In this talk, we’ll first unpack why (UX) research and design teams and departments are some of the hardest hit disciplines across the board, and examine the many ways designers have designed themselves out’ of the production cycle, including: focusing on assembling decontextualized, templated front end-components and rapid prototyping at the expense of the required rigor and depth of research and design work shifting towards using short, time-boxed bursts of work that align with various development methodologies at the expense of well thought out discovery and contextualization efforts ignoring building up knowledge and vocabulary that connects the dots between design outcomes and high-profile corporate initiatives convincing leadership that it’s acceptable for other disciplines to do research work with minimal or no research training establishing design education programs that focus primarily on technical skills ignoring that most of the hiring today is done by immature in-house product teams.