Former Design Head here, Here's my advice to designers today

It seems unfair to me and others like me who are trying to get into the industry. People who are in the industry very well know that they didn't get an entry because they did some Jony Ive-level work. The majority of them simply got lucky in 2021. Now everyone wants superheroes in the name of product design. I wish I was doing the same job search in 2021, things would have been different.

How bad is the design job market now in India?is there an over

Sad to see the degree awareness & lack of common sense in young budding designers these days. Me as a Product Designer get asked- what are you doing in an IT MNC?Did you shift to IT? How much designers can make at max, it must be bad, right? I regret being a designer, aren’t you? #speechless

I have felt that being a designer in India is super hard because of the lack of validation that we get from society and family.

Looking at the sad state of UX market in India makes me think about the scene few years back. In 2018-19 many folks who found coding or other roles a little difficult switched to UX. UX design was glorified even more by few design influenzaaas as if its the only coolest job left in IT. Most of the experienced designers we see today are earning good but shit in their pants when asked to do good visuals. They are good at talking, use lot of UX jargons and give gyaan on Linkedin comments and constantly ridicule designers who are good at visuals to sound intellectual. We don’t see talented illustrators, motion designers, vfx folks get the appreciation they deserve. Also these skills are difficult and takes hell lot of practice to master and has a high entry barrier as well.

Field is saturated and you will seriously struggle to find work. Not gate keeping, just laying out the reality. If you're up for the challenge then good, if not then you should look at some other fields. Product design is kind of weird now and is tougher than you think. It is no more a creative field where you can come up with unique ideas or have fun creating stuff. It is intoxicating, tedious and requires constant fighting with the stakeholders, listening to your micro managers and implementing stuff they "ordered" you to do disguised as feedback. Did I say, it is mostly copy work nowadays and portraying it as a whole new feature/design that is unique to your org/team? It’s 1% creativity, 99% stroking the ego of your managers and bosses just so you don't get laid off. (Not at capgemini, burner account)

Is it just me or design culture in India is just becoming worse? Saw a lead designer come in for work. Sit down for 5 minutes and make crass jokes and then leave. What even man. I am super disappointed. All the best people I have worked with have either left or are about to leave. All the women in office become uncomfortable with these jokes and it is visible on their faces. They then take credit for our work and speak really well to the senior management about "HE" has done. I transitioned to design to learn and grow in my career but this is the least ambitious field I have seen in my career. What do you think?

Mostly so called "Design Leaders" "mentors" are always spewing gyaan in my office, LinkedIn, social media but actually fail to implement those stuff. Every other week we have this call where designers are supposed to talk about a topic and every designer comes with such complex presentations, use big words as if they are saving the world or something. They unnecessarily complicate such simple topics and then go on to call themselves designers 🤡