NextVR doesn't understand design, and sadly, doesn't want to.
Design here is production, never strategy. Design will never have rank, and is subjugated to engineering. Expect to be asked for cleanup after non-designers have revised things structurally (usually myopically). Workflow, governance, and infrastructure for design are all terrible. Think of what internal design models looked like about twenty years ago, not what you picture for modern tech development.
Inefficiency: there is no one source for what 'good' is, so wheels are reinvented. Patterns can't be nailed down effectively; once, I listened to someone in charge extol the 'awesome' virtues of inconsistency. Maybe antidesign is the future of usability, but I doubt it.
Despite my best efforts, design was isolated from end users, who Marketing owns entirely. This resulted in poor discovery, no user testing, no validation. Whole chunks of the design cycle were missing or broken. Expect to get the wrong input, from the wrong person, at the wrong time. Be prepared.
There are no design sprints, and while I was at NextVR, design was removed even from regular sprints. You heard correctly. Expect your role to be blurry, and your schedule a surprise. Don't assume 'sprints' means anything typically considered Agile is going on.
You might think this is to be expected at a startup, and one of your jobs is to improve things. In my experience, meaningful conversations about addressing these issues will go absolutely nowhere, and inquiries are likely to be outright ignored. I call this cricket management. You will not be understood, heard, helped, or even looked at in the eye by executives, processes, or product management.
