wasn't really in doing both myself. It was in understanding how both sides worked.

Version 2: Designer Who Does Everything Visual (Mid 2010s)

As startups proliferated, "unicorn" expanded to mean someone who could handle all visual work: product design, brand identity, marketing assets, pitch decks. Jack of all trades, master of none.

I lived this version as a founding designer at three startups. It was chaotic, but it worked because the teams were tiny, the stakes were clear, and everyone was figuring things out together. You'd present half-finished work to founders, think out loud, iterate rapidly.

Version 3: Super IC Who Needs Zero Support (Now)

This is where things broke.

The first two versions were about what you could DO. This version is about what you DON'T NEED.

Today's "unicorn designer" isn't about breadth of skills anymore. It's about needing zero support while handling everything. No ramp time. No questions. No dedicated research partner. No mentorship. Just immediate, flawless execution across research, design, strategy, innovation, and governance—all while presenting everything polished and ready for executive review.

It's not "designer who codes" or "designer who does brand work too." It's "designer who operates like a fully-staffed team of one."

As Matt Ström-Awn documents in his article on The product design talent crisis, companies now demand senior designers with 8-15 years of experience who can "sink or swim" immediately. These "Super ICs" are expected to produce at full speed from day one—no support structure, no safety net.

How I Became a Super IC Without Knowing It

I thought I was hired as a senior product designer. I expected to:

• Focus on design craft

• Collaborate with dedicated researchers

• Mentor junior designers

• Evolve my skills—AI workflows, advanced Figma techniques, innovative prototyping

• Report to a strong manager who understood my work

Instead, I got:

• Pressure to own user research on top of everything else (never mentioned during hiring)

• Expected to run two-week sprints while simultaneously thinking 2+ years ahead

• Constant retrofitting of my work into line-numbered OKRs that had nothing to do with design outcomes

• A revolving door of managers too stretched thin to understand my product area

• The persistent fear that if I didn't check every box perfectly, I'd be the next one cut

And as for mentoring junior designers? There were none. Companies had stopped hiring them.

The sprint work—the core work I was hired for—was treated like background noise. Something I should be able to handle in my sleep while juggling six other full-time responsibilities.

I was being asked to be Captain (leadership and strategy), Core (execution and craft), and Future (innovation and systems) all at once.

That's not a senior designer role. That's three different jobs.

The "Always On" Culture

Being a Super IC in corporate culture doesn't just mean doing multiple jobs. It means doing them in a specific way:

• Design work happens in your "spare time" between meetings

• Every idea must be presented as a finished, polished product

• You must constantly perform confidence, even when exploring

• Hierarchy and formality trump direct communication

• Looking busy matters more than being productive

These expectations aren't designed for effectiveness. They're designed to keep people visible, in meetings, and performing rather than thinking deeply.

In startups, I could jump into a half-finished file with a founder, think out loud, work through problems together mid-design. That's efficient. That's collaborative.

In corporate, everything had to be crystal clear, concise, spoon-fed before I could show my work. Every update required a mini-presentation. I didn't have time to prepare polished TED talks while also doing the actual work.

Here's a real example: I once spent more time creating a deck, practicing my delivery, and writing cue cards for a 10-minute presentation than I did actually designing the solution I was presenting. The goal wasn't to show my thinking process or get feedback—it was to deliver a polished, effortless performance that made the design department look good.

That's when I realized: the performance mattered more than the work.

I'm a maker, not a performer. But the Super IC role demands both—and judges you primarily on the performance.

What I Realized

After four years of being stretched across strategy, execution, and innovation simultaneously, I finally saw the pattern:

The problem isn't that senior designers need to do more. The problem is that we're trying to be three different people at once.

Design roles shouldn't scale by seniority. They should scale by focus.

In my next article, I'll share the framework that could actually fix this—one that works with existing teams, right now, without waiting for industry-wide change.

Because if we don't restructure how design teams work, we're going to keep burning out the designers we already have.

Sources: Matt Ström-Awn, "The product design talent crisis"