‘If you were to die next day…’: CRED designer’s bizarre advice angers internet

Fintech company CRED’s head of design has been criticised online for his “morbid” advice to product designers, where he asked them to give their best work like “they were to die the next day.”
A video showing Harish Sivaramakrishnan, who had previously worked with Google and Snapdeal, complained about “slack attitude” among product designers.
“My point was that if you were to die the next day – Morbid, I know – but if you were to die the next day, you should be insanely proud of the detail that you drove into that release. The details that can you drive into a release that gave you only 2.5 weeks of time will not look like a release that can do in 2.5 years. I am aware. But that’s not the point. There is general slack attitude of quickly doing something,” he can be heard saying in the video posted on LinkedIn.

While Mona Singh, who posted the original video to LinkedIn said that the advice helped her “step up her game”, only few others agreed.
“Ever since this conversation with Harish I constantly ask myself this question before I ship something. And I’m amazed at how many small details [that take 2-3 days] I end up fixing that make such a difference,” she wrote.
One user took to X and mocked Sivaramakrishnan’s advice and wondered what a person’s “top 10 regrets” would be if they were dying.
“If you were to die tomorrow you should be insanely proud of the level of detail that you put into the last release” – CRED’s Head Of Design (fr). Of course coz top 10 regrets that dying people have includes level of detail they delivered in the last sprint,” she said.
Others said while they appreciated the perspective, their work achievements would not play a significant role on their deathbed.
“If I were to die the very next day, I’d probably be more concerned about finishing my bucket list than the details in my product. But hey, that’s just me,” one user commented under the LinkedIn post.
Another user mocked the advice and wrote, “On my deathbed, I’d be so worried about how I could have maximised shareholder value more than thinking about my loved ones.”
“On a lighter note, I sure hope I am not thinking about the details of the products I shipped on my death bed,” a third user opined.
Quickly you can never get anything done. My point is just put in the right effort. Write the best copy you can, get the best visual design you can, get the best API optimisation you can.
Agreeing with an audience member who said it took 17 version to create the final product, he said “But attitudinally saying “Quickly kuch bana ke test krdete hain (Let’s make something quickly and test)” is the worst way to build. I have not seen a single product that has worked which is built like that.
He said a product build like that might bring a “perverse happiness” to engineers, designers and product managers but it would not work.