Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - July 7, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - July 7, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  Vlad Derdeicea says job titles no longer equal seniority. So
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  the promotion is just a label now? Exactly, and we break down
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  why that structural shift is actually good for your career in
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  the age of AI.
• 0:14
  Welcome to The Feed and The Thread, brought to you by
• 0:17
  Chicago Camps. Leadership By Design is on Thursday and
• 0:19
  Friday, September 17 and 18 and tickets are available now! And
• 0:22
  while you're at it, get caught up on UX fundamentals with five
• 0:25
  minute UX at five em UX dot com. The Feed & The Thread is
• 0:28
  available online at feed and thread dot com to submit your
• 0:31
  feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and threads
• 0:33
  delivered right to your pocket.
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  We've spent years treating titles as proof of competence,
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  but the gap between rank and reality is widening. That
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  disconnect is reshaping how we hire, promote, and trust our
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  tools. Vlad Derdeicea at UX Design.cc argues in "The
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  promotion that didn’t take" that seniority isn't a single ladder,
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  but two separate measures: scope and maturity. He points out that
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  AI is compressing the execution work that used to define junior
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  roles, leaving a dangerous void when promoted designers lack the
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  operational habits to match their new badges. We're seeing a
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  structural break where the badge no longer guarantees the
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  behavior. Christopher Noessel breaks down the fear in "A
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  Primer of 29 Interactions for AI" by grouping AI interactions
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  into four simple types: clusterers, classifiers,
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  regressors, and generators. He insists designers should stop
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  worrying about backend algorithms and start focusing on
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  implied interactions, like letting users curate or rename
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  AI groups. The real design work happens in those human controls,
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  not the code. Pavel Samsonov writes at Product Picnic in
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  "Trust is not built on craft alone" that we're using AI as a
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  cheap substitute for trust. He calls large language models
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  calorie-free trust substitutes, allowing managers to skip the
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  hard cultural work of building credibility. Agile ceremonies
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  existed to manage distrust, and we're just replacing that
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  friction with software instead of solving the root cause.
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  Other articles today from Julie Zhuo on early internet life and
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  UX Design.cc on the cost of aiming to be the best.
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  Practitioners are untangling the knot between what a title says
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  you can do and what you're actually doing. Over on
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  r/UXDesign, people are asking if AI prototyping is quietly
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  shifting work from designers to product managers. Management
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  wants speed, so they're handing solutioning to PMs who can click
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  through AI tools. It blurs the lines of the product triad. The
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  tension isn't just about roles. It's about who owns the
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  validation of an idea. If a PM validates usability via AI, does
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  the designer's strategic input vanish? We need to define
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  competence by outcomes, not just by who moved the pixels. In the
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  same community, a researcher shared a painful gap between
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  passing an interview and surviving the job. They passed
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  the screening but failed the onboarding. The boss expected
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  project management skills, not research strategy. This reveals
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  a hiring system that tests for performance, not fit. You can
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  ace the portfolio review and still drown in bug chasing. The
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  disconnect between rank and reality is widening. We're
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  hiring for potential but promoting for survival. Another
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  thread asks when to ask for ratings without annoying users.
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  It's a classic friction point. You need feedback, but you risk
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  intrusion. The real question is timing. Do you ask immediately
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  after a download, or wait for usage signals? It's not just
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  about UI patterns. It's about trust. If you ask too soon, you
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  feel like a data mine. If you wait too long, you lose the
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  moment. Design is about respecting the user's bandwidth.
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  Junior designers are also debating whether to leave the
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  field temporarily. They're tired of low maturity orgs and
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  underemployment. Taking a marketing role feels like a step
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  back, but it pays the bills. The guilt is real. But leaving isn't
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  always failure. Sometimes it's a strategic pause. We judge
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  careers by linear progression, but reality is often jagged.
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  Taking a break to stabilize your life is a valid design decision
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  for your own career. Finally, someone asked if free trials
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  actually work for consumer apps. They cause procrastination.
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  Users forget to subscribe. The tension is between letting them
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  try and making them commit. Onboarding patterns matter here.
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  You need to create value early, before the trial expires. It's
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  not just about the feature. It's about the habit. If you don't
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  hook them in the first week, the trial is just a delay tactic.
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  The common thread is trust. We're trusting titles, tools,
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  and trials to do the heavy lifting, but the human element
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  is still the bottleneck.
• 4:38
  Chicago Camps is hosting Leadership By Design on Thursday
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  & Friday, September 17 & 18. It's an online event, so you can
• 4:44
  join from anywhere in the world! Tickets are free, thanks to the
• 4:47
  generosity of the community! If it's within your budget, you can
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  purchase a general admission ticket for only twenty six
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  dollars - with limited early bird tickets at only fifteen
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  dollars. Get tickets now at Chicago Camps dot org.
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  The idea that AI acts as a calorie-free trust substitute is
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  dangerous. We're swapping the friction of building credibility
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  with software that just hides the lack of it. Exactly.
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  Managers are using these tools to skip the hard cultural work.
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  They think if the output looks good, the process must have been
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  solid. But that's just a facade. It's a structural break. When we
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  stop demanding the operational habits that come with seniority,
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  we lose the ability to judge the tool's output. The badge no
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  longer guarantees the behavior. So the real issue isn't the
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  tool. It's that we've confused speed with validity. If a
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  product manager can generate a solution in seconds, why do we
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  still need a designer to validate it? Because validation
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  requires context that the model doesn't have. But if the
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  organization treats speed as the primary metric, that context
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  gets ignored. We're optimizing for output, not insight. Then
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  we need to change the metric. We need to make the cost of
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  skipping validation visible. If the AI generates the work, the
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  human must own the risk of it being wrong. That shifts the
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  burden back to judgment. And judgment is the one thing the
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  algorithm can't fake. Right. The gap between a generated
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  output and a validated decision is where actual value lives. We
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  just need to stop pretending that gap doesn't exist.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!