4 ms·
He sounds like a person high in creativity trying to get along with standard developers who, by and large, are not creative people. Creativity is a one of the
by plutonorm 5y ago
He sounds like a person high in creativity trying to get along with standard developers who, by and large, are not creative people.
Creativity is a one of the big 5 character traits and pretty immutable. If you are highly creative you #need# new experiences, it's not just a preference, it's necessary for your psychological well being.
Moving into and working with companies dominated by non creative types, who prefer order and structure and consistency, can be soul destroying. People of this type often find themselves pushing against huge structural resistance to change within organisations and it can seem inexplicable because they fail to appreciate how different others are to them.
It can be quite a revelation to appreciate that other people might actually be adverse to change, rather than energised by it.
Your response is a standard response from someone who isn't high in creativity, who is not particularly open minded. you do not appreciate the #need# for creative expression, just as he does not understand your strong preferences for order and consistency.
Both kinds of personality on this axis of the big 5 are useful to a company in their own ways. Low creativity is useful for maintaining systems, keeping things running in known environments. High creatives are best placed at the frontier of the new, where the land is not yet known.
There is also some merit to the farmer/hunter stereotype imho. Farmers like consistency and routine, hunters are open and distractible and creative.
My recommendation to the OP is to go work in startups. Big companies are usually heavily populated with farmer types low in creativity and high in other traits.
The OP needs to go to the edge where he is needed, not in the middle where he is not.
But honestly in my career it has not been easy to find the right positions either and over time I have come to understand the problem as described above.
Creatives need to be in a role where new ground is being broken, with freedom to express their creativity.
This is not an easy position to find and won't really become available until later in a career.
But this isn't unique to the developer career, it's a general problem for high creatives to find a place in a society that wants them to be a cog when they have a deep, powerful, unchangeable and fundamental need to be anything but a cog.
It's a hard challenge, and they should treat it as just that, a challenge requiring a creative solution.
- pseudalopex 5y agoCreativity isn't a Big 5 trait.
- gerbilly 5y agoHe's probably just thinking of openness to experience."
- plutonorm 5y agoYou can substitute the word openness for creativity in my post, it doesn't really change the argument. The words are made up anyway, they did a factor analysis over lots of questionnaire responses and then found the largest contributing factors. Then they kind of eyeball the questions and tried to come up with a word that described the kinds of questions in that cluster. Openness is prob more accurate, but creativity is more readily understood and close enough to be used when trying to convey a message imo.
- pseudalopex 5y agoI know how the Big 5 model was developed. Creativity is more complex than just openness. Needing new experiences everywhere is novelty seeking. It's more complex than openness too. And openness distributions for software developers and everyone else are about the same as far as I know. Creative people can thrive in many companies. You're right startups tend to be good for novelty seekers.
- plutonorm 5y agoYour condescending tone tells me that you are likely just the sort of person the OP is having trouble with. And they are everywhere in software development.
- tempodox 5y agoI don't get why your comment has been downvoted without an explanation. From my (admittedly ignorant) point of view it seems like a fair perspective.
- plutonorm 5y agoThe other guy probably took it as an insult that I was saying he wasn't creative. Being 'creative' is seen as 'good' when in fact it's often a huge pita.
- dusted 5y agoExcept I upvoted it, I am not offended by it, but didn't bother writing out a "defence" for my view, I have no desire to change those assumptions. I do not consider myself particularly creative, no, if I was "highly creative" people would pay for my paintings and other artworks, as it stand, I'm lucky to even get invited to display them anywhere. I paint abstract acrylics, enjoy photography, program fun little projects and games, sculpt and print 3d models and build other inventions and electronics, pursue research that has no obvious practical application, the normal stuff that able people do, but I don't feel entitled to do so at my job, I work my job so I can afford to have my hobbies. The vast, vast majority of jobs are, by their very definition, stuff that is hard or un-fun enough that you _HAVE_ to pay someone to do them.. They're the category of human endeavour that are needed (some more than others) and that people ALSO don't want to do anyway.. I'd pay money for the privilege to program _MY_ programs.. People will sing, dance, play music and write stories and pursue all these lovely, meaningful things, not because they are incentivised by money but because they WANT to, HAS to do them. And yes, there's some small fraction that get to find that their life calling coincide with their paid job, but setting the bar at that level, that is setting yourself up for failure and dissapointment. I know, you're reading this as if I'm saying you should accept shitty jobs you hate, but read my other comments first.. I'm not saying that. I'm saying you should find an acceptable job, and find something to like about it. You need to at least give it a chance before getting offended that it's not everything you so rightly deserve. OP asked a question, I gave an answer as best I could, it's not the one true answer, but it is my point of view, how I perceive what he has written through the lens of my own experiences and values. It is not a critique of him as a person, but of the way he comes across, and hopefully, he can use that, together with the other comments, to synthesize some kind of model that he can use to better understand his situation.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y agoThis seems like good advice. Go to a small company (or team) where architecture is being created, not a large one where it’s being maintained. Of course the other side of this is that you will HAVE to write a lot of code. Just be prepared for that responsibility.