Should I quit my job to switch into design?
Not until you have two finished case studies and at least one conversation with a hiring manager that went well. Switching into design takes most people six to eighteen months of portfolio work, and it goes faster with an income than with a deadline. Quit when the portfolio is ready and the search is the only thing left.
The switchers who make it usually design adjacent to their current job first: internal tools, a side project for their team, a redesign of something they use daily. That work is both the portfolio and the proof you can do it under real constraints.
Talk to someone who made the same switch before you decide. Hop matches on exactly that: "I'm a marketer switching into product design" is one of the most common searches, and the mentors who answer it did the same thing.
From Hop mentors who've been there
“Laid off and got a job less than 4 months! I can share my journey if you need a help from layoff!”
Chuck Shin · Senior Product Designer at Microsoft AI · on their Hop profile
“I went from running my own thing for a decade to the advertising industry and from agency into in-house product design within fintech, and I've done everything in between.”
Craig Jamieson · Creative Advisor at CR—G · on their Hop profile
“When the 2020 pandemic killed my plan to move into front-end dev, I was working retail with some self-taught UI skills and no design degree. I bet on a UX certificate and spent almost two years getting rejected before landing my first role in 2023. What I took from it: your "unrelated" background isn't the liability you think it is. The years I spent reading people across a sales counter and walking them through setting up their mobile devices turned out to be user research and usability tests that I didn't even know I was doing. I can help you find and name those transferable threads instead of hiding them.”
Stephen Carroll-Keene · Product Designer at EverDriven · on their Hop profile
Want a specific answer for your situation?
Describe what you're stuck on and Hop matches you to vetted design mentors who can actually help, with a reason why.
Find your mentor