The Exchanges

Q What would you, Dylan, what would you do? Because I don't think you were yelling at people or you were mistreating people. Were you micromanaging? Were you slowing the process down? Were you, tell me what you were doing that was causing frustration among your team?

A Micromanaging is a good way to describe it. Uh, perhaps even a mild way. I think, uh, I had for quite a while thought about every aspect of the product experience we wanted to build. And I, uh, you know, felt a lot of pressure to get something out there. And so I would just kind of come in and say, Hey, this is the way we're going to do it. Turns out when you hire smart people, They have ideas too. And also turns out that sometimes those ideas are like really, really excellent. But I think the time urgency combined with like having thought about a lot made me lean into, you know, we just gotta do it this way, let's go. And that was not a fun environment to be in, I think.

AI assessment note: “Micromanaging is a good way to describe it. Uh, perhaps even a mild way.”

Q So you were, you were basically, uh, trying, I mean, you had tested this, and people were, basically, the feedback wasn't great, so you couldn't, you couldn't put it out there yet, and, and when your team came to you, I mean, what did they say? Did they say, Dylan, you know, you're not, you're not managing well, like, how did they confront you?

A Yeah, I mean, people were, were clearly not happy. They felt like I needed help, They were right. I actually did need help. I needed someone to help on the management side. We were not gonna be able to scale fast enough without bringing someone else on to, to help run a part of the company. I just kind of like felt offended though, I think, because, you know, I obviously poured my heart and soul into this and, um, yeah, I, I felt bad because I, at some point, not me, I did reach my voice. I mean, just, just in response to one of the kindest guys in our team, who was saying something that was actually quite constructive.

AI assessment note: “They felt like I needed help, They were right. I actually did need help.”

Q All right. Dylan, that year, I just want to ask you, because we're talking about you professionally, uh, Focused on this, trying to put this out there. But this is a tough year. I mean, your dad is very sick. How are you balancing this really intensive development, but also going back and forth to see him?

A Yeah, I mean, I was doing everything I could to try to be there for him, and also at the same time, I mean, he, he did really want me to be, you know, progressing Figma. He was really excited for what we were doing. Yeah, it was, it was definitely back and forth. There were days where things were really dark, and I would just not be in the office, and I'd go up and see him. It was unclear, sort of, like, How long he had, uh, he was in just such immense pain, but his body was, you know, he was, he was a athlete his entire life. Uh, uh, so he's a strong dude. And even with the immense amounts of pain that comes with cancers, but everywhere, including bone, he was, his body was just holding on. And yeah, so that launch happened, you know, he was, he was very proud to see it. But yeah, he passed, uh, uh, quite soon after.

AI assessment note: “There were days where things were really dark, and I would just not be in the office”

Q Who, who was, who was the, I mean, apparently in middle school there was a janitor. It sounds like, I mean, it sounds like Good Will Hunting, almost, right?

A Yeah, so he was really cool. Um, yeah, he was very cerebral, um, very into math and physics, and, um, I think the reason you took the janitor job was, ah, very much to Just kind of think about stuff all day long and be in his head. Uh, and so I try to always cultivate friendships with people who are, are older than me. I think now that I'm sometimes the older one, I, it's like, okay, you're straight at college. Like there's a lot I could probably learn from you, you know? And he would tell me about different ideas and concepts that he was learning about, uh, and studying himself. And at some point he said, well, look, Uh, the really cool stuff isn't proofs. You should really learn a little bit of set theory, and so would be super sweet.

AI assessment note: “he was very cerebral, um, very into math and physics”

Q and there were plugins, and they weren't really, they didn't make collaboration easy, you felt like there was a real opportunity here. Did you get, I mean, and this is still, you're still miles away from having a product ready to go, but did you hear that from people? Were you, did you have an opportunity to interview designers or to talk to them and ask them what they wanted?

A Yeah, so both I had been working as a designer at Flipboard, or design intern. I, uh, went and talked with other designers that I knew. I also started talking and, uh, researching and learning about how companies were growing their design teams, and there's something that was, like, seemed very off because These companies were investing a lot in design. You know, Facebook was acquiring entire design agencies to try to make their design team bigger. And it was like, wait, how is it the case that all this hiring is going on, and yet there's only a few 100,000 web designers in the United States? Like, either the number's wrong, or it's growing so fast that it doesn't matter. In either way, we can go into other areas later, so I think let's go. Let's go do this. And at first, we were very focused on what are the things that we can just do so much better from the tool standpoint, not the collaborative standpoint, but as an individual user, you know, what are the breakthroughs we can introduce? Can we make a better way to create, uh, grids and guides? Also, how do we honestly build a project of this magnitude on the web? That was something that, you know, we had a lot of technical work to do to figure out what was possible.

AI assessment note: “I went and talked with other designers that I knew.”

Q And, and, and you were also building this product, so tell me a little bit about. About being a manager, running a team, how did you, how did that work out?

A Well, I think that we had a very clear product roadmap, and we all felt that there was something here. But I could have done a better job of helping people see it through, like, conversations with customers and whatnot. I was having those conversations. You know, I'd kind of come back, share all my notes, but if, what I found is that if, if, um, employees are not talking with the user directly, they just don't see it the same way. And they don't understand the pain that people have unless they can actually interact with folks and hear about it firsthand. And, um, And I think, you know, there's plenty of things that get done on the manager side to be better. Uh, but I think it was, uh, it didn't really, like, blow up, per se, until a little later.

AI assessment note: “I could have done a better job of helping people see it through”