{"id":70,"date":"2004-10-29T05:09:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-29T05:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/2004\/10\/29\/on-being-an-artist\/"},"modified":"2004-10-29T05:09:00","modified_gmt":"2004-10-29T05:09:00","slug":"on-being-an-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"On Being An Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker yesterday.<br \/>\nBefore I get to that though, here&#8217;s some background:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m getting ready to leave the company I&#8217;ve been working at for the past 5 (almost 6) years, and move on<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>There is a major rollout underway currently which I have been heavily involved in, and which is in its infancy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>This project, if architected correctly could have a dramatic impact on the company, and completely change the way the business runs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>This company has had a pretty rough time of it for the past 3 years or so, and there was recently yet another wave of layoffs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bottom line is, at the moment, I&#8217;m the only one left of the folks that did the research and initial architecture for this project. So, now that you know all that, back to the conversation.<\/p>\n<p>It went, at one point, something like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nMe: I&#8217;m trying to explain why what we have is wrong, and let you know that I understand what the business is attempting to accomplish, but this needs to be redone before we can do anything.<\/p>\n<p>Co-Worker: Well, you need to understand that I have to take everything you say with a grain of salt, because you&#8217;re a short timer and on your way out the door. What you&#8217;re saying may be right, or it may not, but I&#8217;ve got to question what you&#8217;re saying, because why should you care ?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was a very interesting question to me, and I&#8217;ve thought about it for the past day. As I&#8217;ve tossed it around in my head I came to realize two things, though I think they are actually the same, just twisted differently:<\/p>\n<p>1. This person has not got any clue how I think.<br \/>\n2. Geeks and Managers will never understand each other.<\/p>\n<p>After coming to those conclusions I realized why I cared.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll give you a hint: It isn&#8217;t because it will help the company.<\/p>\n<p>I care because it&#8217;s the technically correct thing to do.<\/p>\n<p>See, tech is an artform to me.<br \/>\nSince I have an artistic background, I actually consider it an extension of my talent; basically, &#8216;geek&#8217; is another medium for me just like &#8216;pen and ink&#8217;, etc.<\/p>\n<p>I want this done right because it&#8217;s a source of personal pride.<br \/>\nMy hand is involved in the architecture, so it had better be done right, because to do anything less is insulting to my craftsmanship and ability, not to mention a waste of my talent.<\/p>\n<p>My coworker will never get that, because in his position there&#8217;s not a burning passion to do things because doing it right is a thing of beauty. It&#8217;s all about buzzwords, bottom lines, and &#8216;strategic partnerships&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>At his level, it&#8217;s all about who you know, and which people you do and don&#8217;t piss off. Anything you need beyond that you get from skimming the headlines of trade mags.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why geeks and management don&#8217;t understand each other.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the same reason that an advertising exec can&#8217;t understand how an artist could spend tons of money on supplies so that they can go sit on a street in the middle of a city, and spend hours, or even days, creating a huge chalk mural which will be washed away in less than a week.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not about the money. (or in my case, the company and\/or my loyalty to it).<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s about the art.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe you already knew that, but I just figured it out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker yesterday. Before I get to that though, here&#8217;s some background: I&#8217;m&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[44,46,60],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing","tag-people-skills","tag-rambling","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freezion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}