𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻

Design Systems @Rentvine. Still figuring this life thing out. 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👶👶🎸🏒🖌️💻

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

When someone asks me what I do for a living as a product designer... I'm just going to send them this

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

I'm in the shipping PRs camp, mostly design system work.

Real question: is your level set by your skills, or by what your org lets you touch?

I'm seeing hesitation to let designers and PMs ship to prod, even with eng review. The tooling outpaced the trust and the processes.

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

Designers writing code in 2026: what level are you actually working at?

Not "can you code" but where does your code actually land?

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@pwnies Usually this happens before it hits prod (especially at their scale) but generally agree. This is the way to innovate.

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@clairevo @Gena_I_Gorlin Seemed unfathomable with kid 1… but we had twins as 3 & 4 and thankfully knew better by that point 😄

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@blvdmitry Yep I get that. The bigger the variant set the more of a pain it becomes. Seems like there isn’t a perfect way to handle this sadly.

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@hthieblot Yahoo towers

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@jsngr Are you talking 1-shot here? Because I’m now using Claude / dev environment to “design” and it’s still a very iterative process, just a different way of working. In the end it’s AI generated but based on a lot of instruction to get it right.

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@lennysan @noamseg

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@lennysan @noamseg This isn’t to sound critical buuuut: would it make sense to do this more than once a year. My answers to this question even 3 months ago would have been wildly different.

Love that you do this in the first place, so thank you 🙌

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

Announcing: The second annual tech worker sentiment survey

With an audience of over 1 million subscribers globally, we've got a unique opportunity to tap into how the tech world is thinking and feeling right now.

My inaugural tech workers’ sentiment survey in 2025 collected over 8,000 responses (the largest survey of its kind) and uncovered that mid-career workers were struggling the most, small-company employees were the happiest, and while almost half of you were experiencing significant burnout, the majority were still generally optimistic about your careers.

Today, we’re kicking off round two, and we'd love to hear from you: https://t.co/hqzCftSjw0

The survey will take less than 5 minutes to complete. If you complete the survey in full, we’ll share the anonymized raw data with you so you can perform your own analysis—plus an early look at the results before we share them publicly.

This is an important moment for the industry, and I'd love to get your perspective.

Take the survey: https://t.co/hqzCftSjw0 (it'll take <5 mins)

[immad @immad]

You can work 5 days a week and succeed as a startup.

Mercury has done that from day 0 and we are valued @ $5.2bn 7 years after launch.

I have been an entrepreneur for 20 years and raised 3 kids while doing it.

The point of success is to have a great life not just a startup 😊

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

The component that frustrates me the most is the **Segmented Control**. The two main patterns you usually see both have major flaws.

That said, the problem these components are meant to solve is very real, so I’m always conflicted.

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@ridd_design @joindiveclub Happy for you man 🙌

Learning as you go is the only way to do it

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@suekhim Basic coding, biology, creative writing, algebra … I could keep going. Love this idea

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@rafahari I appreciate and relate to this more than you know (especially the “nobody cares” and skeptical spouse side-eye)

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@mschoening Had a stream deck collecting dust and found a fun use for it. Such a fun time

[Gabriel Valdivia @gabrielvaldivia]

I've spent the last few months building Patina: a personal intelligence workspace that lives on your Mac.

It reads your iMessages, calendar, email and more. Knows your goals and helps you keep up with your people. All stored locally.

🌐👉 https://t.co/2RdcYGOZZc

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@krispuckett Happy for you man! (But still not rooting for the Avs, sorry)

[𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗿 👨🏻‍💻 @chrisd008]

@gabrielvaldivia I’ve been so close to building this for myself. Excited to give it a go!