How to prove you're a systems thinker (Dave Connis)
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Dave Connis is back on Writers of Silicon Valley after a very different eighteen months.
Since his last appearance, Dave has been laid off, thrown himself into experimenting with AI, built new product workflows, and started creating System Design Lab: an education platform focused on systems thinking for product and content designers.
In this episode, we talk about the emotional fallout of layoffs, the strange new roles appearing in content design, what AI actually looks like when you use it every day, and how to actually prove you're a systems thinker - both in an interview, and on the job.
What we talked about:
✅ What getting laid off did to Dave’s confidence, identity, and relationship with work
✅ Why trying to constantly “prove your value” can lead straight to burnout
✅ The new roles emerging around AI, including design technologists, system architects, and content architects
✅ Why today’s job descriptions increasingly seem to be looking for impossible “unicorn” candidates
✅ What Dave learned from months of actually building with Claude, Figma MCP, and other AI tools
✅ Why AI workflows are much harder to make reliable than LinkedIn posts would have you believe
✅ How systems thinking helps designers define concepts, objects, attributes, and relationships before AI starts building
✅ How to demonstrate systems thinking in an interview
✅ Why Dave is building System Design Lab
Where to find Dave:
⭐⭐⭐ PODCAST OFFER! Get 50% off workshops and courses at UX Content Collective until Monday, August 24. Just use PODCAST50 at checkout. ⭐⭐⭐