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The Grunt Work Is the Point
Why I’m keeping my design title, Joe Caroff, and how AI is changing search and ruining the web economy
Roger Wong
August 24, 2025
When I was coming up as a designer, I spent years doing grunt work. Whether it was looking for stock photos, tracing logos, resizing banners, or making PowerPoint decks, that was the job. I believe AI will change this grunt work, with junior designers still doing those tasks, but leveraging AI to do them more quickly. I can picture the feedback loop being the same: senior designer assigns something -\> junior executes -\> junior goes to senior for feedback. And the loop repeats until the senior is satisfied or the deadline arrives, whichever comes first. Maybe with AI, it’ll be the former more of the time.
The grunt work is the point. All young designers in any team setting will feel like their talents are being wasted, that they didn’t go to design school to endlessly search for stock photos. This cliche has repeated billions of times throughout history as all apprentices long to come out from the shadows of their mentors. But the thing is, when you’re two hours into adding images to a board and 50 pages into your search results, you’re around other designers who are talking to clients, working out problems on a whiteboard, and critiquing each other’s work. All stuff that you don’t learn and can’t learn in school. You learn by being there, seeing how it’s done, up close. (That’s a reason why entry-level designers should not work remotely, but that’s another post.)
Would you really want to be off-leash and field a client call by yourself or lead a major feature? And for the company, that’s risky and irresponsible.
Elizabeth Goodspeed, from Carly Ayres’s post about her Twitter spat with a young designer entrepreneur behind a moodboard AI tool:
Elizabeth sees it differently. “What’s interesting to me,” Elizabeth noted, “is how many people are now entering this space without a personal understanding of how the process of designing something actually works.” For her, that grunt work was formative. “The friction is the process,” she explained. “That’s how you form your point of view. You can’t just slap seven images on a board. You’re forced to think: What’s relevant? How do I organize this and communicate it clearly?”
So if you’re an entry-level designer, be patient and understand that this is all part of the process. If you’re managing a younger designer, remember how impatient you were too when you started out and give them something to be excited about. Take a chance because you hired them for step-functional—not incremental—leverage.
Why I’m Keeping My Design Title
An essay by a Head of Product Design at Microsoft went viral in recent weeks. In it, he explains why he’s abandoning his design title to become a “Member of Technical Staff.” His argument? Design is dead. AI will generate UIs on the fly, fewer design leaders will be needed, and the real money is in building AI systems, not crafting experiences.
With all due respect to Suff Syed, I call bullshit.
His essay reduces design to pushing pixels and aesthetic judgment—as if we’re just painters waiting for AI to make us obsolete. But that’s not what design is. It’s understanding that nurses share computers in chaotic hospital settings. It’s recognizing why users get emotionally attached to their workflows (just ask OpenAI about their GPT-5 backlash). It’s knowing that muscle memory often trumps “optimal” AI-generated interfaces that change every time you use them.
Sure, component libraries have democratized basic aesthetics, and AI will absolutely change how we work. But the fundamental human-centered thinking that defines good design? The ability to observe behavior, solve complex interaction problems, and orchestrate experiences that actually serve people? That’s not going anywhere.
After more than 30 years in this craft—from my amateur days on a Mac in middle school to now—I’m not giving up my design title. I don’t see it as a relic, but a proud commitment.
Highlighted Links
 | Joe Caroff, legendary designer behind the iconic “007” James Bond logo and numerous classic film posters, has died at 103. His clever sketch for the first Bond film evolved into one of cinema’s most recognizable symbols, though he reportedly received just $300 for his work. |
 | New publisher data shows that many sites are seeing up to 25% less Google search traffic than last year, with declines linked to Google’s AI Overviews—a shift that’s now even impacting company earnings and market performance. |
 | Related to the previous item, a new Nielsen Norman Group study finds that while AI-generated overviews are grabbing user attention and reducing site visits, traditional search remains essential—with most people still relying on organic links and using AI tools mainly to supplement or fact-check their searches. |
What I’m Consuming
Has efficiency killed beauty? A designer’s search for meaning (UX Collective). Designers should value beauty as much as user experience in their work. People often think that attractive designs work better, even if they don’t. Recently, focus has shifted mostly to UX research and metrics, sometimes overlooking aesthetics.
AI Is A Money Trap (Edward Zitron). Generative AI companies like OpenAI are spending huge amounts on data centers but are not making profits. Big tech’s massive investments in AI infrastructure mostly benefit a few large firms and private equity, not the broader economy. The AI industry faces a big problem: it burns money without creating new, profitable products.
How Figma’s multiplayer technology works (Figma Blog). Oldie but a goodie, it’s a fun read if you’re curious. Figma built its own simple multiplayer system to sync design documents using ideas from CRDTs, which help avoid conflicts. The system uses a client/server model where changes happen instantly on the client and the server resolves conflicts carefully. This approach makes collaboration smooth and ensures everyone sees the same design without losing work.