Should young designers pay senior designers to teach them?

Welcome to another episode of 2 by 2 and this episode is going to be a little different because I'm not going to start by asking a question. I'm going to start with a long speech and a bit of an analogy and I'll explain this analogy. So imagine that you are a cook. I'm not a cook. I'm not much of a cook. I don't know if either of my guests, Jay Shreyes, are you a cook by any chance? Do you cook at all? Or Shreyes says yes, Jay says well not so much. Okay. So let me see an analogy. Imagine that you're a cook and the way how you became a cook was you basically started in the kitchen. You were the prep cook. If you watched the bear and you watch all of these other shows, you peel like you know thousands of onions. You broke down like chickens. You made the same stock, the same sauce, the same chutney again and again and again. You come into it at like five in the morning and because you kept doing that, it is work that nobody really wanted to do. It's repetition sort of taught you something and it is almost mandatory for you to do those things before you became anything else. So it means that your hands got really calloused. You understood what was fresh and what was not. You understood what burning smells like. You understood what cleanliness actually is when it's not. You keep polishing the folks and the spoons and your instincts get calibrated through that repetition, which is why they ask you to do that. They ask you to do that again and again and again, before they even let you touch anything with respect to cooking. So before you got to the stuff, you sort of understood what the kitchen was like. Now suppose I said that we have a magic wand and suddenly there is a machine and this machine does all of these things. It peels the onions, it breaks down the chickens, it makes the chutney, it makes the stock and it does it faster and better and arguably cheaper than any prep cook. It could ever could. Now let's say this machine has been created. Now the real question is how does one become a cook? That is essentially the starting point for today's episode. I have been working in product and tech for such a long time and there is multiple functions that people have been talking about with respect to AI. They've been saying how AI changes, engineering, how it changes, product managers. Now I think the one function that is going through a very special crisis is product design. I'm going to explain this. Between 2022 and 2023, UX research, job postings fell by 73%. UX designer job postings fell by 71%. This is the steepest collapse in the history of design. Less than 5% of tech companies are currently open to hiring entry level design talent and from the 2022 peak, the people who are getting hired are also getting hired much more slowly. In 2024, about 49.5% of designers found a job within three months, which is down from 67% in 2019. Some of this is admittedly a pandemic kind of a hangover because everybody overhired during the pandemic and they filled their positions and so now they're sort of like cutting that down, which is true in design, in product management, etc. There are signals coming from multiple sites that say that something is happening with design and specifically with the entry level design. And so what's really happening is that companies are not hiring junior designers because partly because of market condition, but also because junior designers, the only way they get better is they need a lot of guidance from senior designers. They require a long ramp up time and they need to understand what the real world is and the companies have decided, look, this is not a cost that's worth doing. And that's because every designer that we know of, especially in the companies that are there in product tech, etc, have grown up the same way and the way they've grown up is they've started at the bottom and they did the work that honestly nobody really wanted to do, which is like, we'll make the fourth variant of this button, resize this banner, or do these five explorations and come back about this new concept. Most of the explorations get torn up. But still, and so when they or what happens to senior designers do the basic thing and they go to and give it to junior designers and say, okay, now do all the edge cases and the flows and come back to me and make it complete, just replicate, replicate, replicate. So what happens is people kept doing that again and again and again and when they would make mistakes, they would go to senior designers, senior designers would give them feedback, then they would learn, then they would learn, then they would learn. It's essentially the same as that of the cooking analogy that I said earlier. And now because AI has automated and done all of these things really well, that means that there is an absolutely new generation of young designers who have absolutely no idea where to begin. And I've thought about this and I see that there are two parts that are ahead of them and I'm going to talk about these two parts today with my guests. The first part is essentially what I call the new grant work, go and search for it, which means that you basically go and say, okay, maybe I can't do all of these other things or machines do these things, but let me find different kinds of work that I can do. And by doing that work after I do them, I get them in front of humans and I basically say, now give me this feedback please and tell me how I'm doing this so that I can learn better. Now the problem is that nobody knows what this looks like and nobody's really clear what is this room that this junior designer walks into where senior or experienced humans give them feedback. Why should they they owe them nothing? So that's the first part, fine new forms of grant work, essentially the same as before, but fine it in a different way. The second one is something that a lot of designers now are starting to do, which is that forget this grant work stuff, let's just jump straight away to judgment, which means that let's try to learn how to critique, how to prompt rather than execute and then accept that look, this is the path for becoming a designer. And I don't know how this person is going to create judgment, but they are. So while I'm just describing these two parts, the real underlying question that I want to pose to both of my guests today is that has the math and the incentives for junior designers change so much that now it's time for junior designers to start paying in order to learn not just get paid to learn. The second path for this cook would be I'm just going to go to every restaurant in town, I'm going to go to every daba, I'm going to eat everything and I'm hoping that by eating and consuming everything, I will sort of figure out what it means to cook. So those are the two parts, but the thing that I'm also interested in talking about apart from these two parts is that in the old world, somebody paid you to, you know, peel the onions and do all of that, grant work in the kitchen, even if that was just minimum wage. But to continue this analogy in the new world, I think the question that I want to ask is, do you now have to pay someone to let you peel onions and do all of these things? To discuss these two parts, I have two really wonderful and thoughtful design leaders with me. My first guest is Jay. Jay Data has spent 25 years and he's built design teams at companies like Deutsche Bank, Adobe, Flipkart, make my trip. And most importantly, I know Jay because he runs the fabulous design up conference, which is Southeast Asia's largest design conference, full disclosure. I have attended it at least twice once as a participant, once as a speaker. And the reason I wanted Jay here was because Jay has argued that senior design leadership is going to be a crisis later and partly because of this. In fact, when I reached out to Jay, he had just written something about this on LinkedIn, which I did not know. And I found that and I got even more excited. And so welcome Jay. Thank you. Thank you, Praveen for having me on this podcast. I am absolutely honored. You can't be just honored Jay. You have to tell us which of these two parts. Come on. Designers are in this podcast listening with baited breath across, you know, calves and metros and buses wondering, okay, which of this is going to happen? Do you have a recommendation Jay? We'll get into it, but I just wanted to see between these two parts, what do you think designers should do? Young designers. Absolutely. And I think there is no way that you can avoid the grant work at some point of time. If you avoid it today, it will be a cost for you sometime later because what this grant work does essentially. And I think we have talked about this is that everyone talks about taste. I think it's much more than taste. It is about building good judgment. It is about building intuition. It is about building taste, but taste is a very variable and very, very subjective thing. The taste for one brand, what you are churning out versus the taste for another brand are two very different things. So you will need the judgment to understand what you're doing for brand A versus brand B. And you may not agree with what you do for brand B. That's not according to your taste, but it's client work, it's paying you money. So you have to mold your taste to find that relevant sweet spot. So taste again is not a stand all objective thing, but it is essentially resting on judgment. And as you were kind of talking about peeling onions or peeling potatoes or washing dishes and all of that, it's a bit like the karate kid analogy as well, right? You are kind of waxing on waxing off. I mean, essentially this teacher sends this kid to do a bunch of things and he feels like he's been treated like a child laborer, but eventually realizes that all of them essentially end up helping him practice his karate chops. So some of this is becomes muscle memory. So you're essentially taking steroids now and you are in path to let's say you are jumping and you're saying that's fine. I've taken the steroids and I'll build muscle, but there is no muscle memory per se. And so you haven't done the reps, you haven't done, and once the steroids stops, you probably kind of go back. So at some point of time, you are essentially kind of forwarding that grant work somewhere in the future, but it will catch up with you somewhere. So I'm long story short, big proponent of path one and I would say let's find things somewhere else to practice. - Okay. - Path one proponent, J. That's I think we'll get into that immediately after this, but now I have to introduce my second guest, you. My second guest is Shreya Satish, who's the founder of Own Path. Now Own Path started as a platform to help designers upskill and get placed. And that's really how I know about Shreya's and Own Path. But since then, it has evolved into a design and development studio and they have clients like hero, phillips, phone pay, et cetera. And the reason I thought of Shreya's was because I think that just like the analogy that I gave about the cooks, I feel like design is the only function unlike engineering, unlike product, where there is an apprenticeship kind of a model where you basically get better by only working and doing this thing in front of senior people. So for that reason, because Shreya has done this, he has tried to rebuild this apprentice model from the outside and he has a good sense I feel of the practitioner side of what young designers are missing, what the industry and what companies are looking for. So welcome, Shreya. - Hi, Praveen, thank you so much for having me. - Pick a path, my friend. Come on. Make it interesting. - So I don't have a spicy answer for you just yet, but I think it's gonna have to be a bit of both in the sense that, I mean, you can go to all the finest restaurants and Bangalore go to pizza for peace and call it mate, or whatever. - Actually, let me interrupt you. - You cannot go to pizza for peace because you don't get any wishes there. - Okay, but yeah. - If you get a reservation, you can go to pizza for peace. - Yeah, but commenting on food and actually cooking something at home that it lands with people is a very different thing. You can have all the taste in the world, and like Jay said, you know, it can be a very vague and subjective concept, but you only build a judgment by actually chopping the onions and actually cooking something and serving somebody and see how they react and hopefully they don't have any adverse reactions to your food. But without that, there's no way. So, but that said, you also have to always compliment your, you know, the work that you're doing by constantly exposing yourself to what the finest work looks like, and that's how you're sort of the level of craft you're aspiring to also haze us. - God it. All right, gentlemen, this is, I think I got a sense of where you both stand. Jay basically says, definitely we have to find new ways of doing grunt work for young designers. Shreya, I'm gonna let you off now, right now, because you basically said, oh, we gotta do a bit of work, but we'll come to that. I think the, this is the, by the way, the last time that we're gonna talk in high conceptual places and I want to now get into the specific software, because when I'm listening to one of the words that I also do not, I have started to develop an aversion for apart from words like quietly and m dashes is also taste, I really, really started to get annoyed with that word, even though I brought it up first in this conversation. So, let's talk about finding new grunt work, which is the first path. I think for both of you, I just wanna start by just asking this question, which is that, it's also what you said, Jay, which is that, oh, you need to find a way to do reps, Shreya, you're also saying we need to, designers need to find a way to like do things in such a way that that's how they get that quick feedback loop. Can I be that person to ask, do what? Because all the things that junior designers were doing earlier, kind of seem like, Claude can do it better and faster and cheaper. So, what should they do? - So, I don't think if Jay is okay with me going, I don't think it's true that Claude can do everything, a very competent junior designer can do, because so for instance, if your design is as much about problem, finding and framing as much, it is about solutions, right? So, actually going into the world, seeing how people behave, how people buy stuff in a supermarket or how people use mobility, right? Those are things that an AI cannot do. You still need somebody to truly understand how people behave, put something out there, iterate, and design actually comes through that iteration, right? While AI can solve specific tactical tasks, right? Oh, can you generate the screen in my brand guidelines or can you review the copy for me? The job itself is not automated yet. I don't think we are there yet. And it's also important, yeah, get carried away in terms of what AI is capable of right now. - Jay? - Yeah, I think a couple of things. So, one is, and I'm just thinking back, when we came out of design school and that's quite a few decades ago, we didn't have an Amazon or a Flipkart or any of these brands that actually we just had, the two companies, the big companies were Adobe and Apple and their rise is also very connected with the PDF and the printers and stuff like that. Happened no longer makes printers or maybe does. So I think those were the early days of digital digitization and when you came out the big sort of hiring guys where an HMT or TVS or some of these, now many of them are not really the number one, higher as per say, and you had a whole bunch of boutique studios. But what you also did is you, I mean, maybe there were a hundredth of the designers graduating and you probably had the opportunity to do like a hundred different things and take as much responsibility as you want, do client servicing, there wasn't a name for it, you could be in meetings, you could be doing the comms, you could be going to the printer. So you had a free run pretty much. Now almost 25 years later, the jobs have become kind of almost slices and slices and slices of that. So you are a very specific kind of a designer. The other day a junior in my team was telling me about how someone in his company he believes just sort of survives on doing drop shadows. Now that drop shadow is so effectively taken over by AI. But then again, you might just explain to someone that what is a drop shadow? A drop shadow is a, you essentially, let's say, you have a box and you make it a little shadow to the box. And that's a drop shadow if you think about that's the process of job. I mean, that's the process. That's the job. Okay. Now, if you think about it and then I said, oh my god, this is like so gone. And then I said, well, actually it's not gone because the AI just wouldn't know where to look for those thousands of files where they are hidden away who sort of stuffed what thing where and where to find it. So the job isn't the drop shadow. The job is essentially finding that file giving it to that particular person. So there is a whole lot of human angle to it. So when you look at it, one is the whole how these have become so thinly sliced jobs. So I think it's an act of rebellion. Almost the designers have to do to go back and say, hey, I want to own more and more of those pieces. And that is where the grant for it exists. Like what Shreya was talking about. There is understanding what the problem is talking to users going. And so this here's another very big danger is that you do stuff on AI and then you kind of run it past synthetic users. So neither is real in a sense. So maybe you need to go out, get out there, observe users, take your designs to them, get them to try it out. So there is a lot of work which is still available for you to do, which maybe no one will ask you to do. But this is something which is still there. How do you find that judgment? How do you build that intuition? Essentially like the guy cutting onions or such facing a thousand balls or Andhra Agas his famous stories of how his father used to make him like go on and practice for us and us. I think you need to find that things to practice on. And that practice may not be your design. in doing part, but how does the output sit with your users passing? So yeah, I'll share as I have to ask you. I mean, you work with young designers. And in your team, what is the work that you give them now? So I can tell you how do you decide-- And how do you decide-- you know what this thing that I'm asking this person to do, I can probably do it using AI, or I can get an 80% version of it. But I'm going to give it to this person because how else will this person learn? Is that something that you do? Yeah, so we follow a very apprenticeship-style environment in the sense that we have a direct group design. We have a principal designer. And then we have senior designers. And we have associate designers. So I think what we were talking about is somebody who's an associate designer. We always make sure they're working with a senior designer. Sure. And associate designer is-- help you understand this profile. Because I mean, the titles are the titles. But what is this person? This could be somebody with 0 to 2 years of full-time experience, even though I don't really like that metric. But typically, they've done a lot of internships. They've done a bunch of projects. So the bar for this role has definitely gone up a lot. But that said, I can tell you-- Why do you not like that? Yeah, I will get-- why do you not like that, though? 0 to 2 years full-time. Because time is a relative concept. And people move at different speeds. And 2 years of experience can mean widely different things across people. Fair enough, fair enough. Sorry, please cut you. So studios are also in a bit of a unique position because they are incentivized to hire more junior people, give them responsibility, and see how they can handle clients even because they're so clear margin to be made there. But apart from the business side of things, I think we make sure they're exposed to clients as soon as possible, learn how to talk to them, how to-- not just understand the problem, but also flash start flashing out the brief. And all of this is obviously done in the guidance of a more senior designer, because we want them to be able to be in that position in a year or two. And in terms of specific work they're doing, so I can talk about the product designer who's currently working. In fact, the new website that we launched recently, that was not just designed, but built by a designer in the team. So she actually shipped the whole thing with Cloud Code. Only talked to our dev team when it came to architecture, or if she got stuck somewhere. But by and large, she shipped the whole thing. And now we have an associate designer working under her. And now she's learning the same thing. Now she is learning how to use Cloud Code. Obviously, it's a healthy mix of Figma and Cloud Code. But she is taking up the auxiliary pages that our senior designer wasn't taking up. And now she's asking me for more tokens. And that's always a good sign. When somebody comes and asks you for a Mac subscription, they're doing something right. So that's on the product design, website design, side of things. On the visual design, the dynamic is a little different. In the sense that the work cycle tends to be a lot shorter compared to product design. Because for example, we've been working with hero motor cop on their IPL campaign, as you know, the title sponsor of KKR. So we've been helping them stuff. So things move so quickly. Sorry, just to clarify for our listeners, I mean, because some of them may not be designers. So product design is essentially the interfaces, the apps, the screens, the flows, et cetera. Visual designers could be, but not restricted to things, like say, marketing banners and the visual aspects of it. Is that a fair way to put things, illustrations, et cetera? Those fall into the visual design part, right? Yeah, good enough for now. Fair enough for us. Thank you. Yeah. And in terms of graphic design, so she handles the client directly. Like she's actually right out of college last year. But we've made sure to sort of train her actively. And now she's at a point where she can handle briefs. And she knows when to escalate, hey, I'm not sure how to add handle this. And then we know how to help her. So these folks are really good. And the bar for this has definitely gone up, because the supply is way too much in that segment of the market right now. You mean the graphic design of it? No, across graphic and product design. But in that experience level, at that level. So people do really need to stand out, apart from the usual, hey, networking and all of that. But in terms of the actual work they do, they are still doing a lot of the work that a senior designer does. But maybe not the main parts of the work, but auxiliary work, or even helping them with certain components, or helping them prep the work. Like for example, come up with a bunch of explorations that they can use for inspiration, than giving that to those heroes. So there is still both groundwork and interesting work that they are doing. And this is work that you cannot give away to an AI, J jumping. No, I was-- maybe finish that question, and I'll jump in on a very interesting thought just across my mind. Sure. Shrews, the rest of the stuff that you said, I think the thing that I'm trying to understand from you, Shrews, is this stuff that you say for associate designers to do-- I mean, apart from meeting the client, which of course, no AI can do that, hopefully for a while, will find out. But I'm saying that the rest of it was that something that-- is that something that an AI can do? Like what can a senior designer literally ask, Claude, or like do we go into research mode, find out these things, use Claude design, or something else to basically try out these exploration? Because I've been experimenting in some of those as well. I have junior designers on the team. And of course, my role is I sort of play like a quasi-- because I'm a product, I don't necessarily have a design head. So I play a little bit of that role as well. And of course, my designers are fairly talented and they get a bunch of stuff done. But I always wonder for senior designers, is it-- basically with the question I'm asking, do they make them do it? Because they're like, look, the reason my monomeq do it is because I expect you to level up and get to my place someday. So it's important. Or is it that, no, there is some stuff here that genuinely an AI cannot do? So an AI can't test the website you built with users, again. Right? Because everything we do is test it with people. We go to people, see how they react. So that part is still not there. The other parts that you said, once you define your design system, and maybe it's a product that does not require that level of innovation and interaction design, it's possible that you could automate some of this stuff if the guidelines are set up. Yeah, to answer your question, it is possible. But it's taking the more longer term view that, hey, you want somebody to pick up this work because, hey, they develop this judgment. Be, you can't assume machines are going to always work. When they do break down, when they don't make sense, do you have somebody at the wheel who knows how to fix it or who knows how to complete the project? So we need that conviction at the end of the thing. We can't lie on everything. And I think this is sort of a famous dilemma and other books I was reading about automation and flying planes, right? Like, there's always a question of how much automation should you allow pilots? Because you don't want pilots to lose that judgment and craft of actually taking off and landing and handling crises when you're midair. So I think if I'm not wrong, automation is deliberately configured that planes are not completely automated at this point. So similarly, I think we want to make sure that these designers, even though some tasks can be automated to an extent, that they know how to do it so that, you know, what to do when things break down. Interesting. Jay, jump in. Here's the other one. And 2019, designer, breeder, research, and the state of design in tech. And I think by then, the studios in India had already declined significantly. I mean, there are so many great studios which have closed down and it's a real shame. But so again, coming back to your point, where do these young designers go to learn their jobs? That is also sort of which is traditionally the studios that is shrinking as well. So yeah, I think going back to what Shreya was talking about, things like what can a machine not do? And I'm pretty sure a machine will be able to do it better and better by 20, 28, 29, 30. I think Claude will be able to do a lot more things. And the question really is what can this machine, which is almost like a brain sitting in a black box who doesn't really know what the world outside is? What-- how does it interpret the word? And how can we interpret the world for the machine pretty much? It seems to be we are going that route almost. So yeah, I understand your point about the design studios versus the company going in house, et cetera. I mean, I always see it as a little bit of a cyclical thing. In the sense that what ends up happening is design studios become very exciting, like places like Onepath, et cetera, become very exciting because it gives you this, especially in places and times of a certain amount of-- where there is a big-- maybe a transition happening perhaps. It's because it gives you this opportunity to try out multiple things and try to figure out what's happening and plug in all of those things. I feel that in-- and then the move to company start to happen when there is a certain amount of stability. There is a short-ed company. And I'm struggling right now to think of any kind of stability. If a young designer or a young product manager, or a young engineer came to me and say, can you give me two companies or three companies that you think I can go join, where I know and I'm assured that they're going to be growing for the next three years. Forget five, three years. I'll struggle to tell you what that is, because it's not that evident anymore. Don't you think? I don't think-- Yeah, job security is an illusion that we want to go to sleep at night. But I think that's the point of-- So reducing that, that's what it is. especially at that early stage of that career because it's so important for people to focus on learning and not worry about, oh, am I going to have a job in like three months? So I totally understand where the need comes from and it's valid. And I think I do hope that there are a lot of safe spaces that people who are actually talented putting in the work get to develop their craft and build those careers because it's important. Suppose I asked the two of you, I'm going to just take a broad list of quote-unquote young product designer who what all he or she can do, right? First of all, you're assuming that they get some this thing, but I think one of the things that we kept talking about is they're whatever they do, they must have a way to get some kind of feedback from humans, right? Now, inshers, your point, your point was essentially that well, yes, there is, and the way to do that is either you basically go out early into the process, go talk to users, come back into the real world, or you take the parts of the product that aren't necessarily the core, but you take the side of it, but you run it completely all the way to the end, or you basically sit in, you know, conversations with clients, etc. I think the thing that I'm really asking is, what is this new set of things? Are there like a set of ways how, yeah, if I'm a young designer, who's 21, I'm listening to this podcast? What can I do in order to get that feedback from humans about and develop my judgment? Is it somebody who currently does not have a job? Let's go with that for now. Okay, so I think we'll have to start by acknowledging that the system is broken, and you're working with a very, you're essentially having to create an informal system for yourself. Then that's the base level premise, right? Like if you take some of the European countries where apprenticeship systems, for example, are well established, that people go through a three-year program where they combine studying and working at the end of it, they come out as actual, you know, trades people, crafts people, but that kind of a system is not there here, and neither are most educational institutions, sort of configured in a way that they can help people stay up to date in terms of what needs to be done right now. So that said, now how do you create your own informal system, right? And thankfully, there are ways, in the sense that I think the design community, especially in India, is amazingly warm, helpful, at least in my experience. So if people reach out to more senior people informally, if there is earnest that is seen, I think that's always encouraged and helped. There's so many places now to reach out to designers, and so that's that. So you can always construct your own feedback loops, both from putting things out there and see how people react to it, as well as designers in either in your circles or even on the internet that you can reach out to. Like to be honest, I come from a very informal background, like I have no formal training in design per se. I did a year ago. So how did you work? So I did a year's of current work before starting on path, worked at early stage startups doing, you know, design, development, a bit of marketing as well. I think now maybe you don't need that level of grant work anymore, like that's probably compressed, but you still need to do enough that you build a judgment over time again going back to that. But even when starting on path, I think that was the most difficult years of my time. I know very few people in design, like I had a few friends, but I really built on path to solve my own need that I want to learn design and a few other things that I'm passionate about. So how do we create this interesting learning space that we have cool people coming and teaching and then we get to learn from them. That's simply how it started. In fact, Jay's good friend, Rasagya, was, you know, the first instructor in our workshop. That's how it very organically started. And then, you know, we actually created, I created this one mentorship program for literally one person over three months and then at the end of it got her a freelance gig that paid off whatever fee she paid me. So I think it was very like, grant work if you call it that before I actually started doing programs for Gojek or Freshworks or whatever you're like, whatever I'm doing right now. So it's been years of grant work earing to what I'm doing right now. And even when I was starting, I remember reaching out to Siddhu Puneppa, who's probably a regular guest with you here. Yes, he's come a couple of times. Who is now, you know, probably one of my most important advisors and mentors and also now a customer and a investor. But that relationship was built by me like besting him, asking him questions and going with elaborate notes and asking him what he thinks about it. And this was Siddhu at his peak from his corporate point of view. Like he was the MD of Gojek India from not wrong at the time. That's good. Getting time. Getting 10 minutes from him itself was pretty difficult. But I think I was very persistent. I think he also saw the work that was happening and then that kind of built over time and that opened so many doors for me. In fact, that's where I started to go. I started talking so many people that who eventually played such a big part in whatever little progress I've made so far. So I think it's possible and I definitely am aware of the whatever privilege I do come from. But that said, I think there are enough networks to reach out to. And if you show that seriousness, I think people are willing to help. Jay, I know Shreya is talk to the design community. If I'm a young 22 year old designer, I've reached this point in the podcast and I'm like, okay, I am ready to do the grant work. What do I do? Okay, so for the 22 year old, here's the problem. So now the 22 year old or maybe like three years ago, the 22 year old would have been competing with the whole other bunch of 21 and 23 and 24 years old, some who were self-dodged, some who graduated from good places and so on. So you had to make your portfolio stand out and be seen and so on. Now in between came a time where suddenly you were okay because as a 22 year old, you were going, if your work was really good, if you were willing to put in those hours, you were definitely cheaper than the 30 year old and if people saw promise in you, they might hire you, they might take you in. Now, you say that they came a time, what were the years of this? Was this like, I think maybe something like in the last five years, this has been on the rise or last five to seven years, last two years or especially the last six months, you're no longer competing against the 30 year old who used to charge more, not against your peers, you're now competing against a machine. And the machine does a pretty good LCD version of design, the least common denominator version of design. So if you are doing a templatized LCD version of design, sorry, you are kind of already losing to the machine. So the question here is, what do you do to stand out because you have to beat the odds and beat someone who's recognized and taken in and all of that? So you need to learn and look at other things. I think what makes it super easy is that your grant work may be reduced in the design department, where you need to replicate maybe 30 icons or whatever styles and you know, replicate it for mobile versus iPad versus desktop, etc. So a lot of those that take and care of. So let's assume you have suddenly a lot of time on your hands. What do you sort of look at? And I think this is where the designer who would be in demand understands maybe some of the financial implications of what he or she does can talk to can express articulate with product managers, with engineers, why a decision matters, sell their design, why does it matter versus B? And to even get to that point, you need to sort of have build your own conviction in terms of finance, where the business is, why this feature matters, what would you use a think about it and what would use a be think about it or cohort and cohort B? So understand users understand the data around the past sort of thing. So I think those are the ones where designers, designers that 22-year-old designer will have to concentrate more and more on. It's what we talk about insights. Yeah, but how will they get this? It's impossible, right? Totally, totally. And I think this is where the bigger gap is. One is the apprenticeship model, but again, I assume that that might not be even there. I do see, and this has been against Riesh and I do it, but in between I used to see a lot of people would take, okay, here's I'm going to redesign, I don't know, Google travel, page or something like that. Now, this is usually more of a UX visual design exercise of sorts. Now, if I were to redesign the Google travel or make my trip or a goi-bibo or any of this pages, today I just can't do without just thinking through a whole lot of other things. So I might be to dig through a lot of old Ken issues to see what is happening. What does that business look like? What we have people been thinking around? What's the, I mean, and these are not easy ones and you might need to go to 10 other people, people who understand finance and business and strategy and say, okay, it was not just about changing the button, but it was about so much more than that. And I think this is where the next era of case studies might be going, and this is where I would definitely encourage the 22 year old listening to this podcast to say that your case studies have to be much more comprehensive than just changing that look and feel and making it look cool and edgy and all of that. There has to be much more deeper rational. So that is probably a way to get the foot in the door for a possible apprenticeship. There was another very radical idea the other day we were discussing in a leaders group was that people pay for apprenticeships or people actually pay a university who in turn gets them apprenticeship. So they just don't pay fees to learn but they pay fees to be actually working on real projects in real time. Now this is a crazy idea but who knows? I mean, they might be a time where you're not getting paid for apprenticeships but you have to pay for them. So I think there are again, if I look back to your high rocks kind of article recently, it's a very different take on the way. It's almost like saying that, okay, I'm going to pay you to touch on me but I'm through that process. I'm going to learn something and do something and do something more. So it's almost is there an equivalent of an high rocks in design where you actually and by the way, we have been thinking about it at design up kind of to say that, is there something like that? Obviously your usual typical 24 hour hackathon is not going to cut it because it needs a lot of time to think through and do it and you know, go through that. So the fact that you're building 60 days of work to go to a high rocks is your is your grant work phase almost kind of thing, right? So this is where I'm thinking of in terms of some crazy radical ideas or people are thinking about it. I don't know which where it goes. This is not by the way, crazy radical ideas is the part of point of this podcast. So I will just contextualize this, which is I find this very interesting actually, because you've actually touched upon something that it just occurred to me, which is so the reference is to the last episode that we did or 2 by 2, which was upon high rocks. And of course, high rocks was this event that everybody was coming to and they prepared for such a long period of time. And after preparing for this time, they paid like almost 9000 rupees, they went to a place to literally ingest words torture themselves, but at least in my perspective, but that torture had a purpose and that purpose in this case was vanity and to basically show the world something. Maybe it is on dating apps, maybe it is on, you know, validation, anything, right? In this case, the purpose is not about vanity when we're talking about designers, but if you're doing like a high rocks equivalent for designers, its purpose is to display that I am capable of doing this, right? But I think the interesting point that you have brought up is yeah, they should pay for this, right? I mean, obviously they should pay for this. It seems pretty obvious. So I feel like what does it take now? Shreya, suppose, would you consider this? You have another revenue source, by the way. Okay. We used a charge for our fellowship program. I understand, but I'm saying that about 100 people who've gone through it, but the price was primarily for instruction and just the sort of experience that we put together, it was never to do real work on any sort of any corporate work as such, right? Exactly, but that was my benefit. That is my point. I learned the experience. Yeah. Correct. Correct. That is my point. Now my point now is that, suppose for instance, are we now going to move into this space where for every young designer, it is going to be whether it is a studio, whether it is a, a large, arguably a company as well, where it is like, okay, you are now joining fresh. Okay, you know what? There is, whatever you do a machine can do. So there's no point. So you might as well just pay us so that at least it makes it better for us because we are now investing in you, right? Do you see that happening? I don't think it's particularly unreasonable. I don't think so. I also have some ethical issues with that in the sense that it can lead to exploitation to an extent if you're not careful. So no, I don't think that needs to happen per se, right? Because ultimately people need to bring value to the company and that value is we justify it somehow. And there is no need for such an extreme measure in any event because you do have enough opportunities and I want to go back to the question that you were asking, right? Because if you actually look at what's happening on the ground, like I don't know, just spoken to 22 year old designers recently. I have spoken. I had the fortune of hiring 22 year old designers a few months back. In fact, we spoke about it at that point and I was really lost in trying to figure out how to hire designers. But please, good. And I think we should definitely give them more credit in terms of how much initiative they do show. Like the folks I see, they show a lot of initiative. They go out and network. They go make it a point to meet people and hustle their way to their first job. And I think apart from that, they also have a lot more agency that I think this question can make it seem like it's not like, oh, and this helpless person who's going to teach me. But they have that agency and I know that they have that drive. If they can do a high rocks, they can definitely go build their own products. Even if it doesn't have to become a business, it's something enough that gives them that first job. Nobody disagrees about their drive and their ambition and all of these things. It is just a question at this point, I feel that the incentives have kind of changed for everybody a little bit, where especially for like senior designers, I feel like earlier the incentive was very clear. Yes, you come on board as an apprentice, whether you pay or I pay whatever will come to that. But I'm saying at the end of the day, I have a very clear incentive, which is that I spend my time with you. And I'm sure you have done this, Jay. I'm sure you've done this for countless designers, where you give that time and you invest that in them because you know that they are going to get better and eventually get better, get better. And that is the only way. I feel like now the incentive has kind of changed for that. And from a senior designer standpoint, I feel like it becomes a little more blurry with respect to why should I do this exactly and how should I think about this? That's one. Second, from a junior designer standpoint, it has become okay, what is now a way for me to get notice is exactly the point that you said, Jay, I remember the time where people who put their portfolios out and essentially say, oh, I have redesigned this page, I have redesigned that. You know, honestly, now I find it very hard to even whenever I'm talking to junior designers if I wanted to hire them, I don't even understand, I mean, that portfolio that I see, I'm not even sure if they did it, if it was just given by given to chat GPT and maybe you can tell stress, but I am a little more that's true. But that's true. Across levels of seniority. So that's nothing exclusive about designers. Okay, fair enough. That's fair. That's fair. So I get the argument about the grunt work and finding new forms of grunt work. Is there any other form of grunt work that you think young designers can do apart from doing all of these things of annoying senior designers, reaching out to them stuff that you did. And of course, extreme measures that Jay is suggesting like high-roxy and equivalent for designers, which by the way, I'm very much behind. I would pay to attend or at least watch that. Is there any other thing that you think they can do? I think the advice also really depends on one's financial position because if somebody is just graduated, they have an education loan on them, maybe their family depends on them. So their strategy is really dependent on what their situation dictates. If they do have that space, I think the advice is clear. Do your projects, find not for profits that you can help find your friend who has a D to see brand if you can help them. There are opportunities everywhere. I don't think there's a death of opportunities. But if you don't have that space to explore is where my concern mostly is because it's not like the system has prepared you enough to just like take the leap for a job, which means that you have to create that own loop for yourself in whatever limited time you have. Which means that you'll end up taking a suboptimal job just to make needs, ends meet, which might mean your growth path takes longer to reach that place where you want to be where you're actually learning on a day to day working with you in a design and so on. So I think the latter thing is what I'm extremely concerned about. But honestly apart from that, there's so many resources right now, so many opportunities to actually do the work if somebody has enough agency. And I do see people demonstrating that there's no death of opportunities even today. Okay. Cool. I'm going to jump down to path 2. And just to be clear, path 2 was about, I know we kind of like at least J was like, no, this is not going to work. I know Shreya said maybe or there is a part to it. I'm in impression which part is but just to clarify, part 2 or the path 2 essentially is, okay, look, we understand this grand work part fine fine fine, we'll figure that out. But what if there was another way? And this other way is, is there a universe where a young designer can just open up whichever AI tool they use? Whether it is cloud, chat GPT, etc, etc. And by the way, there are a bunch of these new design companies that are coming that can directly go from canvas to code. But so apart from those, like, is there a universe where they can say, I can, I don't want to use the word prompt because that's such a basic thing. But can I use this tool in such a way that I, I don't have to necessarily rely on humans and there and annoying them and getting into their lives and trying to figure out all this opportunity and hustle and all of these things that you both have said, is there a way where I can just sit with this machine and attack it attack it, say, give me feedback, I'm going to give you feedback, give me feedback, I'm going to give you feedback, I'm going to give you feedback and develop that judge You seem to think it's not possible. In fact, I think you wrote about this also a few days back. You said that there is no way that this is going to happen. In fact, you wrote and I quote, you can't prompt your way to taste. Yes. We know where you stand, but my results clarified. I think, yes, you can't prompt your way to taste or judgment in the current context of how LLMs and AI models work. But what if the AI model wasn't meant to be a blind companion or kind of someone who's throwing answers at you? What if the AI model was meant to be a rather difficult boss, for example, who's kind of asking you and who's never kind of satisfied really, but it's kind of is helping you design. But kind of asking you to say, what's three wrong things about this design help me understand why do you not agree, etc. Right. So right now it is it kind of just pretty much gives you what you want and kind of assures you that this is the best thing ever. But what if the whole thing was to change? And the angle is that it is the person I take son is a difficult boss, a difficult creative director, a difficult person to say, have you thought about this of do you know this or do you understand this. Have you checked it out? So I think it is totally possible to do that. It is totally possible to completely alter the persona of the current AI system where the AI system becomes a teacher of sorts and becomes that. One who keeps prodding you in which case I think it might be a great way for people to learn I think I was reading somewhere I think very recently about how people who use chat GP to kids who use chat GP to turn out really good essays. But when asked about those essays maybe a few weeks or days later they can't even exactly remember what they wrote. So essentially it's not the knowledge that's getting built it is the output which is getting kind of done out of there. So this is what we are countering by saying that can we build a knowledge can AI be both helping you at the same time I had some friction to it. So yes, so you can possibly prompt in a different parallel world. So I think one exception I can think of is if you are an expert in the users you're designing for right you have that domain knowledge to an example, and that helps people who move to the city find flats. I'm just making up an example but because they are so into that problem that they they get the pain what that is. And that in the market the current state of the solutions do not reach any stellar design level in that kind of a guess you could potentially prompt your way towards a solution because mostly because you are extremely intimately aware of the problem and we can iterate your way towards a solution that reasonably works given that the market does not have a Airbnb kind of a solution there to compete with. So there are I think situations like that where you could do that and I was just what when G was saying about the prompting I was thinking about how the alternate to design that we already know is evolution and it does work right like evolution is not intelligent design. It's it's worked over billions of years and it completely happens through random trial and error right. When you look at certain organisms or even life itself you could philosophically ask he was this deliberately design and you could fool yourself into thinking maybe it was but when it was actually around the notation that gave it some advantage on the only problem with that is it only took some billions of years right it's a slow process whereas intelligent design the point is that you shot circuit that path with four site with planning and but also include trial and error in that process so pure trial error works evolution as short as that but I think just to answer your question it can work in domains that you're deeply intimately familiar with. But I guess the trade off with that with path to is I mean path one we understood what the problem is the friction really is how do you find how do you find the kind of groundwork that is going to be different from what you've done earlier number one number two when you do that kind of how do you find the humans who are going to be invested in you and what are their incentives to give you their judgment so you can learn that was the conflict in path one in path to I imagine the conflict is the stuff that you described is anyone can do this. Anyone can do this. I mean that I don't need to be a 22 year old designer to do this. So let's say for instance, I wake up in, I mean, I'm a 22 year old. I studied liberal arts from Ashoka University. I came to Bangalore. I struggled to find the flat for like two weeks, or one month. And then I was like, you know what? I understand this problem really intimately. Let me wipe code a website on a app. I'm using website on a app as an artifact. It could be anything. But basically, I understand the problem really. Let me create this experience that sort of solves for it. So I guess that is the thing that they have to surmount, which is that this aspect that you're talking about, this domain knowledge now becomes extremely broad. Anyone can do it. So there is no real, well, for the lack of better, but no real, no real, no real, no real specialization. But domain knowledge is, isn't so easily available. It's only some people who have expert domain knowledge in those domains. And it's only when you involve yourself in that space and will you develop that knowledge? OK, fair. J. And the fact that maybe a designer needs to know something else, something in the adjacent areas. Maybe that's the other advice for a 22-year-old. What is it that you know very much about an area adjacent to you? Could be product management, could be dev, could be research, could be whatever kind of thing. So yeah, leaving it there for a moment. I'm going to actually-- I started by asking about two parts. And I think the part that sort of is resonating with me a lot, especially given what the two of you sort of said, about asking young designers to pay for learning. I think that that essentially seems like the future that it seems much more like a-- it's not just like, oh, it's something that you do in part of a program, but I think that's going to be the dominant model going forward. But here is my third point. And this is the point that sort of like ties back to that, which is I cheated and I said there are two parts. But I think there is a third. And I'm going to ask the two of you about this third part. And here's the third part. The third part is maybe why bother at all. And the reason why I say why bother at all is because maybe what's probably going to happen is that product design, at least in the traditional form that we understand it, is no longer going to be a standalone function. I think that you're talking in terms of, well, designers have to learn other things. I feel like it's much more likely that other people will learn a little bit of domain knowledge, learn a little bit of design, et cetera. So it sort of stops becoming a standalone thing any more than, I guess, typing stop becoming a standalone profession when word processes, et cetera, were involved. It just became something that other people had just into it did. And I think that is that something that you think is going to happen? Because design sort of like emerged as this career where there was a scarcity and you needed designers. But I think now, if I was going to say you're a 22-year-old, you're thinking of a career in design, don't maybe think of something else and do design alongside it. Yeah, I think this is a total possibility. If you see the rise of things like Adobe Express and Canva and all of that, this is for, you could say, almost like a 22-year-old who was pressurized to go into engineering, but now can design. So this is an equally with a whole bunch of things. So you don't have to be necessarily a product designer. You can design so many different things, whether it is X, Y, or Z, or slide shows and everything else. Suddenly, the world of creativity is much more accessible to you. Now thanks to AI and the thanks of-- thanks to a lot of tools which you can now use today. So definitely, I think that democratization is happening at a massively fast pace overall. The problem also is education, because the worth and value of education itself is kind of like, does it even matter? It's almost like I could be doing X, but completely moving to Y. Unless, of course, you are into something very, very specialized area, like I don't know, sort of cancer treatment, or something which requires a license for you to practice, and which is very well-regulated finances in one of those areas as such. But otherwise, you could go along. And if you look at a lot of people, if you look at, for example, Satji Theray trained as a graphic designer, did his own typeface, and all of that, picked up, saw bicycle thieves, got very moved, and went into filmmaking. Of course he had jobs. in an adjacent area which helped him do this. But today he's known as a filmmaker. No one thinks of him as a graphic designer, an ad man, type designer, et cetera. So I think this has happened across time that you pick up some things, you begin to learn, or Ragurai who recently passed away, Ragurai is a civil engineer. And he's known as a photographer, the man who documented. I think something somewhere triggers you to find that passion in you. Of course, for every 100,000 people who tries, there's only one Ragurai, or for maybe for 100,000 people who try. A million people who try this are, there's one Ragurai. But I think that percentage of people who finally make it is going to be slim. So the question here is, that 22-year-old that you are, who are you competing against? And the unfortunate thing is that you are a fortunate thing is you're competing against a machine. So how do you build those chops up? Shreya, come on. Can I go back to your earlier third part thing a little bit for a second? Yes, please. So the third part could also have a different version here, where the students themselves don't have to pay, but the government pays. Now governments are already offering to pay your unemployment insurance as part of election benefits. I totally see a world where they should actually be funding education, or maybe even subsidizing companies. I think they do do that, by the way. There is an Apprenticeship Act, which does offer some sort of a monetary benefit to a company if they are hiring an apprentice. The problem is how structured is this, how reliable does the system work. But I think that could be a way where you don't need the student to pay, but the government actually subsidizes the company to facilitate this learning and develop that next generation. Question for the two of you, do you think that design schools would do this? Can you imagine the NIDs of the world, the Shreishie designs of the world saying, OK, you know what? You come and join the design school. You pay fees. But whatever fees you pay, if it is a-- let's say if it is a three or four year program, you pay for three years. But you know what? The fourth year, it's actually going to be an apprenticeship. It costs x. We will take x percentage, 50% of it, 60% of it. So that's also part of your learning. I think when I was mentioning this, and the person who had suggested this was suggesting that this should be part of academic programs. So whatever fees you pay, essentially, a part of it goes for apprenticeship. Of course, in that case, how does school make money or doesn't make money is a big question. But would parents be willing to pay for it? I think they might be. Because this is part of a structured system where they're almost paying for a year or two of apprenticeship per se. Now, again, like Shreish said, there are a lot of big questions. Here, I think all questions and all of it. But then there are those questions in everything that you do, whether you are taking money for training. Like a lot of design schools today don't have enough teachers or not enough well-trained teachers. You have a bunch of them with PhDs. But what is a design school with PhDs going to teach you sort of thing? So I think there is something in there which design schools should definitely look at. And I know there are design schools who are very industry-facing and somewhat not industry-facing. The angle is that some design schools believe design and engineering school. Actually, every engineering school wants to have design and every architecture school also wants to have design. Everyone wants to have design. So in 2019, when we did that report on design intake, one of the things was that no parent ever forced that kid to become a designer. In 2026, it is no longer true. People are forcing them to actually architecture probably has lost out. But UX design is everyone knows. Product design is something that a lot of people thought it was the older 3D industrial version of physical product design, which has been appropriated by digital product designers. So I think when digital product design goes down, physical product designers might be very happy secretly. But having said that, which is already happening, having said that, I think there is something here which is world-worth for institutions to look at deeply. Shares, is there an ethical way? Yeah, please jump in. So do you know about IT Madras's ICSR? No. This is the industrial consultancy, force, and sponsor research. You won't take a guess what revenue they make. Just take your wildest guess. It's a mix of government projects and private projects. Look, I know that the IMs also have something similar. If I had to really take a guess on an annual basis, if you take the number of profs, et cetera, 50 crores, maybe 100 crores we push it, maybe. J.D, I have a guess. I'm thinking about 150 crores. So they do about 1000 crores. Then revenue. Wow. It's sale. OK. OK. The 65% of their projects are government projects that has to be private projects. And this is mostly executed by professors and their students. Correct. So this is a proven model we already have. Like they say, a future is here, but it's unevenly distributed. This is the future I want to live in, right? Where people actually get into work on real world projects, earning money from it. And IIT Madras's revenue line is that, not tuition. Tusion fees is a small stream in that small line item compared to this. So and I believe NID also has a consultancy. I'm not sure exactly what the status of it is, but I have heard from NID. Sort of. NID was big on this. Actually, if you think about NID in its inception days, people used to work a lot, maybe 50% of the time on projects. Like for example, the discovery of India exhibition at the Nehru Center in Verly, for instance, that was done by professors and students. It was a real-life learning project, and they would get money off it. And of course, fees then were 1000 rupees, semester or something like that, maybe 500 rupees. So everything was very well off and paid for. I have a feeling that it has decreased and nowhere near IIT Madras for sure. But it used to be very, very big ones upon a time. No, but the question I have for both of you, especially shares also, because you work in this similar kind of a thing. I think this is a great model, but I feel like it still does not answer the incentive question for a young designer. And I'll explain. So let's say, for instance, I am IIT Madras, or I am an ID, or a thing. And I have a consultancy, which is not very different from, say, a consulting firm, or even like a design studio which goes to a client and says, oh, this is the work, pay me X, this is what it is. And it's going to be mostly based on some form of billable arts, right? Where it's just like, oh, this is the amount of hours it's going to take to do this. We scope it out, et cetera. And we know this now. As a result of AI, what's happening is the billing no longer happens with respect to us, but it's going happening with respect to outcomes. So now the client on the other side is essentially going to say, well, if you are going to-- you're going to charge me a billable hours. I don't know if I want to pay you by billable hours. Why don't you use AI? And I will give you 20%, 25% less. And then the person on the other side, whether it is IIT Madras, whether it is an ID, or whether it is even well-meaning organizations, are incentivized to not do this apprenticeship. They're incentivized to now use AI. So the young designer or the young person in this thing is still caught, right? So I feel like it's an interesting model, but I feel like at the end of the day, God of Pay, I'm sorry. I mean, it ends up in this position where either they pay directly, indirectly via colleges, et cetera. I get that. I think the question that I would ask is, what is the ethical way to do this? And I ask this-- The payment is happening. The payment is already happening. People do pay tuition fees to colleges or bootcams or what have you. The question is, what is being done with the money? Right? How are you using that money to create a space where that can lead them to opportunities which can earn them back the money? Fair enough. But what they're not paying for at this moment is let's say, for instance, if you take the, say, 50 top designers in India, 100 top designers in India, right? Some of them may be inside companies. Some of them may be running their own studios, et cetera. And what do you do? If you want to work for them, you have to do all the hustle that you centuries, which is that I reach out, I do this, or the stuff that you said, Jay, where I basically like, expand into product, I come up with this thing, understand domain knowledge, et cetera. I think at the end of the day, it just comes down to, OK, you want to work with these people? You want pay X, spend X amount of hours with them. They'll give you their feedback and judgment. I think the question is, if that is the only way you can create senior leaders tomorrow, what's the ethical way to do it? Or what's the best way to do it? Ethics is one part of it. What would you charge? What would somebody charge? I'm just trying to think. If I was, let's say, what's a design school right now? Design school, I would imagine you would pay close, like more 10 lakhs for like design, 10 to 15 lakhs for like three years of design. Give or take. I think so on the lower side, definitely. So maybe if it's more way, maybe more. Wow, it's more is it? OK, fine. All right. So let's say it's 20 lakhs. Fine. Now think about it. Now if I am a senior designer, and I'm just putting myself in the shoes of a senior designer with like 10 years of work experience, I have enough things going on. I have my clients, I have my things, this is et cetera. And I'm going to take like say, I don't think I can handle more than like two apprentice, maybe a quarter. It seems like more than that seems like a big chunk out of me. What am I going to charge this person? I'm very amused, but I want to answer it. Let's say I come up to what? Would I charge? Seems reasonable to charge like a lack or two for these people. So I would get like what, four, five, lack a quarter from them. It's not about the money because I'm fairly well off, but I just want to make sure that they respect my time and they take this seriously. So I think it's not a money making operation from a senior person, but it's more like, you know what, pay at least like 25% of what you'd pay at design school. And you get a one year apprenticeship and that kind of like works out. reasonable. You can say. I think no, I think so there is two parts to it. The number is whatever the number is, but we're all as an idea. I would say why not? I mean, we have to think through this, but essentially you are getting time with a top designer or someone who's super experienced, you're going to eat their head, you're going to probably, they will take a liking to what you're doing and maybe we'll recommend you to 10 other people and say, oh, this guy is really good. Again, may not, but that's a sort of thing. So you're not only getting to learn, but you're also getting him or her to maybe open doors for you. So that's the other part of it. That, that, that, that is much more invaluable than just the learning and that will only happen when that other person trusts you enough to sort of say, yes, this person is highly recommended by me. I will kind of say that. Now is it right to do that? You are essentially giving time and you are charging for your time. Now, whether you were mentoring or coaching someone, coaches charge a lot of money as well. Similarly, you are coaching and you are coaching on a real project as opposed to a very generally where's your life going sort of thing. So yes, I think it is not an unreasonable sort of ask. Shereesh would love to have your take on that. Yeah, I think there might be a middle ground here. So a 22 year old is leading a contingent in the Indian army. You have 20 year olds flying planes. You have 20 year olds performing surgeries. So what is the gap between those fields and say design? The gap is you don't have an effective simulation environment where people are getting trained in things with context consequences. The projects people are mostly doing are extremely hypothetical and conceptual to the point that it doesn't help build judgment. Whereas if you look at the army, you look at pilot training, you look at surgery, these are all done in an environment that simulates consequences as well. That's correct. I'll tell you the second one. It's that in all those three fields that you mentioned, whether it is an army, whether it is pilot training or whether it is surgeries, you are not at a place where technology and machines have gotten to a point where they are equal to 22 year old humans. So which skews incentives for everybody? That's my larger point. I'm not saying anybody is wrong here. I'm just saying that that technology has not done that that change incentives. If hypothetically speaking, hypothetically speaking that you got autonomous, maybe it's probably going to happen soon. So that's why we have autonomous drones to the point where it's like, you know what, we don't need 22 year old pilots at all. I mean, I'm pretty sure that those 22 year old pilots will be wondering now how do we now learn? That's going to happen. We do have autonomous weapons right now. We do have autopilot and planes. We have robotic surgeons at this point. So we do have fair bit of technology and all these things. I agree with you that the stakes are higher in all of these three fields. It's not out of words. I was supposed to like designing like the new version of Google Travel or whatever it is. Fair. I'm sure that's important, but I agree the stakes are higher. Go on. But I guess the point is that, you know, you could like, I'd love to sort of spend some time creating that. I mean, I did do it to an extent. But yeah, what would the simulation environment kind of look like when people are paying and they're getting an experience that is pretty close to what they would get, you know, actual company. And then it satisfies the constraints that you were placing that hey, senior designers like any compensated for their time and designers are doing all sorts of working, 20 groundwork and building their judgment as well. I mean, this is a job that the colleges and universities are supposed to be doing. So that is the only long term solve, honestly, that you have institutions that adapt and create this environment where people are feel less, unready and intimidated for the environment. That is the only solve. Thank you. Thank you for having us, Praveen. Thanks, Praveen. Thanks, Jay.