How to Know When It’s Time to Leave Your Design Job (and What to Do Next)
Tips for designers navigating the age old job question: Should I stay or should I go?
Image by Jornada Produtora on Unsplash
By Alla Weinberg, Meg Rye and E Jamar
Leaving a job is never easy to do, and deciding when to leave can be the hardest part—especially in an ever-changing industry and job market. Design careers often come with a particular set of frustrations that don’t always come up when searching for generic career advice, and making a switch comes with real-world considerations and consequences. Whether you're a designer being micromanaged into mediocrity, a creative leader whose instincts are constantly second-guessed, or someone who was hired to think strategically but spends most of their time moving boxes around in Figma—you are not alone, you are not imagining it, and we’re to help you navigate the age old question: is it time to leave?
If you have been asking yourself whether it is time to move on, consider this a guide to help you decide. We are going to walk through the signs that it might be time to leave your design job, what to try before you make that call, and how to set yourself up well when you decide you are ready to make the move. We’ve also included general information on protected leaves, should you need to take one.
Signs it’s okay to stay
Before we jump into the red flags, let’s assess the green ones. Not every frustration at work is a deal breaker. Sometimes when we get the urge to find a new job, we’re going through a rough stretch, a difficult project, or a mixup with your manager. Here’s a few considerations to think about when it comes to recognizing a healthy workplace.
Sign: You have real relationships and trust equity with leadership.
It's much easier to negotiate scope, a new project, or a title change with people who already trust you than to build that from zero somewhere else. If you have a genuine relationship with your manager or other leaders in your organization, it could be worth continuing to navigate the difficulties.
Sign: You're still doing (or could pivot toward) strategy-heavy work, not production work.
If your value is strategic — synthesizing ambiguous problems, facilitating stakeholder alignment, making the call on what to build — that's harder to automate and harder to replace than execution-heavy design work. This is a good sign that a layoff isn’t imminent, and you might have more pull than you realize to make changes.
Sign: Your org isn't in a visible layoff pattern.
One bad quarter isn't the same as a company doing rolling cuts. If you're not seeing repeated rounds, restructurings, or a hiring freeze that's lasted many quarters, the ground under you is probably more stable than it feels day-to-day. Use the stability to shape things where you need to.
Sign: You're still learning something.
If the role is still stretching you — new domains, new stakeholder complexity, exposure to how AI tools are reshaping the workflow — that's compounding value even if day-to-day satisfaction is mediocre. This is valuable for your career growth, and the grass might not necessarily be greener elsewhere.
Signs it’s time to leave
It’s hard to judge when it’s time to call it quits, but often you know when the writing is on the wall. The tricky part, for designers, is that they have been trained to sit with discomfort. Tolerating ambiguity, iterating through uncertainty, and finding possibility in constraints are the skills that make you good at your work. They can also make you extraordinarily patient with situations that do not deserve your patience. If you have been telling yourself things will improve, that the next project will be better, or that this is just how it is, it might be time to look a little more honestly at what the work is actually costing you.
Sign: Your health is suffering and stress is normalized.
You have a multitude of “mysterious” symptoms or frequent illnesses that seem to resolve after a period off of work. Stress has become so normal, you don’t even notice it anymore. Not the tight jaw or scrunched up shoulder, or even the poor sleep and exhaustion. You think, “that’s just the way it is,” even though you’re hurting. Meetings at work cause immense anxiety, and you feel exhausted at the end of the day. Overall, your physical health is suffering just as much as your mental health, in a way that’s not tied to a known health issue. This is one of the most common signs that it’s time to leave.
Sign: Abusers get promoted into positions of power.
When the person that works their team into the ground, the one that controls their team through fear, the one that plays the political game well but doesn’t do any work, or the inappropriate one is the one being promoted. These are major red flags that the issues you’re facing are systemic, and it’s not something you can fix.
Sign: You no longer care about creativity outside of work.
When a designer loses the ability or desire to make things outside of work, that is a signal worth taking seriously. You may be experiencing burnout. Designers often measure their own wellbeing by their relationship to creativity, so its disappearance is a meaningful marker.
Sign: Communication isn't safe or productive.
For designers specifically, this often shows up in design reviews and feedback culture. If feedback is personal rather than about the work, if there is no shared design language, or if presenting work feels like a performance of survival rather than a genuine creative conversation, that is a form of unsafe communication specific to the discipline.
Sign: Your portfolio hasn't grown in over a year.
If a designer looks at their body of work and cannot point to anything in the last 12 months that they would want to show a future employer, that is a concrete and actionable signal. A healthy design role should produce work you are proud of, problems you solved in interesting ways, or at minimum lessons you would want to talk about. If none of that is true, the job is costing you more than a salary can compensate for. It’s time to start looking for your next step.
Sign: You don't feel like yourself anymore.
Designers often have a strong sense of professional identity tied to their creative voice and values. If you’ve stopped advocating for the user, stopped pushing back on decisions you know are wrong, or stopped caring whether the work is good, that’s worth wrestling with. You deserve to be your whole self.
Before you leave your job, prepare yourself
Not everyone can immediately leave a toxic workplace. Some people depend on their salary, have a family to support, or are unsure how they’ll find a similar role in the current job market. Whether you know it’s time to leave or you need time to assess, there are a lot of things you can do to set yourself up for success. Take some time to explore your options and take action that’s within your control. Consider doing these before putting in your notice.
Learn the way your company works. Make the invisible visible and be open with yourself about what is actually happening in your company.
Map out how power flows and work actually gets done in your organization. Learn more about power mapping.
Begin to track who is leaving the organization and who is staying or arriving, and if your org is having visible layoff patterns.
Identify the company’s trajectory: if your company is shrinking design, keeps moving design to different business units, or has stopped investing in design as a discipline, this is a trajectory problem.
Observe how executives leaders treat people: notice if they take care of their teams or mistreat them.
Lean on a support system. Create a personal advisory committee of your friends and colleagues, and show them the maps you created, so they can help you accept reality and help you think through your next move.
Name the dissatisfaction precisely. "I'm unhappy" isn't actionable. Is it scope (you're doing production work, not strategy)? Visibility (good work, no recognition)? Growth (flat skill curve)? Relationship (a specific manager or stakeholder dynamic)? Comp? Each has a completely different fix, and vague dissatisfaction tends to get misdiagnosed as "I need a new job" when it's actually "I need a new project."
Have a direct scope conversation with your manager. This one should be navigated carefully depending on your relationship with your manager, and how toxic (or supportive) they might be. Consider bringing up a proposal rather than a complaint. "I want more of X, less of Y, here's why it's good for the team too.”
Look sideways before you look outside. Is there a different team, a different stakeholder group, a different problem space inside the same company where the work would feel different? Is there an opening available?
Build the case for a role redesign. If the company is stretched thin, there's often unclaimed work — AI-tooling strategy, systems/ops design, research ownership — that nobody's assigned because nobody's asked. Volunteering to own something ambiguous is one of the fastest ways to change your day-to-day without changing your badge.
Talk to a designer outside your organization. It is easy to lose perspective on what is normal when you are inside a dysfunctional culture or otherwise questioning your experience. A peer who works elsewhere can be a reality check.
Keep your receipts. Begin to document everything, especially in an abusive environment. Send important emails and Slack messages to a personal email account so you have leverage for unfair dismissal, severance package, or other eventualities.
Set a checkpoint, not an ultimatum. Give yourself a real window — 90 days is usually enough to see if a scope shift or manager conversation actually moves anything. Write down what "better" would look like at that checkpoint so you're not relying on vague feelings to judge it later.
Audit your portfolio now, regardless. Even if you decide to stay, knowing where your portfolio stands gives you agency. It shifts the feeling from "I'm stuck" to "I'm choosing to stay while I prepare." This can also be a grounding way to self-reflect and remind yourself what you've accomplished, what you're great at, and it can give you energy. Going through a portfolio revamp can help you figure out what you might want to do next.
Consider a leave of absence. If your health and wellbeing are suffering due to a toxic workplace, you might consider a leave before officially putting in your notice. This could give you enough space to assess your needs, shift things in your life, seek workplace accommodations, or look for other work while your job is still protected. Your organization might have its own leave policies, or you may be able to lean on government-enforced programs. This largely depends on your company’s policies, and what country you reside in.
Garden leave: in the UK (and some other countries)
Garden leave (sometimes called “gardening leave”) is when your employer asks you to not come into work, or to work at home or another location during your notice period, and you get the same pay and benefits. Many contract designers don’t know that they could also qualify for garden leave. While typically it’s something an employer initiates, you may be able to ask to be placed on leave. An employer might place an employee on garden leave because they don’t want a departing employee to have access to sensitive information that they could use in a new job. You can’t start a new job during the notice period, but nothing stops you from looking for new roles to start after the leave period ends.
Statutory Sick Pay: in the UK
If you work in the UK and any illness, physical or mental, keeps you from working, you might be entitled to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP). This is the legal minimum amount that UK employers must pay employees who are too ill to work. The rules for SSP changed significantly in April 2026. In the past, you had to earn a certain weekly amount and be sick for four days in a row. As of the new changes, there’s no minimum earnings threshold and SSP is paid from the first day of sickness absence, so far more workers qualify.
It’s worth noting that many employers offer far more generous sick benefits, SSP is not necessarily a livable wage, but it’s an additional safety net to know about should you need it. Before weighing any leave, you should confirm your employer’s specific benefits, or contact a qualified employment advisor to make sure you know your options.
FMLA: in the US
In the US, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) entitles eligible employees to take unpaid, job-protected leave for qualifying medical or family reasons. This includes a change in your mental health. While this type of leave is unpaid, many employers will allow you to use your paid time off, have their own policies for paid time off during your leave, or you may have short-term disability policies that you can use to make up all or some of your pay. Additionally, the law requires the employer to continue providing group health benefits during your leave, even if it is an unpaid leave. FMLA can be taken as-needed or as a longer, continuous period, for up to 12 weeks.
Not everyone is eligible for FMLA: you have to have worked for a covered employer for at least 12 months, and your company has to have at least 50 employees. Check out the U.S. Department of Labor for more information.
So, what now?
Leaving a design job is a very personal decision. There’s no right or wrong answer, only what’s best for you at this moment in time. And it’s often never as simple as we hope it would be. Be sure to seek support, and explore how to celebrate, mourn or otherwise recognise the transition. We’re here to help, too. Good Maven offers specialized career coaching for designers. Our coaches are designers and recruiters who work in the industry, so we really get it. Learn more about our offerings.
This article is a collaboration between Alla Weinberg, of Harmonic, our founder Meg Rye, and our content strategist E Jamar.
Alla is the Director of Design Operations at Harmonic Design, a service design consultancy. She’s also the author of A Culture of Safety: Building a work environment where people can think, collaborate and innovate. Purchase a copy of Alla’s book and connect with her on LinkedIn.
E is a freelance editor, journalist, and strategist who is passionate about human-first storytelling. They help small businesses and organizations doing meaningful work reach new audiences. They also consult authors and academics to reduce ableist, transphobic, racist and classist language and stereotypes in their work. Find them on LinkedIn.