Is there room for craftsmanship in tech?
It often feels like Craftsmanship isn't appreciated and/or rewarded in tech. Let's investigate why that's the case and what can be done about it.
Traditionally, the term "craft" has been reserved for "an occupation, trade, or activity requiring manual dexterity or artistic skill". I would argue, that "crafts" and, hence, craftsmanship can be extended to include a much wider range of occupations.
Here, I would like to expand the definition of a "craft" to include any work that produces a tangible artifact as its result. And I am going to focus on Tech as an industry since that's where most of my experience lies.
In my opinion, simply being engaged in a craft is not enough to be considered a craftsperson. While thinking about this, I found this short post that draws the line between craftsmanship and worksmanship, and I think that it hits the nail on its head:
The art of craftsmanship is not stitching a shoe or an apparel — although that’s important. It’s about caring who is gonna wear it. And in fixing those small details that will make a product an experience.
In other words to exercise craftsmanship you have to go beyond skill development and getting to mastery. You have to build a certain depth of your relationship with your craft and the level of care you bring to it. Then you can be a craftsperson in pretty much any line of work in tech: engineering, design, data science, etc.
The state of craftsmanship in tech
The short version of it is that, in my opinion, being a craftsperson is not being rewarded at the moment. Similarly to how factory manufacturing made craftsmanship rare in traditional trades, the need for scale and speed is flushing out craftspeople from tech or, at least, is sidelining them.
The classic truism of "better done than perfect" has been weaponized to the extent that virtually any pushback on timelines in favor of quality can be dismissed as "perfectionism." Of course, there are exceptions from time to time, but that has been my impression so far, which is solidifying more and more as time passes.
It is essentially the other side of the enshittification coin, which seems to be mostly discussed from the perspective of consumers' experience with products. And this side is the side of the employees of the tech companies that produce those products.
If you're a craftsperson who has a deep connection to your craft, working in tech, you probably know how it hurts when you have to produce what you would consider a sub-par outcome that goes against anything you know about your craft. At the same time, it's "good enough" for the company that you work for. So, if you want to make things that you work on actually good, you have to do that, basically, on your own personal time or at your own risk.
Sure, that may be optimal for business, but it seem to create neither great user experiences nor fulfilling workplaces for employees. However, it is a natural consequence of the system we operate in.
As always, it's all about incentives
In the current environment, when the vast majority of tech companies are either publicly traded or funded by VCs or Private Equity, the main incentive set for the companies is growth.
Sometimes, especially at the early stage of the business lifecycle, growth can be achieved by improving the user experience. However, in most cases, you expect to deliver 80% of the value to the user with only 20% of the initial effort. Further refinement is not the optimal strategy in terms of ROI, as it won't enable the fastest growth. As a result, refinement is rarely prioritized but that's exactly where most of the craftperson's work lies.
And when the cost of things is not correctly accounted for, they tend to be overproduced. However, that's a topic for another post.
So, at the end of the day, the lack of appreciation for your craft is not a "moral failure" (or whatever you want to call it) on the company leadership's side; it's simply a natural consequence of existing incentives. Being upset about that is not very productive, even though it is very tempting.
What can we do about it?
That is something I've been thinking about quite a bit recently, so if you have any other ideas on how to exercise your craft, please, don't hesitate to reach out.
Do your own thing
That is an obvious one that people tend to suggest.
You can start your own company and run it the way you think is right. Then you can set the quality bar where you want it. Not boring software and callsheet seem to be examples of such projects.
The obvious challenge is that it's risky; you may end up being unable to earn a decent living with it, especially if you already live in a high-cost-of-living area and can't simply pick up your stuff and move to a lower-cost-of-living place.
For instance, the creator of Seneca (a keyboard that starts at $3600 and is 100% a product of true craftsmanship) has admitted that, financially, it makes no sense for him. So he's doing that because he wanted a product like that to exist. If it piqued your curiosity, you can watch this video where Adam Savage interviews him.
The less obvious challenge, however, is that you may still be unable to exercise your craft if you're not intentional about it.
If you raise external funding, you end up being beholden to the same incentives that lead companies to prioritize other things, such as growth, over craftsmanship. Additionally, if you try to make a living as an entrepreneur, you will have to deal with lots of other things that have nothing to do with your craft, just because you run a business now (marketing, accounting, taxes, etc).
There is a way to make it work, despite the challenges. Reading "Slow Productivity" by Cal Newport, I learned about Paul Jarvis. He took an unconventional path to building his own business with the core philosophy that can be summarized as follows:
if your endeavors begin to succeed, leverage this success to gain more freedom instead of more revenue
I havent yet read Jarvis' book "Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business", but the high-level approach, as relayed by Newport, feels very appealing, and it seems that it can serve as a path to exercising your craftsmanship. His approach does require that you lead a relatively modest life, which is the price that potentially is worth paying for the fulfillment and freedom that you get.
Exercise your craft outside of your work
In other words, "get a hobby" 🙃. Which is also common advice.
It's worth calling out explicitly since I've seen it happen to others and fell prey to it myself: please, don't make something a hobby just so you can get better at your job. Do it, only if it's indeed something you care deeply about and enjoy doing for the sake of it.
One common way people tend to turn their craft into a hobby in tech is by getting involved with open-source projects. It's definitely valid and one might say even noble. However, I personally would make sure that I don't end up being like that "random from Nebraska" from the famous XKCD. It seems that at that point it stops being an outlet for exercising your craft and becomes merely an unpaid job. So, if you engage with open source, make sure to set clear boundaries and regularly evaluate whether you still get the fulfillment you wanted from it.
If you have ideas for a personal project that you want to explore in your personal time, go for it. There is no shame in being genuinely interested in something that most people would find boring or weird. If it brings you joy and fulfillment, it's worth spending your spare time doing it. Just make sure you're following your curiosity and interests, not the market or other people's opinions.
Look for opportunities where you are
This is the trickiest one. Even if you work in an environment where incentives are misaligned with "true craftsmanship", you can both be looking for opportunities to exercise your craft and create those opportunities yourself.
Alignment between high-quality output and company goals is not a natural outcome of the incentives structure but it doesn't mean that there isn't an overlap.
The challenge is that you have to be creative and proactive about it. This challenge is not unique, if you examine the options above, both of them require this. The upside is that you don't have to risk your financial well-being or have to "love what you do" to the extent that you would do that for free.
Don't try to push projects just because they're fun to you; do it because that will produce a superior outcome. It won't be easy, and you will have to convince people that the way you suggest doing things is indeed the best one and worth it. In a way, any act of craftsmanship in a corporate setting can be seen as a mini-rebellion against the system. So, be the rebel!
The wrap
While appreciation and reward of craftsmanship is not embedded into the modern-day tech landscape, not all is lost. There are ways that you can find ways to embrace it, you just need to evaluate your interests, risk tolerance, and other factors to pick the path that works for you in the moment.
Good luck!