4 ms·

Free for all Friday at Inventables - Crazy or Obvious?

33 points by zkaplan 16y ago

InclinedPlane 16y ago
At some point between the Renaissance and today we, the western world, seem to have acquired the notion that inventing and craftsmanship are not creative endeavors. That seems to be going away, and with it the correspondingly outmoded ideas about work environment, schedule, and structure. If you treat creative endeavors like an assembly line you'll get assembly line employee satisfaction and assembly line levels of innovation and creativity.
- zkaplan 16y ago
  That's an elegant way of putting it. At the core I don't believe that software engineers are assembly line workers. They are not cogs in some big machine that can be automated. Writing web applications requires creativity and intellectual thought. Everyone knows that telling someone "be creative now!" is a ridiculous approach.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Worse yet, the dissonance between straight-jacketed cog-in-a-machine style working environments and the need for creativity and deep intellectual thinking is often a source of cognitive and emotional stress. So much so that I believe it's a primary factor behind burnout in the tech industry. So many of the norms of the tech industry revolve around a belief in the productivity of "be creative now!" And to a certain extent it does work. But only in a very limited fashion and only at an extraordinarily high cost (reduced job satisfaction, high levels of turnover, high levels of burn-out, etc.)
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    'They are not cogs in some big machine that can be automated. Writing web applications requires creativity and intellectual thought. Everyone knows that telling someone "be creative now!" is a ridiculous approach.' On a number of occasions I've talked with people in the Web development/software business, and they make regular use of the term "creatives". And every single time they use it to distinguish some group of people (designers, ad writers, whatever) from mere software developers. Who, apparently, are not creative, or not doing creative work. It's probably a lost cause to get people to consider software developers part of that group (at least with those who most often us that term), so I propose we call developers, hackers, engineers, etc. "Inventives."
robg 16y ago
Bad title, good article.
- zkaplan 16y ago
  What would you have titled it?
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Google did it, Google did it! Seriously though, it's obvious, and shown to work with quality engineers, but no less cool for all of that. Bravo to Inventables, we need more companies that do this (and in general, organize their workforce according Dan Pink's insights).
slapshot 16y ago
Sure as heck matters what your employees do on other days. If I had a customer service team, I don't think my customers would appreciate it if they all decided to stop answering support calls on Fridays.

33 points by zkaplan 16y ago

At some point between the Renaissance and today we, the western world, seem to have acquired the notion that inventing and craftsmanship are not creative endeavors. That seems to be going away, and with it the correspondingly outmoded ideas about work environment, schedule, and structure. If you treat creative endeavors like an assembly line you'll get assembly line employee satisfaction and assembly line levels of innovation and creativity.

zkaplan 16y ago
That's an elegant way of putting it. At the core I don't believe that software engineers are assembly line workers. They are not cogs in some big machine that can be automated. Writing web applications requires creativity and intellectual thought. Everyone knows that telling someone "be creative now!" is a ridiculous approach.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Worse yet, the dissonance between straight-jacketed cog-in-a-machine style working environments and the need for creativity and deep intellectual thinking is often a source of cognitive and emotional stress. So much so that I believe it's a primary factor behind burnout in the tech industry. So many of the norms of the tech industry revolve around a belief in the productivity of "be creative now!" And to a certain extent it does work. But only in a very limited fashion and only at an extraordinarily high cost (reduced job satisfaction, high levels of turnover, high levels of burn-out, etc.)
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  'They are not cogs in some big machine that can be automated. Writing web applications requires creativity and intellectual thought. Everyone knows that telling someone "be creative now!" is a ridiculous approach.' On a number of occasions I've talked with people in the Web development/software business, and they make regular use of the term "creatives". And every single time they use it to distinguish some group of people (designers, ad writers, whatever) from mere software developers. Who, apparently, are not creative, or not doing creative work. It's probably a lost cause to get people to consider software developers part of that group (at least with those who most often us that term), so I propose we call developers, hackers, engineers, etc. "Inventives."

robg 16y ago

Bad title, good article.

zkaplan 16y ago
What would you have titled it?

SkyMarshal 16y ago

Google did it, Google did it! Seriously though, it's obvious, and shown to work with quality engineers, but no less cool for all of that. Bravo to Inventables, we need more companies that do this (and in general, organize their workforce according Dan Pink's insights).

slapshot 16y ago

Sure as heck matters what your employees do on other days. If I had a customer service team, I don't think my customers would appreciate it if they all decided to stop answering support calls on Fridays.