This is quite literally true; many organizations even refer to their employees as resources. But strangely, managers aren't PowerPoint resources.
Absolutely! There is even a PeopleSoft module called HCM: Human Capital Management.
Re:Courtney Love does the math (2000)
by OnesimusUnbound on Friday July 08, 2011 @04:45PM
(#2744025)
... or Excel resources
What $random industry doesn't operate by exploiting $random people? It's the same for programmers and rock stars, unless you go the DIY/startup route.
Programmers are creative people.
Re:Courtney Love does the math (2000)
by michaelpinto on Friday July 08, 2011 @08:03PM
(#2744594)
The best programmers are creative in their work, but that's different than being a creative professional. The programming equivalent of a creative (not the verb but a noun) is the person who comes up with the next big thing, or at least tries to do this. Woz, Bill Gates, Zuck, etc. all fall into this category -- but the person slinging .net code to keep an insurance database isn't in the same category. And those in that later group are engineers, and there's nothing wrong with being an engineer -- but that's different than being an architect or a product designer if you know what I mean.
No, I don't know what you mean. Woz, Gates, and Zuck made names for themselves with good execution on the right idea at the right time.
While admirable, that's not exactly the definition of "creativity" in my books, especially not in the programming sense.
In fact, I would speculate that somewhere out there, there are .net DBA code monkeys doing more creative things to keep an aging insurance database infrastructure from collapsing than Zuckerberg did for facebook.
how about this... if a product manager hands you a spec with mockups and youre expected to return pixel perfect code in return, you're on the engineer end of the scale.
the key difference is freedom/autonomy.
I rather think that it has nothing to do with either. Comp engineers may be creative, but they're not in a creative field. They're in a field of artisanry, where they produce specialized, more or less hand made goods. Some of those people become famous for doing incredibly detailed work, but many just build chairs. Just because you come up with a creative solution does not make what you're doing art.
Creativity is not art.
Yes, but most working musicians aren't Mick Jagger or $famousmuso either. Many of them don't necessarily write music - just perform it.
Maybe the insurance database programmer is the coder equivalent of a session musician?
They view creative people the way a miner views a resource in the ground: as something to be strip mined and then discarded. I've encountered raw contempt... in a sense they are jealous of the ability of creative people to be creative, and this fuels their desire to co-opt it and take some of that glory for themselves.
But, part of the reason there's so much of this is that creative types are often horrible businesspeople and have no desire to learn. Instead, there is this myth that you get "discovered" and then someone else does the business for you.
Reality: you get "discovered" by a predator. If you don't want to be prey, you have to do it yourself.
Edit: this doesn't mean you have to be a 100% indy do-everything-yourself self-publisher or bootstrapper. But going into things with your eyes open, reading the fine print, and thinking like a businessperson is part of doing it yourself. Businesspeople do go into business with other people and other businesses, but they don't think "wow! I'm getting discovered, now I'm set!" They think "hmm... what's the value proposition here?" and they run spreadsheets and they look for hidden places where they might lose value or not get enough value for their money. Then they push back, and negotiate. Think like this or you get screwed.
Oh, and if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.