Reflections on Growth and Learning in a Startup Environment

• Julius Tarng is the ultimate generalist designer.
  • He started the design tools team at Facebook where he made a massive impact on products like Origami.
  • He then freelanced as a design engineer for companies like Felt, Anthropic, and even prototyped some of the early AI features for the Arc browser.
  • Now he’s in his first-ever engineering role at Linear.

  So this conversation is a deep dive into what it looks like for designers to approach their work with an engineering mindset. We talk about Julius’s deep background in prototyping, how he collaborates with designers at Linear. And we also get into why the current state of design engineering is a missed opportunity.

  If you’re looking to grow as a software designer then you’ll love this episode.

Show notes:

• Julius’s twitter
• Felt — a better way to work with maps
• Daniel Smith (Linear designer that Julius pairs with)
• Origami (Facebook’s prototyping tool)
• Brandon Walkin (ex: Facebook, Apple, now at OpenAI) who made the adaptive pointer for iPad.
• What are GPUs and Shaders? (Julius’s tutorial video)