A company is not design-driven if:
- Your design leader reports to a product or business leader
- Seniority levels of designers/design leaders don’t mirror those of product & eng
- Your designer-to-engineering ratio is low
- Large design teams don’t have DesignOps support

A company may be design-driven if:
- Founder/CEO is a former designer (Apple, AirBnB, Slack)
- Chief Design Officer reports to CEO (Twitter)
- Design has an equal seat at the cross-functional table by default
- Senior designers help lead discovery and co-write product roadmaps

In a design-led company, cross-functional partners understand the inherent value of design, and look to design leaders to help set the team’s direction. Cross-functional partners fail if they do not understand how design works.

Design-led tech companies have adequate content strategy and user research staff who partner with UX/product design.

Design doesn’t have to constantly fight for headcount; it’s not too hard to get the headcount or resourcing they need in order to pursue customer goals.