ichik
Joined 9 years ago
Joined 9 years ago
[0]: https://twist.com
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Maybe
Technologies: CSS, HTML, TypeScript, Figma, Photoshop, After Effects
Résumé/CV: https://vaitenko.com/cv.pdf
Email: [email protected]
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I’m a digital product designer with decades of experience focused on UI, UX, and scalable design systems. For the past decade, I’ve been a principal maintainer and contributor to design systems, owning Figma libraries, documentation, and collaborating closely with engineering (including contributing frontend code) I’ve led and mentored small, distributed teams and work comfortably in remote, cross-functional environments. I value clarity, consistency, and practical systems that help teams move faster and ship with confidence.
Adobe killed their Figma competitor (XD), so the reality of the UI design tools niche in the design tools market is that Figma actually has a near monopoly. Sketch still chugs along, but its market share is negligible. Penpot is a neat idealistic community effort that is lightyears behind.
This is one of the reasons why Figma continues to tighten the screws on their userbase, who doesn't like it one bit, but continues to pay.
Now, this is all not to say, that it would've been any better with Adobe's involvement, more like lamenting the fact that Figma lived long enough to become a villain.
Writing this from the perspective of someone who used to spend all day every day in Photoshop/Sketch/Figma for decades. This markedly contradicts my recollection of the state of Sketch at the time Figma was in its first public beta. Sketch's performance was abhorrent and it was constantly crashing while working with libraries. I was very skeptical about web-technology based tool in terms of performance, but Figma blew me away. It was FAST.
One more advice is installing vim mode extension and sticking with it for a few weeks. It takes some getting used to, but it is worth it.
> Proceeds with a bunch of opinions and outright lies.
Bit ironic, since the war is undoubtedly based on lies indeed (including not even calling it a war by the aggressor).