Cameron Worboys - Inside an AI-native design org

I think the biggest blockers across all of the tech industry in the next two years

will not be the speed of building. It's going to be the operational side and being able to move

something from like we have built this thing. How does it move through the operational

cogs of product development in order to like get it live to customers? So my view is like how do we

set ourselves up for the new world? You have to make sure that your organisation is capable

at running at the same speed as the AI tools. Welcome to dive club. My name is Red and this is

where designers never stop learning. Today's episode is a deep dive into design at cash app with

their head of product design cam warboards. We're going to get into the hiring process and get a little

behind the scenes of some of their recent releases to understand how the design org operates.

And cam is a lot of fun to listen to so let's dive right in.

The amount of change that's happened in two years not just to cash app but like the industry at

whole is absolutely nuts. If you just think about it right it's we've had an entire set of

tooling we're using changing. The entire speed that someone can produce a similar output has changed.

The entire like organisational structure has been put into challenge. So I think on a good day

without all of the like crazy industry stuff I think it would have been a crazy two years but then

when you throw all of like the AI change on top of it it's been an absolute whirlwind but to me what I

love is driving change and I think that's why I feel like I think I'm reflecting back on two years

being like I'm pretty proud of where we've got to. We've really got an insane team. We are working

in a way that feels very modern. We're small and nimble and able to kind of pivot with the

changes that happen every single week and ultimately we're just producing really good work.

I think you have every right to be proud even just digging through some of the recent

you had a pretty big release just a few months ago. It was a big deal and across the board it was

really high quality. So part of my goal of this conversation is to dig into some of these modern

ways of working and I want to start with a phrase that you used last time we talked where you

talked about almost your mandate is this high quality high velocity. So what about this big release

that you just shipped at the end of 2025. Do you think shines a light on how you want this design

org to operate? I think historically in product development they used to be this insane trade-off

that you could either have it off high quality and it has to be slow or you have it fast but then

it's bad and I think the change that I felt the most over the last you know six months to a year

and even since like November it's like another exponential change again is those trade-offs

no longer exist and you can move fast and you can do it with high quality and to me that is just

exceptional. It doesn't mean it's easy to do. I think that the way you achieve both of those things

simultaneously is you have to run very lean teams. You have to be incredibly clear on the outcomes

which those teams are trying to achieve and then you have to make sure they're using these tools

in a way that allows them to 10x output and you know the amount they produce because I think the

quality piece there's a misconception that it comes from a designer sitting in some cave for

three months and pontificating about the future of software it literally doesn't it comes from reps

and the the speed which you can be wrong and the speed that you can go again and experiment and

experiment and experiment and I think that's what we've seen change is the amount designers can

produce has exponentially increased and the amount of like bureaucracy and layers you need to run

an organization has changed a lot as well so you kind of package that together and it allows you

to produce significantly more at really high quality at a really high speed and it's just like a

product development dream at least as far as I'm concerned. Real quick message and then we can

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let's dig into some of the organizational change because yeah you almost kind of drew this line

at like six months ago and then you know like november December maybe I very much so see those as

these two inflection points as well but then yeah like how does that trickle to a design or like you

as a leader trying to make sense of how do we want to operate given the rate of change of all

these tools and what is possible and it just feels like a lot of the old rules don't apply anymore

so what do you even do with that in your position yeah it's like a complex question I think that

there's not one answer to the way my brain kind of initially goes on this previously is what are

the old rules right and if you think about the old rules it used to be that there was this product

development pod and it was an embedded designer and it was an embedded engineer product manager

and then the pizza team essentially right and then you'd have a lot of these pizza teams

and then because there were a lot of pizza teams you'd need a lot of management layers then you

have a bunch of managers and then those managers would also have managers and then you have a bunch

of structure and before you knew it you had this web of these giant orcs with like six management

layers lots of small teams and lots of people doing like micro optimization in there and I think

what's changed from a structural standpoint is because the amount people can produce has

yeah probably like 20x 30x maybe even 100x sometimes in you don't have to have this old model so what

you can do and what we were able to do is flatten the entire organization so we have this in design

which we have core plus free which essentially means we're only free management layers away from Jack

which is actually quite crazy when you think about a company of all size when we first decided to

flatten it was the thing that we were most nervous about but actually since we did it it's been the

thing that I've received the most positive feedback on and the reason is you flatten it and basically

it just goes Jack broke cam and then a layer of what's that that's it and what it allows us to do

is not kind of like yeah there's no hiding in various management structures there's no game of

telephone it really just prioritizes the people who are building the software and the product

weak in weak out and then they get to skip a bunch of layers and just report up so I think that was

probably one of the most intentional things that we've done and if you think about that at like what

that actually allows you to do when you when you kind of change the organization of structure and

just flatten it it just allows you to be much more nimble so when something happens in say November

and we're like oh my god the games changed again we are not working through six layers of management

and having to like keep those five people aligned it's a very small tight knit group of leads

where I just have one standing meeting on a Monday to keep them in sync and that's it no one on

one's no nothing just once one meeting a week and then the rest of our time is just spent building

and that's really what's unlocking some of these things there's there's tons and tons of stuff

in there but I think if I was to reflect what's been the single biggest thing we've done that has

allowed us to keep with the pace of change it's been really challenging the traditional

organizational like product development structure that I think people use to deliver software

at scale wherever the last like 10 years can we push on that a little bit and talk about how that

impacts the practice of design or any processes rituals like what does exist still in that

more flatter org and were there specific elements of how you all did design that you actually

removed given those changes is interesting as well to look at like the before and the after

right yeah because that's actually where it gets kind of interesting so we have an uncomfortable lack

of process so often some people join and more recently they've been like what this is kind of like

a shock and they're not documented but all of our process in cash product design I can actually

picture it right now it's it's about five lines of stuff like initially just like sentences just

like this is like the thing you have to go to and that to me talks to just like the cutting we've

been able to do on there and the reason I think that's really really important is process existed

from my perspective to provide consistency and output when design started to scale and become

professionalized so you know back when I first started design it wasn't I would I would say it

wasn't really professional we just used to kind of wing it uh we pretty just we're like kind of

run on vibes mostly and like what we felt felt good I'm sure it's probably the same with you

and then as you know you needed design orgs to be 300 400 people or 1000 people you had to put

any process and structure in order to support that many people the real question which is there's

been kind of been put into motion over the last year two years has been of that process what is

serving you and what isn't serving you so we've just basically just like systematically gone through

and deleted an uncomfortable amount of stuff like for example everyone is obsessed with design

and says oh so essential to our process if you actually do like a ride along uh of a design

crit a lot of large organizations it's not really a strong crit in like the traditional sense

people are just telling everywhere who works lovely I work so good maybe push it over here

or they like put another post it they put like a few post it notes on there and then most times

like the designer leaves that crit and probably ignores like 90% of the comments anyways

right like you probably experience that oh yeah totally and then it's like well what was the

point you spent an hour you bought everyone together so why don't we just try deleting it

um so you delete it and then you see what happens um and then I think we kind of just systematically

gone through all of the you know kind of professional design processes that we've held clear

and then just found a way to just like run very very lean so if you're a kind of IC at cash app

the weekend week out it's it's pretty simple you basically just get together and plan

with your team on a Monday and then if you get stuck there's standing time on Wednesdays to unblock

but you know it's optional you don't have to unless you're stuck and then on Fridays you just demo

what you built and that's like shared so it's really it's very bare bones but I think it actually

starts to get back to me to the pureness of product development where it didn't need to be

so complicated and we didn't need to have these like checks and balances to support all of these

hundreds and hundreds and thousands of connective tissue points is just it's just getting back to

building again and to me that is just like the most energizing thing and I honestly think it's

what sped us up so it's just evaluating all of that stuff and seeing what serves us and what

doesn't serve us I love the two anchor points being plan in demo kind of at the book ends of the week

because in my experience if you do have that crit like the formal crit where you're actually going

to get like quote unquote approval or like you know get unblocked per se a lot of times you know I'm

guilty of just waiting like I just wait yeah I'm just going to wait three days until I can have

that meeting and then I'll just ask those two questions that I need to get answers to

and it's like that just doesn't cut it anymore given like what you were talking about earlier

this is the speed of reps that you can do as a designer that just doesn't translate

for me I think the biggest blockers across all of the tech industry in the next two years

will not be the speed of building it's going to be the operational side and being able to move

something from like we have built this thing how does it move through the operational cults of

product development in order to like get it live to customers so my view is like how do we set

ourselves up for the new world you have to make sure that your organization is capable at running

at the same speed as the AI tools and these AI tools move again fast different to me that's like

an entire habit we're trying to change within our org around us like the pace and the urgency that

we bring into just everything and then that means that they are keeping pace with this tooling and

I think to me that puts an org in a much better state for the future let's talk about the Friday

demo space for a second like yeah what does a great Friday demo look like compared to maybe a

slightly more mediocre one the lines between disciplines are blurring right because designers now

coding stuff and engineers are still coding stuff as well and even product managers are coding stuff

so to me a good demo I feel happy when I've finished Fridays and I've tend to pop around a lot of

demos when I just feel there's been like technological breakthroughs I can't make say too much but

a lot of the times over the last few weeks there's I've been going to demos and I've been seeing

what's been built and it really does feel like invention I guess and that we it's not just

information sharing like oh here's what I built as we go to spec and we've fulfilled the answer

in the spec it to me feels like a you know we had this challenge and this outcome which we were

trying to achieve as a group and we were on like the fourth prototype of it and this one almost works

I guess there's maybe the best definition and it's scrappy it's raw but you can see like a glimmer

of a technological breakthrough so for example moneybot was something we launched in our full release

right I remember seeing the first demo actually on web of moneybot where we basically took a

customer's data and like art some of our data right to like feed it into this thing and have a

response back and it was probably the design was not good the execution was so slow it took so far

to defend it back but it was the first moment where you could see all the potential and you were like

oh wow we're like having breakthroughs here in a good week on week basis from demos those breakthroughs

tend to like compound and then that energy just like filters into the team and then I've at

at least seeing people want to keep like leveling up on those like breakthroughs which are having

a demo so there's there's no like formula per se other than just show us what you built this week

if you built something incredibly complex that's really hard and you've broken through great if

you've just built something that's raw or if you're just doing animations for the week and

find a more polish that's absolutely fine it's just show us what you've made this week

I think moneybots are pretty interesting thing to look at because so much of what makes it special

exists outside of the pixels you know like a lot of the design even is outside of the pixels so

maybe we could even use that as an example to talk about how the value prop of design has shifted

at cash app both maybe due to the the type of product that you're working on like a money bot but

also it sounds like you know people are experimenting more with these tools you talked about the value

of technological breakthroughs more people are coding like what has that shift looked like in practice

at cash app well almost all of our products and I know it goes now like shipping PRs and I found

it kind of funny I can pull it the data of my top head is like over 90 percent it's like crazy

it's big deal yeah so it's a big deal but what's funny is designers keep gravitating towards the

most designary stuff and I've found a lot of designers are fixing these small refinements in the

product that have bugged them for years and it's just like a funny cause of action it's like you

get keys to the kingdom and you could ship these insane things I've been designers are like all

this pixelation on like this is pretty was like it was really awful like the amount of key line

alignment I've seen like we've got we used to have the issues in our app where there was quality

and paid some pages and you know and things just weren't quite perfect page to page and there's

two designers and thinking off of the top my head it was like smashing through PRs and Lauren has

this range from like the pixel janitors and they are like the pixel janitors it was like going around

cleaning up after our developers who like didn't make the app completely pixel perfect so I know

that's a tangent of the question but I think that's that's just an anecdote which I'm finding so

funny but I think over time it will start being pixel janitors and designers shipping code and then

confidence will just grow from there and grow and grow and I I do see a world in the not too

distant future where very complex features are being you know ships via just a builder and you can't

distinguish whether that builders an engineer a designer or someone else in a discipline they're

just able to visualize and invent something and just ship that through these tools so that's where

I can see it going I just think it's gonna slowly be like a progression and then we'll wake up one

day and it'll be like wait there's no more roles it's just who can ship good stuff and I can really see

that trajectory already happening I'm feeling that a little bit even from my own practice like I've

made a couple PRs in the last few days I'm like I just honestly step back I can't believe it I

cannot believe that I did that you know it's so past the line of the like p3 polish ticket

that being said for you to even get close to that at an org that's so much bigger you know and you're

if you're even close to this 90% number that's a pretty incredible feat so has there been any like

top-down investment or anything that you're doing to help designers get more comfortable in a

is it just happening organically like how have you been able to see such an organizational

transformation over such a short period of time I think we've been far ahead in the tooling

aspect that enables designers to do this so we've had a group of people who essentially look at the

AI enablement side of it and there's an entire program that's dedicated to code fluency and

that's helping designers from zero where they don't have a get-up account all the way to like

shipping a PR into product all the first stage starts in like a sandbox PR so you can kind of mess

about and then once people have kind of got comfortable shipping inside the sandbox we move into

like the actual product and then there we found some engineering pairing is like really helpful

just to help designers honestly just like navigate it like I don't think it's it's necessarily

building the code which is the hard pot anymore it's it's more so which buttons do I press and

the world doesn't end so true okay I'm not like technical but you know I'm not technical in the

sense of like a development and you like read some of these things and just even the follow names

you're like what is this every button and GitHub is scary too like even the squash and merge like

I looked at that and I'm like it's green green normally means like it's okay to press on but I'm

like no I gotta Google this and I'm like I'm searching I'm like do I hit the squash and merge but

like it's very clearly the only button on the entire page here but I still I still couldn't get

myself to hit it yeah that's that sounds about right I think by the end of key one we'll have

we'll be at 100 percent like we've got a few people who are obviously out of office and stuff like

that but yeah well we'll have every single designer ship I have ship production PRs by the end

of course I think world is changing it's one part of it like I think yeah they're still the building

part but there's still these other jobs that happen in this new world that to me are just like

just as essential and even more important in this new world as well do you want to go a little

bit deeper there we basically have a DRI concept and that stands for like directly responsible

individuals and the DRIs are responsible for needing a large group of ICs to achieve an outcome

and what's really interesting from my perspective on that right if you actually think about it is

there's so much stuff you could do the real challenge then becomes if I've got this infinite set

of options like what is the strategy and how do we coalesce a large group of builders to live

on that strategy fast so that we win like that's an art form in itself that I think is just as critical

because otherwise what you'll end up with is you'll end up just so much shipping it won't click

together it will be you know one part of the orgs going over here another part of the orgs going

over here so these tools are amazing at increasing the amount of output but output without that taste

and that ability to be like this is where we're going strategically as a company and these are the

people who are going to like help drive us weak and weak out towards that direction and that to me

is just as critical as the people who are you know shipping the code and building it day to day and

and I think design also has an opportunity to really from my perspective like step into that role

because design can visualize what the future could look like and a lot of other skill sets can't do

that right like you know people have to write documents or something like that but you know if

if we're trying to go after say the next version of money bar and talk about it in the future

a designer can actually prototype something show it to everyone and be like this is the direction

we can go and then everyone's like yes let's follow that right and that allows this group of

builders to essentially like know where the flagpole is and so maybe a good way of articulating it

is I think as the output increases the the value of clarity and vision just becomes more and more

important because otherwise you end up in this jack of all traits master of none software I think

maybe we could even tie a bow on everything that we're talking about here because I'm sure some

people listening are excited by all of the change but also you know people are trying to figure

out almost like career strategy you know like what's the North Star that I want to even point

myself at in terms of what I want to bring to the table one two three four years from now to

continue practicing as a professional designer so when you think about maybe even like the archetypes

of designers that are having real success in your or where do you kind of draw the lines like where

can somebody point at or the decision matrix of what type of designer do I want to be where I

could thrive at an org like cash up when you're in these periods of rapid change the most important

thing is being malleable and then being able to reinvent yourself again and again and again

at the pace of change so if I was to give any advice on like long term career longevity is I'd say

there is no fighting this direction of travel right it is fundamentally changing the entire product

development process so retooling is not a luxury it's like a must do and I think it's going to be

if you're not AI-flueing in I think you will struggle to get a job to be honest in the

in the not too distant future you might even struggle now I was about to say we might be there already

I think so it's sad to say but I think it's just like the truth and then I think as far as like

the evolving shape of it I honestly don't know but there's there's three archetypes which we're

working towards and I think at the highest level it's a world where the lines between roles

are a lot more fluid and we basically talk internally at block and I can't take credit for this

but there's basically a DRI is the person who's driving the work there's ICs who are the craft

makers the taste makers driving the actual execution towards that goal and then there's player coaches

which are like the leadership player of the organization I can like go into each one of those I guess

from I think a DRI is a really interesting thing to lean into particularly as a designer because

your strength as a DRI is essentially is your ability to take a loose strategic nugget as a

business right so for example at the moment I'm very focused on this idea called neighborhoods

which is how we connect both sides of the counter between square and cash up and you think about

that that's like fascinating problem to solve why when you walk into every single

square shop should you not play with pay with cash up that's in that reason right and it's like a

very technically interesting challenge to solve but also very customer eccentric experience

challenge to solve that's like an important role which I think shapes the future of design is like

people who can take maybe a good way to frame it is like creative problem solving and start to

think about what are the biggest problems at this business faces and how can I use building and

product development and design thinking to help people visualize and follow me on that change

like that's a role which I think will still be really important and then on the IC side

the ICs that are thriving at the moment are what I would just call like just builders they are people

who bias towards action they are very outcome focused and solution focused versus linear process

focus they're just like okay cool we're gonna connect both sides of the counter through square

and cash up let's just start building some prototypes of how we could potentially do that get that

into customer's hands they're not scared of being wrong I think that's like the probably the most

important trait that I'm seeing is that ICs who are willing to be that eye back this as the first

direction is actually a undervalued skill and I think those ICs tend to be like really really

thriving at the moment and then in the player coach space there's still a deep need for leaders

in design but we did this before the AI push but we don't believe in like professional managers

in the sense that other large tech companies might have the idea to me that you have a manager

who is not responsible for the output of their team it's just like one of the dumbest things in

the world and it just doesn't compute with me and so our managers are leads we call them our

player coaches they are responsible for driving outcomes and positive outcomes in the team

and all of the pixels which they're pushing and their team is pushing they are responsible for so

those are the three archetypes which we have and I think across those archetypes you're almost

seeing like different skills prevail and you know I will summarize it as like the DRIs are like

the people who are able to kind of do like creative leadership essentially the ICs are just the

builders who just produce and create amazing high craft outputs and then the player coaches are

essentially the people who can kind of lead the ICs towards achieving great outcomes and that's

generally what I've seen but maybe the inversion that would be I don't think the kind of middle

professional management layer who doesn't actually produce stuff will exist I don't think it

exists anymore perhaps in the way it did three years ago I've been interviewing a big company

and they're like do you want to be an IC or a manager and I was like can I be both and they're like

no no no no and then people would have invested like five years of their career and just being

appealed by manager and then they then they come up now it's tough it's tough I genuinely

feel for those people and yeah I really like DRI a lot because I think it's been easy to evaluate

where you want to grow as a designer on kind of the you know engineering product try add a little

bit it's like hold do I want to go down the code path more do I want to go down the product path

and product felt like a departure from design in some ways but it's so clear that like there's

this need on like the stick to strategy you say creative problem solving I love that you know

it's like AI is exciting everything was like great the bottleneck in some ways is ideas you know

like yeah you got to come up with things and direct things and I totally believe the designers

might be the best positioned person to thrive in that role yeah I feel similar being the ideas

guy always used to be like a joke right yeah and now like actually at my value it was such an

insult like 18 months ago on Twitter and now it's like wow we need more ideas guys hey we're

hiring ideas guys yeah maybe it's different that's like the most successful DRIs like I'm thinking

of Ryan and Owen that that's super senior people in the company that that DRIs as well and

that obviously Brian was like the old CEO of cash apps he's like the perfect definition of DRI because

he could just he could just make stuff happen and think strategically but it's a really

fascinating thing because you do need more of those people at different layers and you have to

build a bench of highly capable leaders who can essentially you know lead the the robots plus the

humans to deliver these outcomes and I don't think it's as simple as people realize and I've

definitely seen even through friends or even you know from personal experience at cash app where

if you have just like a bunch of people building stuff and making stuff but it's not

being shaped into like a coherent direction and strategy with taste and curation it kind of

just feels a bit rattles and you're like producing stuff but it's not really driving the

impact and that to me is perhaps one bit which the industry at large is maybe not talking about

because you can make stuff and build stuff all day but if customers don't want to it's kind of

pointless right yeah there's one question that I can't stop asking myself what if companies apply

to talk to you rather than the other way around and that question is the foundation for the all new

dive talent network and it's working like right now I'm helping many of the most exciting startups

that I know to hire the designers and builders who listen to this show so if you're curious what

might be out there and maybe you want to get on my list or maybe you're even looking for your next

design hire head to dive dot club slash talent to join today okay so we're talking a lot about

archetypes and everything that's changing in the world my question then is how's this influencing

the way that you're thinking about hiring and maybe even like the signals that you're prioritizing

in evaluating people and trying to figure out who's the best fit to bring in to the team

so I think the thing that's universal and has never ever changed is someone a good designer

and that might sound stupid right when I say that out loud but most people fail a portfolio phase

or an interview phase because they don't have what I perceive as one of the most important things

in design which essentially craft I made that 90% up but I actually think it will be probably

closer to like 95% every single rejection reason I think the number one up there by an

exponential amount is like craft I think the other stuff that surrounds craft is much easier to

teach but someone's like a na i and taste is actually the most valuable thing that I think I've

time and time again had like there's a lot of people I'm thinking of who you could just tell

they haven't i for it and they hadn't necessarily had the opportunity and then you give them the

opportunity and then the i prevails and to me like the i implies that it's just this like

visual only thing and it's not you know when you look at a product and it just feels right

and they've balanced it and it just feels like incredibly obvious that's a really hard value to

place on something but I think it's actually probably the single most important skill it's like a

designer and I think as the number as like the amount of output you can produce comes up we're

going to see a ton of slop and then we will see a smaller and smaller amount of designers and

people who can really just like select with such intention and focus but they know what good looks

like and so to me that's like the universal trait that hasn't changed like craft taste whatever

you want to call it and there's a misconception that it's just like the visual side is not just

the visual side it's like it's the combo of it all when it's just feeling right like that's

that's really really important and then I think the other stuff that we've seen change more

on the hiring side is just general AI fluency and stuff like that is just kind of a given now I

think it's unlikely that you'd get through the interview process if you weren't building some

stuff in AI and like other projects there's some people for example who work at companies who aren't

as AI forward but have insane craft levels they tend to be like oh the weekends I built this

amazing tool and you can kind of connect to and to and you're like this is enough so I don't know

that answer the question but I think the most important thing to say there is craft away shines through

and now more than ever even if you look on Twitter and you see the people who are like growing their

followings exponentially as like an IC is craft like they're building amazing prototypes they're

building amazing interactions and I just don't think that's disappearing anytime soon so that's

what I keep looking out for and that's what a lot of people at cash app and I think that's why

the fit and finish of the app was quite nice because we have a lot of people who care and

take you about that stuff I want to join to the AI fluency piece a little bit and I want to

speak to a very specific listener who hears you maybe they've actually been kind of

hunting all the AI stuff because it's annoying and they don't have time for it and you just convince

them you're like all right shoot like I actually really have to invest in this but it's unclear where

is the threshold like what line are you trying to see designers get over where you can say yep

they have what it takes and they've experimented enough or they've built enough so if you're an

IC and you're a builder type I would guess and I may be wrong that if you're asking yourself that

question you're probably not a builder because anyone I know who is thriving in this like builder

first IC world they are so emotionally enthralled by this change that is happening because

design was always gated behind technical expertise and it was always like you needed someone

else to realise your vision that a lot of people I know who are interviewing and all work at

cash and block and everywhere they are like shipping fun things on the side just to experiment

and like have fun with the technology and that is by for me from an IC perspective like that is

a builder and they bias towards action they love making if they have half an hour free they're

going to tinker on something there I guess that's like a way to probably like challenge the question

a little bit that if you're asking yourself that I think maybe the better question is can you

compete with these people who are high craft high taste and building incredibly high velocity and

like figures spread to blind and honestly I would say if you can't like don't get in the game

because if you're not worth it you're not going to have a gig it's a good answer honestly I respect

the pushback because building is pure love with the game at this point it's like like you said

like we've as an industry we've almost like had this coiling of men it'd be nice to build my ideas

and then all of a sudden it was like boom and now you can and it's just like okay cool this one

this one this one this one yeah it's tough to compete with if it doesn't come naturally and you're

not excited about it it's tough to compete with so then then what there's other things right so like

you know in in a leadership role and in some of the other archetypes which you're looking at

then the skill set is more so like how do I shape an organization and shape strategic direction

for these ICs who are producing this the same amount of stuff like that's the skill set in

itself there's no like course on that I don't think and if there is you know someone's probably

making a lot of money I think that's a skill set that's incredibly valuable in this world it's

like creative leadership or you know I don't know what the answer is and exactly how to define that

but that's maybe a space which people I think could go into in this world but it's going to be

harder like that's the honest truth design jobs I think were plentiful and everyone needed design

and I think what you're going to see is there'll be fewer gigs because people can achieve

more with less and that to me just means the standard gets higher and what people have to produce

so I'd see the quality of people getting better and better so I think it's also really important

to like caveat that and this time that I think the design industry at large got really guilty

of overvaluing people's resumes on a logo and I transparently like don't get a shit about where

someone worked it'll probably kill me for saying this but like one of our best designers hands

down and I think he'll come on to be like one of the best ICs in the company his job before was

like work designing stuff for Yosu Shih no shade at Yosu Shih is cool but it's not like the

the Airbnb or the nectar of the world and I think it just comes back to raw talent shines through

and raw craft and raw skill shine through so for the ICs of tomorrow I think you'll just see them

bubbling up and we had this like we had these build of fellows doing recently who are like

like no college fresh-end to working with us and the amount like the skills which they have they're

just like swiss army-nice it's terrifying they can actually do yeah and so yeah I know that's

like a bit of a long-winded thing but I do think it's important for us as like design leaders

in this new world to not be overly attached to the resume logos and with that kind of bullshit

that's actually with it and just look at raw skills of someone building and transparently from

my side and I know I speak for all the block that we don't care where someone works we don't care

where someone lives it's just like do you have the appetite to work in this high velocity

high-croft environment and do you have good taste and could pull it off so hopefully that changes

but again I felt that was an important PSA to say no I think it's great I'm glad you said it

because there's a lot of reasons to be intimidated about the future but that is the reason to be

optimistic like this is the great leveling of the playing field literally just today we released

an episode with this guy who just landed a really cool founding designer role through the talent

network and his resume sucked he wouldn't even feel bad about me saying it like he he didn't like

the company he was at it was very low craft and he just went out and made a baller portfolio

in a really cool side project and sweat a bunch of details on his portfolio site and it was more

than enough for me like okay this guy's really good what the heck this guy's a gem and he will

fly past people who you know dare I say maybe I've spent the last five years at meta on the tiny

little size of the product because he's like this generalist that AI is accelerating in every

single direction that archetype so so exciting and for the first time in a few years probably like

this is their moment like if you are that person this is your time right now I've recently joined

Twitter again and I like DM quite a lot of people where I just their work pops out and like

that work is sick and I don't look at the LinkedIn I don't it's just like you know let's chat and

people will get jobs off the back of that and it's not saying you like you have to post all

your stuff all the time but there's just bills and it just I don't know I just think you just see

craft cutting through a rate that it didn't before and previously perhaps you know you would go to

a large tech company and there would be like 10 rounds of interviews and everybody like tell us

about this tell us about this and it was easier to get into the CIA than some large tech company

interviews whereas now it's just like show us what you built and I absolutely love what feels to

me like the smashing down of the last 10 years where it was designed became bureaucratic

overly professionalized and now it feels like we're getting back to basics and that to me is just

so energizing and that's probably why I'm so hyped at the moment at work. I want to return back

to what you said earlier and you were talking about the connection between cash and square and

neighborhoods. Yeah and like there was a tweet that I had circled that you put out I don't

remember a couple weeks ago where you just talked about how something you're thinking a lot about

is that you're creating a shared DNA like visual DNA even between square and cash that's not a small

project or initiative to lead given the scale that we're operating at so can you just shine a light

on some of the things that you're thinking through on that front. It's not just like changing design

language for changing changing design languages like that's like the best way to phrase it.

If you think about that problem which I talked about earlier of like connecting both sides of

the counter there is a customer experience and like design language part of it that what works

about the Apple devices when you go from like an iPhone to an iPad to a TV is there's this

feeling of similarity even though they're different OSs and core experiences that make these

handoffs feel like very seamless. A while ago because cash happens where we're pretty separate

until we functionalize the company there was no incentive to think about how that

connected right so they were by and large like separate things so if you had a design like this

very smooth handoff at that time it would have felt like you were you know handing off between

toast to Venmo right because it's two separate companies so actually like square and cash

out are a single company and we're going to connect them and it's going to be one of the coolest

things ever but we need to make sure from a customer standpoint that the experience feels seamless.

The obvious nod to that is oh let's just make them both the same let's just make cash up

and square like have the same design languages have the same systems but then if you really interrogate

that it's like oh wait cash app is like one of the most crazy culturally relevant brands that

appeals to like a very young generation we've got 25% of US teams and then square is like a hard core

working B2B software where people are in the app for like eight hours a day so if we start like

you know dropping crazy illustrations and tons of white space everywhere we might you know people

might get annoyed so what we started talking about as a group is like well how do you connect them

and I think this is where it comes down to that deeper layer of like strategic drivers and this

is something that Moron was involved in and deeply passionate about is actually design runs deeper

than that and you can start to think about what we call shared DNA and this idea that

it siblings not twins and if you think about that as the analogy what we're saying is there is

shared foundations that make it feel like it's a block designed product whether that's

tied some shared like base tokens approach to the grid and then there are these unique personalities

that get put on top of it that allow each of the brands to shine but also make that handover

moment not feel like you're jumping between two different companies so that's I guess why it

is interesting because it really is like design as a strategic asset because you're using design

to solve a customer problem and to solve business problem which is how do you connect both sides of

the counter one of the personality glimpses that I really liked from the latest release was these

personalized payment pages can you give us the backstory there like how does a project like that

come up get green lit be brought to life like what does it take to pull something like that off

because it definitely exists so far outside of the traditional box of responsibilities that a lot

of designers especially people working on be to be get to even sniff it's like a personal one I

still think we can take it even further again it just goes back to that like created problem solving

again right most payments essentially like moving money between you and I it's become a commodity

so the prompt there is how do you start to make the experience of moving money between you and I

feel less commoditized and even if you and I were just now to like ideate on that you'd be you

probably say like well what if you could like send a special message and then you're like okay cool

so what we did is we actually looked at the messages that people were sending in their payments

we pulled a list and aggregated it again like using AI we're able to look at you know millions and

millions of payment notes and find out like why people are moving money and you see there's a lot of

things that are kind of functional right so like rent you know no one's celebrating rent

but you also see there was a lot of very emotional things like for example graduation

birthdays dinners for a special reason right and then you kind of pull that thread you know like

why shouldn't that experience be more than just this like sad utilitarian thing and it shouldn't

so we were like that's designed a bunch of custom assets that mirror all of these moments that

people are sending money and that's what we started to like see if it worked and see if custom

is a loving it customers do love it they're like big advocates for it and I think we will continue

to push this idea that it's completely personalized and moving money doesn't need to be this like

commodity for the rest of the rest of the year a lot of the things that you're talking about

related to maybe finding the shared DNA you know people translate more into this like design

systems bucket I know Lauren is leading that doing a great job there and yet much of what comes

out of cash specifically is like frankly bizarre you know it's just very very different can you

talk a little bit about like that tension like how do both of those things operate at a high level

where you have this you know the systems required for crafted scale while also trying to be deeply

creative in the core brand and what that expression looks like it's like one of the most extra

central challenges that I think every tech company should be thinking about deeply right now

I think it's better to be on the side of expressive and unique to customers so that they have

an emotional attachment to your product versus like you know consistent and essentially like

you know commoditized yeah vibe codable vibe codable yeah like that's genuine it so for example

one of my favorite apps that I did a design at the moment that is out there it's like bump

I don't even use bump it's like map app and I like met the designer and he's like he's like yeah

we just we just yolo anything like it's just like yeah how read how read can we make it

Friday's episode is with Julian Martin anyway yeah yeah well man respects I think that's a good

example of like I just think you have to and we're definitely forcing ourselves to get out of our

comfort zones I guess it's maybe the right way to describe it because the traditional logic was

oh consistency is ruthlessly adhering to this very strict design system was the only way to

adhere consistency right that was like the truth for a while and I don't think that is necessarily

true like design systems have to be able to flex and allow for more expression and then I think if

I put the new age layer on it I believe one of the primary ways which you will create lock-in in

the new world is creating apps that feel completely one-of-one so what I talk a lot about cash

app is I won in six months a year I want everyone who's sitting at a dinner table to open their cash

apps and put them on the table and every single one looks different it's a complete expression

of their personal identity and if you think about it like we actually have the heritage of doing

that we have our cards right you've probably seen the crew debit cards you can customize them you

could draw on them and actually when you think about the future of software development and where

it's going with generative UI there is nothing in the future that's going to prevent us from

creating these completely one-of-one experiences so that's what like is top of mind for me at the

moment and I do think we will get there relatively quickly that every cash app does feel unique and

completely designed around the person and then from a business perspective why I think that's

super interesting is it create this like deeper harder to quantify emotional connection with

the products that is the same as like your wardrobe clothes are by and large like an expression

of personal identity we've seen a trend particularly in younger audiences that digital identity

is as valuable as physical identity you just need to look at the fortnight store to see the numbers

so you know I think from my side I have a very deep belief and a bet that interfaces in the

not-too-distant future will be a spoke completely one-of-one and at least in cash apps instance a

complete representation of your personal identity and I mean like my brain is already running like

how applicable is this to be to be you know like how far are we going to go into this it's so

applicable I think it is so my dad he still runs a tiny little small business antique shop right

and his options previously were he could have his mental website which was so difficult for him

to manage like he's not a technological guy is an antique dealer for that sake right like you

could picture it right or he could upload to his antiques to like some big conglomerate that

standardizes the experience and his like personal touch and his shop and like all of the effort

he puts into it basically just goes into like this commoditized like Bordash-esque platform like

that to me is just like not the future of B2B software like it you know if my dad was able to create

a completely bespoke you know solution and and piece of software that allowed him to serve his

customers and create a website that was a representation of his style and identity it would have

changed his entire course of his business but he wasn't able to do that and I can only when you

think in the future that people will be able to do that and even at Square we're talking

with lots of customers at the moment and building stuff and you can kind of see the direction

of travel that people want very bespoke interfaces as much for B2B because every restaurant is

different and I just think that's like one of the biggest opportunities ahead for designing general

which is like how do you make this stuff and then how do you make sure it comes together in a cohesive

line creativity as a competitive advantage regardless of industry does feel like it's going to become

more of a thing which that's this exciting as a designer you know because if your product doesn't

have something that obviously there's this bucket of top-down enterprise contracts that they're

always going to exist but there is an abundance of choice and one of the choices is make it yourself

so it's got to be good you know the bar in the same way that you were talking about the bars

rising for designers it also is going to rise for products specifically to ask probably.

I'm sorry maybe I'm wrong I really really hope so I just I just think software was

that yeah you had to mass produce it previously essentially and it had to be one-size-fits-all for

almost every customer and if you were in workday and signing a contract for like 10 million you

probably got some customization to it but by knowledge it's like the same product and I just

think that whole notion of how software is created is it's kind of being challenged and that

is just so energizing if I didn't believe that creativity had a role in this new world I would

quit my job and give up and my wife's an amazing baker I would just support her doing like bakery

like honestly it but I genuinely believe that the world would be a better place if more

businesses really led with creativity and used it as a tool to drive the outcomes at scale

and that's really what fires me up personally it's you know there's very few I know like the designer

founder trope there's very few designer founders there's very few designers on boards and I think

design is often misconceived as just pixel pushing and it's not it's like creative problem solving

the design industry at large can look at problems in a very different way and come at them in a

very different way and that's like a skill set that transparently I think would make the world

a much better place than today where it's like you know just giant conglomerates in every shopping

and like not enough neighborhood businesses thriving and you know one-size-fits-all software and

mass-produced clones like I think there's an opportunity here generally not to go like to

philosophical is to like for design to like push against that tide of the last 10 years that it's

you know it's all conglomerates and go back towards more of like creativity at the heart of everything

neighborhood businesses neighborhood stuff and and I think that's very very energizing for me I

saw someone on Twitter I think actually it was last night referred to this as the niche economy

and I'm totally adopting it because I think that's good it's so relevant for designers because

even if we were able to correctly identify a problem which as a whole like a given the population

we're pretty good at right like that's what we do it didn't really matter because there was

still such an upfront cost and skill gap to actually be able to go and solve the problem we're

all of a sudden now it's token cost and the time cost is driven down we are not reliant on other

people to actually go and solve the problem so I do hope that there are so many design created

businesses that don't necessarily have to be these billion dollar companies it doesn't matter

right it's the niche economy I think the niche economy can be driven by designers and I'm

very excited about the future for that I love that phrase and it's almost like we're saying that

is before we kind of press report I was talking about the I think future tech companies might be like

CPGs and it's not just it's not dissimilar to that where it's actually is it one piece of software

in five years time that serves a billion people like metadata or is it split up into 30 pieces of

software that solve much smaller niches so you go to you know your fitness app is booked here like

your local community is just your way you live but that to me feels like a much more competitive

and better world which I hope exists but I also could just not and get eaten by these people

by these three AI companies but yeah I think for the good of the world it would be amazing if

it went this way and I hope design continues to have a role in shaping it to the artist can this

has been incredibly energizing I appreciate you coming on today and giving me a lot to think

about and also just learning more about how you all operate and everything that's going on has been

just fascinating so thanks for coming on plumb at the curtain talking with us today

dd appreciate it and thanks for listening and it was enjoyable thank you guys

before I let you go I want to take just one minute to run you through my favorite products because

I'm constantly asked what's in my stack framer is how I build websites genway is how I do research

granola is how I take notes during crit jitter is how I animate my designs loveable is how I build

my ideas in code mobin is how I find design inspiration paper is how I design like a creative

and raycast is my shortcut every step of the way now I've hand selected these companies so that

I can do these episodes full time so by far the number one way to support the show is to check

them out you can find the full list at dive dot club slash partners