In the United States, 40% of workers have experienced at least one layoff. Nearly half of all adults worry they’ll be laid off in the next year. Yet we’re still getting career advice written for a world that doesn’t exist—one where hard work guarantees job security and “being yourself” at work is always good advice.
My upcoming book BAD FIT: A Career Survival Guide tackles the uncomfortable truth: sometimes you’re not the problem. Sometimes the system is broken, and trying to fix yourself to fit into dysfunction only makes things worse.
The Patterns Hidden in Plain Sight
After surviving multiple layoffs and working as a UX designer across startups, government contractors, and Fortune 100 companies, I started recognizing patterns that no career guide talks about:
The CEOzilla Trap: When executives micromanage design decisions down to paint colors while claiming they want innovation. These leaders often quote Steve Jobs about not doing user testing (Apple actually does extensive user research) while creating environments where creativity goes to die.
The Team of One Seduction: Recruiters promising you’ll “lead the entire company’s direction” as the first UX hire. What they don’t mention: you’ll be outnumbered by engineers who see user research as bureaucratic slowdown, expected to be a magic cure for years of product debt, and working with people who interpret design feedback as personal attacks.
Startup Cult Culture: The Bay Area’s history with actual cults wasn’t coincidence. The same recruitment tactics, isolation techniques, and devotion demands that characterized 1970s communes now define “passionate” startup employees. Free beer and foosball tables aren’t perks—they’re tools to blur work-life boundaries and keep you from developing outside perspectives.
Your Body Keeps the Score
We’ve created an economy of enforced silence around workplace dysfunction. NDAs attached to severance packages literally pay people to keep quiet about toxic experiences. Even without formal agreements, the cultural expectation remains: suffer gracefully, network strategically, emerge with a compelling narrative about “exciting opportunities.”
Meanwhile, companies that invest most heavily in design practices see 32% more revenue and 56% higher returns to shareholders. Yet these same organizations often create environments that systematically destroy their design talent’s effectiveness. The irony is profound: the conditions that make creative investment worthwhile are the conditions most companies actively prevent.
Beyond Individual Solutions
BAD FIT isn’t another book telling you to network better or optimize your LinkedIn profile. Instead, it provides frameworks for recognizing dysfunction before it damages your career and health:
- The “gut check protocol” for trusting your physical responses during interviews
- How to spot the three crushing dynamics that destroy solo creative roles
- Why “design thinking” workshops often become expensive theater productions
- Practical strategies for maintaining creative identity in hostile corporate environments
The book also addresses recovery—how to rebuild professional confidence after toxic experiences and detox from survival behaviors that no longer serve you.
The Real Solution
The most radical thing a creative professional can do isn’t learning to fit better into broken systems. It’s refusing to accept that dysfunction is normal, that creative work inevitably requires creative suffering, or that workplace trauma is the price of career advancement.
Sometimes the problem isn’t your performance, your attitude, or your ability to “read the room.” Sometimes the room is gaslighting you, and the healthiest response is strategic misfitting.
Your body might be trying to tell you something important. Maybe it’s time to listen.
BAD FIT: A Career Survival Guide will be available in early 2026. Want early access to chapters and additional resources? Reply to this email—I'd love to hear about your own experiences navigating workplace dysfunction.
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ICYMI: Some Freebies and Other Goodies:
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