5 ms·

Is Tim Ferriss acting like an asshole?

28 points by karjaluoto 17y ago

SwellJoe 17y ago
I thought this was going to be one of those sites like isitchristmas.com, where it just says, "YES" in big letters.
- 100k 17y ago
  istimferrisactinglikeanasshole.com is available!
tptacek 17y ago
So now, look at your job, and ask yourself: How would you feel if your work was reduced to a contest? I’d guess you’d find it rather insulting. Uh, no?
aichcon 17y ago
I agree that spec work is nonsense, but these things have a way of working themselves out. If you want quality, you have to pay for it, and quality designers will charge you for it. Many times the parties who ask for spec work don't really care much for quality and thus will attract the kind of talent that is willing to do spec work. They'll get what they pay for. I suspect the time and energy Tim spends trying to organize the book contest, look through the submissions and filter out the garbage would have been better spent just contacting a reputable designer and paying them to do a good job.
- DannoHung 17y ago
  I think that's the cynical way of looking at it. On the other hand, maybe he's not particularly concerned with going through with the effort of finding an excellent designer and spending the time discussing what he wants on his cover and would instead like to give amateur and student designers a chance to possibly get their work on the cover of a book and maybe win $250 bucks for something that they might be able to pass off as course credit (in the case of students) or that they would have done on their own time (in the case of amateurs or hobbyists). Maybe he's not expecting professional designers to submit their best work.
  - aichcon 17y ago
    Perhaps you're right, but if I was going to release a book and put my name on it, I would want it to be designed by a professional. Books are definitely judged by their covers.
    - michaelfairley 17y ago
      For his last book, Tim actually printed out fake bookcovers, placed them on books in bookstores, and sat around and observed how much attention each cover brought (source: http://vimeo.com/3934635 http://vimeo.com/3934635) . A lot of people around here don't like Tim, but that is certainly hacker like behavior. I'm sure he'll do something similar for the new book as well.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      An anti-spec person would say, "it's so true that you need books to be designed by professionals, so that they all the technique and language of graphic design to their fullest and match the content of the book perfectly, so as to sell as many copies as possible, that you should be prohibited from soliciting the services of designers who might not meet those standards, as evidenced by their willingness to accept substandard contractual terms".
michaelfairley 17y ago
What's next? GitHub is acting like an asshole?: http://contest.github.com/ http://contest.github.com/ This is roughly the same situation, but with code rather than art (ignoring the differences with open sourcing and whatnot). I doubt that GitHub expects the guys writing recommendation engines at Facebook/Google/wherever are going to participate in this contest for some bourbon and a GitHub account, and I doubt Tim expects big name graphic designers to make the cover of his book for $250. I certainly haven't seen any Facebook employees blogging about how the GitHub contest is demeaning to their industry though.
- paulgb 17y ago
  Likewise, I haven't seen a single programmer insulted by the Netflix Challenge. Most think it's a great thing.
- alanthonyc 17y ago
  So are netflix for that matter, I guess.
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Summary: this is a long and well-written discussion of how Tim created a contest for the design of his upcoming book, which violates many designers' belief that spec work hurts their craft. Serious question: I absolutely do not mean to in any way demean or trivialize the work of designers, but how is doing design work for spec any different than other creative pursuits, like writing a novel, painting, or authoring a screenplay? First-time creatives usually do those things with little to no hope of getting paid, and no one seems to be up in arms. Can someone enlighten me as to the difference?
- karjaluoto 17y ago
  When you write a novel, create a painting, or author a screenplay, it remains yours at the end. You take all the risks and all the gains. Spec is initiated by another party. Meanwhile, it takes advantage of people who have little other choice, and often leaves them with little to show for having done so.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    When you do graphic design work, it remains yours as well, unless you sign a contract that designates your deliverable as "work for hire". [%] The "taking advantage of people" thing is a canard. Designers are in business like everybody else. There's no reason they need to be protected from the market any more than a carpenter or an architect. [%] I don't know if Ferriss demanded a contract before accepting a submission or not, but I do know that the anti-spec brigade would have a problem with the contest either way.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    Sorry, but I'm still confused. Aren't paintings and screenplays typically sold to someone else for a fixed price after they're created, assuming someone buys them? With a book, I guess you might theoretically share in the profits. And while spec is initiated by another party, doesn't that imply that there's at least some demand? Let's take another approach: what's a better solution? If you have an aspiring designer with no portfolio or references, how should they get started? I hire designers, and I'd be reluctant to hire someone with no track record...what if I hate what they produce?
SwellJoe 17y ago
So, now that I've actually read the article I feel like ranting a bit. The thing about these kinds of contests is that they serve a niche that very much wanted filling: Low budget design projects that "real" design firms wouldn't touch. Large clients already get ideas on spec from those design firms...this "contest" process just makes it possible for small companies to get the same treatment. Yes, it comes from less experienced designers, and it comes with some additional problems (like the unpredictability of follow-on work, which may or may not be of reasonable quality and may or may not be available from the same designer at all). But, for one-off design work, like a logo, it's simply the best way for a small business to get design work done quickly and cost-effectively. When times get tough, as in a recession, folks often start looking for people to blame for their own reduced income. Some folks blame immigrants, and this is just an indirect version of that...blaming foreigners for working too cheap and cheapening their trade by accepting these contest terms. Because the reality is that most of the designers taking part in $250 contests are overseas. The funny thing is that software shops have historically gotten some flack for using design contests and such...but the fact is software development was among the first to experience this pressure from cheap overseas white collar human resources. We hackers have been dealing with it far longer than designers, and though a few among us belly-ache and bitch and moan, most of us have embraced the differences and compete on quality and taste rather than price. In other words: Tim Ferriss, while possibly an asshole on other occasions and for other reasons, is not acting like an asshole by holding a design contest.
- tonystubblebine 17y ago
  Thank you. I would be interested to hear a designer's take on what the downsides to spec work are for me. But everytime I read an anti-spec rant it includes accusations directed at me that are patently false, like that I ran a spec contest because I don't value or respect the work of designers. No, I ran a spec contest because it was the only thing I could afford. The second, and most obvious criticism of anti-spec arguments, is that the designers on the other end are choosing to engage in them. If the anti-spec crowd can't convince designers who participate in spec contests, why should we pay them any attention? For people who feel so passionately about a topic, I wish they would at least put the time into creating a more compelling argument.
run4yourlives 17y ago
The no spec movement is what is nonsense, to be perfectly frank. Listen, I hate having my work undervalued too. I get it. But guess what? The value of my work isn't what I think it is, it is what other people think it is. That's the heart of the matter: Designers tend to have inflated ideas of their value; more importantly, non designers tend to have low opinions of design work. You can't sell BMW's to people who think a Chevy is more than enough. Crying that a person that comes into your dealership and says: "My budget is $20K" is some sort of religious persecution isn't winning you any friends. Even worse, suggesting that Chevy should start selling their cars at $50K so that they can see how much better your bimmers are smacks of self-righteous ego. The whole point of spec or contests or paying for a cheaper solution is that the customer has already decided that the value of your work is not worth the cost. Get over yourself already and go sell to people who do appreciate whatever it is you offer. Set your price at what you consider fair, then find the right customer. If you can survive, great, but don't tell others in different situations what to do please.
- tptacek 17y ago
  A funny part of the AIGA position on spec work is that it "devalues the industry". Which, of course, it does, if by "devalue" you mean "reduces the cost to access". By the same token, you can always "improve" the value of something by colluding with all the suppliers to jack up the price.
stevenj 17y ago
Cover artist for "The 4-Hour Workweek": Barbara Sturman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_4-Hour_Workweek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_4-Hour_Workweek
richcollins 17y ago
The author doesn't understand spec work at all. The reason we hire people on spec, is because an artist's portfolio usually gives you very little indication of whether they will do a good job of executing the project at hand. If an artist has good samples of the exact type of work I will be hiring them for, spec isn't needed. It really has nothing to do with a perception of artists as cheap talent.
lionhearted 17y ago
Maybe this will get dead'ed, but I understand where the author is coming from. Believe it or not, what designers are feeling and how they're acting is nothing all that special or unique - it's happened to many different fields over the course of history. When a new, cheaper way of doing things comes around, buyers celebrate, and sellers get really, really upset. Do you know the term "Luddite", meaning someone that's technologically backwards? It came from loomweavers who protested and actually broke mechanized looms that made weaving (and thus clothing) much cheaper. Not too long ago, people bought or made a new shirt every year or two. One shirt. You wore it all year, and patched it up if it tore. It was expensive! It all hand-weaved. When mechanized looms came in, it sped weaving up - clothes got a lot cheaper, but less weavers were needed. Many weavers didn't like that. Some actually took to breaking looms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite - "The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their entire way of life." Horse drivers protested cars once they started catching on too. This is how it goes. It's not a glamorous passing of the torch with dignity or anything like that. Design used to cost a hell of a lot, and now it doesn't necessarily. But I sympathize. It happened to web designers too. The first website I had commissioned cost something like $13,000 and it wasn't all that long ago. (It was late and over budget - but the features were really good for the era. We had a scrolling news bar - I can't even begin to explain how cutting edge that was for the time) Paul Graham sold Viaweb for $45 million. I had something with more power and fuctionality put together only a few years later for $13,000. Now you could get similar quality for $500-$1000 professionally, or hack around with a CMS and do it for a couple hundred bucks yourself. But I imagine a lot of website designers and coders lost their jobs, or changed the way they did business. It was a gravy train for a while - now, not so much. I can imagine that there's a designer somewhere throwing darts at a picture of Matt Mullenweg, saying, "Curse you and your Wordpress! Curse you! Curse you to hell!" For tangible products, I still pay for design I know is good with someone that can capture emotion very well. But if it's just a project I'm slapping up and come what may, I'll Elance that sucker and get 10 potential, slapped together designs for $50. I'll spend another $20 to $50 to iterate on that and it'll work to start. Actually, forget Elance these days - 99designs.com looks like the future. Fellow Hacker Newser bobz turned me onto the site - it looks pretty amazing for getting a passable design done on a budget. But I do sympathize. Progress is all the consumers of society, but it can be painful for the people who produced the old way. You can look at the legacy airlines or United Auto Workers or farriering (horseshoeing) or swordssmiths or "workstation" style superpowered computers, or any number of things. People had to radically change how they did their work, or change their work, or not work. I sympathize. A good designer is worth a hell of a lot, and the proven, world class designers will continue to be paid well for highly leveraged projects. The price pressure for the bottom is here to stay though - people in rural parts of developing countries, high school kids and maybe even middle school kids, people just casually screwing around who don't care about the craft... and, maybe even, some people who work fast and can put out a first iteration in 20-30 minutes, and revise it in another 20-30 minutes, and win a $200 contest 1/4th of the time they enter. That'd be $50/hour in money and they'd have a huge portfolio that they can use to revise on as templates for jobs or sell as stock design afterwards. The old way is gone. The new way will work once we all adjust. But we ought to sympathize with the plight of people who are forced to change through no fault of their own - change is typically hard and unpleasant, and you and I will curse the next time our fields change as well.
lacker 17y ago
How would you feel if your work was reduced to a contest? I’d guess you’d find it rather insulting. But, there are programming contests. They are fun, not insulting.

28 points by karjaluoto 17y ago

SwellJoe 17y ago

I thought this was going to be one of those sites like isitchristmas.com, where it just says, "YES" in big letters.

100k 17y ago
istimferrisactinglikeanasshole.com is available!

tptacek 17y ago

So now, look at your job, and ask yourself: How would you feel if your work was reduced to a contest? I’d guess you’d find it rather insulting. Uh, no?

aichcon 17y ago

I agree that spec work is nonsense, but these things have a way of working themselves out. If you want quality, you have to pay for it, and quality designers will charge you for it. Many times the parties who ask for spec work don't really care much for quality and thus will attract the kind of talent that is willing to do spec work. They'll get what they pay for. I suspect the time and energy Tim spends trying to organize the book contest, look through the submissions and filter out the garbage would have been better spent just contacting a reputable designer and paying them to do a good job.

DannoHung 17y ago
I think that's the cynical way of looking at it. On the other hand, maybe he's not particularly concerned with going through with the effort of finding an excellent designer and spending the time discussing what he wants on his cover and would instead like to give amateur and student designers a chance to possibly get their work on the cover of a book and maybe win $250 bucks for something that they might be able to pass off as course credit (in the case of students) or that they would have done on their own time (in the case of amateurs or hobbyists). Maybe he's not expecting professional designers to submit their best work.
- aichcon 17y ago
  Perhaps you're right, but if I was going to release a book and put my name on it, I would want it to be designed by a professional. Books are definitely judged by their covers.
  - michaelfairley 17y ago
    For his last book, Tim actually printed out fake bookcovers, placed them on books in bookstores, and sat around and observed how much attention each cover brought (source: http://vimeo.com/3934635 http://vimeo.com/3934635) . A lot of people around here don't like Tim, but that is certainly hacker like behavior. I'm sure he'll do something similar for the new book as well.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    An anti-spec person would say, "it's so true that you need books to be designed by professionals, so that they all the technique and language of graphic design to their fullest and match the content of the book perfectly, so as to sell as many copies as possible, that you should be prohibited from soliciting the services of designers who might not meet those standards, as evidenced by their willingness to accept substandard contractual terms".

michaelfairley 17y ago

What's next? GitHub is acting like an asshole?: http://contest.github.com/ http://contest.github.com/ This is roughly the same situation, but with code rather than art (ignoring the differences with open sourcing and whatnot). I doubt that GitHub expects the guys writing recommendation engines at Facebook/Google/wherever are going to participate in this contest for some bourbon and a GitHub account, and I doubt Tim expects big name graphic designers to make the cover of his book for $250. I certainly haven't seen any Facebook employees blogging about how the GitHub contest is demeaning to their industry though.

paulgb 17y ago
Likewise, I haven't seen a single programmer insulted by the Netflix Challenge. Most think it's a great thing.
alanthonyc 17y ago
So are netflix for that matter, I guess.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

Summary: this is a long and well-written discussion of how Tim created a contest for the design of his upcoming book, which violates many designers' belief that spec work hurts their craft. Serious question: I absolutely do not mean to in any way demean or trivialize the work of designers, but how is doing design work for spec any different than other creative pursuits, like writing a novel, painting, or authoring a screenplay? First-time creatives usually do those things with little to no hope of getting paid, and no one seems to be up in arms. Can someone enlighten me as to the difference?

karjaluoto 17y ago
When you write a novel, create a painting, or author a screenplay, it remains yours at the end. You take all the risks and all the gains. Spec is initiated by another party. Meanwhile, it takes advantage of people who have little other choice, and often leaves them with little to show for having done so.
- tptacek 17y ago
  When you do graphic design work, it remains yours as well, unless you sign a contract that designates your deliverable as "work for hire". [%] The "taking advantage of people" thing is a canard. Designers are in business like everybody else. There's no reason they need to be protected from the market any more than a carpenter or an architect. [%] I don't know if Ferriss demanded a contract before accepting a submission or not, but I do know that the anti-spec brigade would have a problem with the contest either way.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  Sorry, but I'm still confused. Aren't paintings and screenplays typically sold to someone else for a fixed price after they're created, assuming someone buys them? With a book, I guess you might theoretically share in the profits. And while spec is initiated by another party, doesn't that imply that there's at least some demand? Let's take another approach: what's a better solution? If you have an aspiring designer with no portfolio or references, how should they get started? I hire designers, and I'd be reluctant to hire someone with no track record...what if I hate what they produce?

SwellJoe 17y ago

So, now that I've actually read the article I feel like ranting a bit. The thing about these kinds of contests is that they serve a niche that very much wanted filling: Low budget design projects that "real" design firms wouldn't touch. Large clients already get ideas on spec from those design firms...this "contest" process just makes it possible for small companies to get the same treatment. Yes, it comes from less experienced designers, and it comes with some additional problems (like the unpredictability of follow-on work, which may or may not be of reasonable quality and may or may not be available from the same designer at all). But, for one-off design work, like a logo, it's simply the best way for a small business to get design work done quickly and cost-effectively. When times get tough, as in a recession, folks often start looking for people to blame for their own reduced income. Some folks blame immigrants, and this is just an indirect version of that...blaming foreigners for working too cheap and cheapening their trade by accepting these contest terms. Because the reality is that most of the designers taking part in $250 contests are overseas. The funny thing is that software shops have historically gotten some flack for using design contests and such...but the fact is software development was among the first to experience this pressure from cheap overseas white collar human resources. We hackers have been dealing with it far longer than designers, and though a few among us belly-ache and bitch and moan, most of us have embraced the differences and compete on quality and taste rather than price. In other words: Tim Ferriss, while possibly an asshole on other occasions and for other reasons, is not acting like an asshole by holding a design contest.

tonystubblebine 17y ago
Thank you. I would be interested to hear a designer's take on what the downsides to spec work are for me. But everytime I read an anti-spec rant it includes accusations directed at me that are patently false, like that I ran a spec contest because I don't value or respect the work of designers. No, I ran a spec contest because it was the only thing I could afford. The second, and most obvious criticism of anti-spec arguments, is that the designers on the other end are choosing to engage in them. If the anti-spec crowd can't convince designers who participate in spec contests, why should we pay them any attention? For people who feel so passionately about a topic, I wish they would at least put the time into creating a more compelling argument.

run4yourlives 17y ago

The no spec movement is what is nonsense, to be perfectly frank. Listen, I hate having my work undervalued too. I get it. But guess what? The value of my work isn't what I think it is, it is what other people think it is. That's the heart of the matter: Designers tend to have inflated ideas of their value; more importantly, non designers tend to have low opinions of design work. You can't sell BMW's to people who think a Chevy is more than enough. Crying that a person that comes into your dealership and says: "My budget is $20K" is some sort of religious persecution isn't winning you any friends. Even worse, suggesting that Chevy should start selling their cars at $50K so that they can see how much better your bimmers are smacks of self-righteous ego. The whole point of spec or contests or paying for a cheaper solution is that the customer has already decided that the value of your work is not worth the cost. Get over yourself already and go sell to people who do appreciate whatever it is you offer. Set your price at what you consider fair, then find the right customer. If you can survive, great, but don't tell others in different situations what to do please.

tptacek 17y ago
A funny part of the AIGA position on spec work is that it "devalues the industry". Which, of course, it does, if by "devalue" you mean "reduces the cost to access". By the same token, you can always "improve" the value of something by colluding with all the suppliers to jack up the price.

stevenj 17y ago

Cover artist for "The 4-Hour Workweek": Barbara Sturman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_4-Hour_Workweek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_4-Hour_Workweek

richcollins 17y ago

The author doesn't understand spec work at all. The reason we hire people on spec, is because an artist's portfolio usually gives you very little indication of whether they will do a good job of executing the project at hand. If an artist has good samples of the exact type of work I will be hiring them for, spec isn't needed. It really has nothing to do with a perception of artists as cheap talent.

lionhearted 17y ago

Maybe this will get dead'ed, but I understand where the author is coming from. Believe it or not, what designers are feeling and how they're acting is nothing all that special or unique - it's happened to many different fields over the course of history. When a new, cheaper way of doing things comes around, buyers celebrate, and sellers get really, really upset. Do you know the term "Luddite", meaning someone that's technologically backwards? It came from loomweavers who protested and actually broke mechanized looms that made weaving (and thus clothing) much cheaper. Not too long ago, people bought or made a new shirt every year or two. One shirt. You wore it all year, and patched it up if it tore. It was expensive! It all hand-weaved. When mechanized looms came in, it sped weaving up - clothes got a lot cheaper, but less weavers were needed. Many weavers didn't like that. Some actually took to breaking looms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite - "The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their entire way of life." Horse drivers protested cars once they started catching on too. This is how it goes. It's not a glamorous passing of the torch with dignity or anything like that. Design used to cost a hell of a lot, and now it doesn't necessarily. But I sympathize. It happened to web designers too. The first website I had commissioned cost something like $13,000 and it wasn't all that long ago. (It was late and over budget - but the features were really good for the era. We had a scrolling news bar - I can't even begin to explain how cutting edge that was for the time) Paul Graham sold Viaweb for $45 million. I had something with more power and fuctionality put together only a few years later for $13,000. Now you could get similar quality for $500-$1000 professionally, or hack around with a CMS and do it for a couple hundred bucks yourself. But I imagine a lot of website designers and coders lost their jobs, or changed the way they did business. It was a gravy train for a while - now, not so much. I can imagine that there's a designer somewhere throwing darts at a picture of Matt Mullenweg, saying, "Curse you and your Wordpress! Curse you! Curse you to hell!" For tangible products, I still pay for design I know is good with someone that can capture emotion very well. But if it's just a project I'm slapping up and come what may, I'll Elance that sucker and get 10 potential, slapped together designs for $50. I'll spend another $20 to $50 to iterate on that and it'll work to start. Actually, forget Elance these days - 99designs.com looks like the future. Fellow Hacker Newser bobz turned me onto the site - it looks pretty amazing for getting a passable design done on a budget. But I do sympathize. Progress is all the consumers of society, but it can be painful for the people who produced the old way. You can look at the legacy airlines or United Auto Workers or farriering (horseshoeing) or swordssmiths or "workstation" style superpowered computers, or any number of things. People had to radically change how they did their work, or change their work, or not work. I sympathize. A good designer is worth a hell of a lot, and the proven, world class designers will continue to be paid well for highly leveraged projects. The price pressure for the bottom is here to stay though - people in rural parts of developing countries, high school kids and maybe even middle school kids, people just casually screwing around who don't care about the craft... and, maybe even, some people who work fast and can put out a first iteration in 20-30 minutes, and revise it in another 20-30 minutes, and win a $200 contest 1/4th of the time they enter. That'd be $50/hour in money and they'd have a huge portfolio that they can use to revise on as templates for jobs or sell as stock design afterwards. The old way is gone. The new way will work once we all adjust. But we ought to sympathize with the plight of people who are forced to change through no fault of their own - change is typically hard and unpleasant, and you and I will curse the next time our fields change as well.

lacker 17y ago

How would you feel if your work was reduced to a contest? I’d guess you’d find it rather insulting. But, there are programming contests. They are fun, not insulting.