Tom Scott: “taste becomes the USP” as the design job filter

The design job market is tight right now, and the signals are confusing. Recruiters say the future is bright. Senior designers say they can't get a human to open their portfolio. Both are telling the truth. Let me catch you up on what actually changed and what it means for how you hire and coach your team.

The deep cut

• Confusing signals point the same way: taste. Tom Scott says bars are rising while senior designers get AI rejections, and both prove craft is the filter.
• A portfolio is a usability test you wrote. A content designer got rejected for omitting "ABC" that nobody asked about on the call.
• Technical skill without craft loses the interview. Scott sees people declined for vibe-coded work that "looks very vibed."

Two true stories about the same market

A recruiter and a laid-off senior can look at the same market and describe two different worlds. Tom Scott writes that companies are "absolutely raising the bar," more founders want a designer on the founding team, and Europe is full of real roles at places like Attio, Lovable, and ElevenLabs.

Then there's the Senior Product Designer who got laid off, landed one great contract, and has been hunting since June. The problem isn't losing out after interviews. It's that "I can't even get companies to look at my portfolio." Even referrals go dark now.

Both are real. The bar is up and the funnel is clogged. If you lead a team, assume good people are stuck in that gap, not short on skill.

The portfolio is a test with a hidden answer key

The loudest frustration is about portfolios, and it's fair. A content designer who interviewed several times this year describes the trap plainly. You get a vague prompt, you spend a week guessing what the room wants, the call feels good, then you're rejected for not showing "ABC" that nobody raised during the conversation.

That's a process you own, and it's broken. Your prompt is a usability problem you handed a candidate without instructions. If you reject people for missing something you never asked about, you're testing mind-reading, not design.

The fix is cheap. Tell candidates what you want to see. Ask questions in the room about the gaps instead of scoring silently and moving on.

When "best in class" fails its own test

There's a running argument about whose portfolio counts as good, and it cuts at how you judge craft. One designer tore into Simon Pan's much-praised portfolio: rambling case studies, chaotic layout, full-screen images, 20-plus minute read times. The point lands. A hiring manager scans for seconds. A case study that takes 20 minutes fails the one user it was built for.

So separate two things when you review. Pretty is not the same as usable. The judgment to cut, format, and lead with the answer is the craft you're actually hiring for. Scott makes the same case from the other side: when everyone has the same tools, "taste becomes the USP," and average design is now exposed because AI can produce average.

The real filter is taste, not tooling

Underneath the noise, the reasons people get cut are specific. Scott names two he sees most: not technical enough, and "presenting vibecoded products that look very vibed." Both are craft failures dressed up as tool stories. He's blunt that you "can't shortcut design knowledge with AI." Typing into a chat box is a low bar now. The difference is whether a designer hands AI the work or hands it the grunt and keeps the decisions.

That's also why the field feels crowded and raw at once. One veteran argues the profession got "overrun with fakers" during the cheap-money boom, people who memorized some Figma features and called it a vocation. You don't have to buy the bitterness to use the lesson. The winnowing is a taste filter. Hire for the last 1% of judgment, not the tool list.

Three questions for your team

• What exactly do we tell candidates to show, and do we ask about the gaps in the room before we reject? Fix the prompt the content designer was handed.
• When we review portfolios, are we scoring polish or the judgment to cut and lead with the answer? Use the Simon Pan test: would a hiring manager survive a 20-minute read?
• Are our rejections about craft and taste, or about AI tooling we could teach in a week? Name the real reason before you pass.