Hi, friends! Happy Tuesday
If we haven't met yet, my name is Anfisa, senior product designer at MEWS by day (well, not anymore). By night, I help designers to stand out in a crowded market inside the IntoUX Community.
I'm leaving my great job at the peak of a design market crisis.
And I don't know if I'll regret it...
It still feels unreal.
My last job gave me 4 insane years of growth, learning, and the smartest people I've ever worked with. I know it’s ridiculous to leave a UX-mature, EU-remote company that just announced Series D with $2.5B valuation. So why am I walking away? Here's my story...
I've been working as a designer since 2012
Freelancing across countries and cultures, constantly adapting, always saying yes (because as a junior, you're never in a position to say no to jobs). After 6 years of freelancing, I felt uninspired. Along with that, after launching startups for 4 years, I felt tired in a way that rest couldn't fix.
In 2019, an opportunity to switch it all came: A product company offer, a salary I cannot say "No" to. That's when the adding began.
2020: I added more to my plate
COVID hit, I got laid off, but I didn't pause...I had a mortgage to sign.
So I found a new full-time job. I also had my content work, which was at its peak. So in 2020, I launched UX online courses. The split between a demanding new role and content creation was real, but I told myself:
I'm young, I don't have kids, and I could handle it.
I thought I was tired back then, little did I know...
2021: You got the drill, I added more again
With Ioana, we launched the Honest UX podcast while both working full-time. I kept creating content, kept running the course, stayed at the job for two years until I was laid off (again) at the start of another crisis.
By then, pushing through felt automatic; it was just what I did.
2022: New job at a scale-up
After being laid off for a second time, I joined a company I really believed in: A fast-growing unicorn where everything accelerated. I was building design culture, growing my own UX maturity in a market that never slows down. I even stepped into a PM role on top of my design responsibilities. More pressure, more lessons, more weight on the plate.
2023: Launching community on maternity leave
A couple of months of break to get used to my new role, and soon I returned to my job part-time. But as you guessed, I couldn't stop here.
I launched a design community that same year, started hosting over a hundred workshops annually, kept recording podcasts, kept creating content, kept designing under pressure, and kept being a mother.
Each thing required presence, energy, but I kept adding without ever removing a single thing.
2025: The plate started cracking
Sleepless nights followed by full workdays followed by content creation followed by community building. A constantly sick toddler whose needs didn't care about my calendar or my deadlines, and my constant guilt.
I woke up tired before the day even started. I moved through packed schedules on autopilot, spent evenings and weekends trying to recover just enough to do it all again, and not get sick.
But I kept getting sick, at least 2x every single month. I told myself:
I have a fantastic kid, a fantastic business, a fantastic job, and fantastic content partners. I should be grateful. This is just a hard season, and things will settle soon.
They didn't settle. They piled higher.
October, 2025: Then my body decided for me
One day, I woke up sick again, but this time I couldn't recover. Not for a week, not for a month, for over 3+ months, my immune system simply gave up. It sent me a signal I couldn't ignore:
You cannot stretch forever. If you keep going like this, everything you've built will break, including you.
For the first time in 14 years, I listened...
I looked at my plate and realized something had to go.
I couldn’t give up being a mother, and I couldn’t give up community.
For the first time in my life, I chose to leave a job.
Not because of “restructuring,” but because I had I wasn't able to perform anymore. I thought about it for three months. I hoped the feeling would pass. I journaled, looked for signs, talked to people, and weighed every option. I knew the market, how rare a UX-mature org like this is, and that my company is at its peak: everything I’d worked on is about to culminate.
But the option to stay wasn't an option anymore.
What I had to remove from my plate is pressure (even if they say gems are born from it). I don’t know if I’ll regret this decision. I only know that, right now, it’s the right one.
2026: So, what's next?
This year, I'm following one rule: if it doesn't bring joy, I don't do it.
That's why I'm switching to the design community full-time.
I've learned that nothing beats helping designers and seeing their growth.
I've started the year by conducting 30+ interviews with members to learn how I can help to land jobs in UX mature orgs and overcome the fears in a fun & supportive way.
But my main message is this:
You don't have to wait until things become unbearable to make a change, and you don't need a breakdown to justify the break.
Because when you don't take care of things, they break.
Take care.
Anfisa Bogomolova
Founder, IntoUX.design
🫶
