Designer feels like working with an arm tied behind my back. I absolutely hate Adobe's subscription model, software philosophy, and nearly everything else about them. But Designer has a long way to go to being productive.

As someone who is not professional in graphics but need to do some vector graphics for professional work, I like Affinity Designer very much. Once it clicks, it’s actually easy to use and quite productive.

That said, its probably not a marketable skill by itself as most places would look for the “Adobe Illustrator” keyword.

The free and opensource https://inkscape.org/ is a great altrenative to Illustrator. More here - https://logosbynick.com/illustrator-vs-inkscape/ for those interested.

I'm mostly happy with it too, but the lack of a "Select Same Appearance" in Designer drives me insane.

Affinity just added this in the most recent update.