Do you care about your craft? | Hacker News Reader

Do you care about your craft?

3 pointsdarrelld2 comments

I’m reading through The Pragmatic Programmer again, this time stopping at each tip along the way and thinking about my work and how what the book is talking about applies to me.

The first tip is to “Care About Your Craft”

I had to realize that I haven’t really cared about the craft in some time. I’ve been sailing through a series of meetings, deadlines, changing project requirements, office politics and general life that the caring of the craft is at the bottom of my list of cares.

I used to care about the craft in detail: getting formatting in code right, following best practices, seeking the new more efficient way to do things. But now it’s just get it done and push onto the next thing.

Thankfully starting to do some summer technical book reading has ignited that care for craft in me again.

So I ask you all, do you care about your craft? Why or why not?

I've found that genuinely caring about one's craft—beyond a baseline observance of best practices—requires, for lack of a better word, psychological space. Constant deadlines and distractions, workplace toxicity, and a pervasive focus on just getting stuff done on time are all environmental factors that make it difficult for me to genuinely think in terms of crafting rather than cramming. It's not that I'm indifferent or resentful, I'm just not being provided the space to really focus on what I do beyond doing it as fast as possible.

To answer your question: I don't have the wherewithal to care at the moment, but I wish I did.

Yeah. You want me to care about my work? Earn it. Give me 1) work that is worth doing - useful or meaningful in some way, and 2) space to work well - work that I can be proud of. Give me both, and I'll care quite a bit about my work. Give me one out of two, and I still may care. Give me neither, and I won't.

In some ways, that's passing the buck. I'm letting my employer determine my attitude about my work, which is probably unhealthy. On the other hand, caring about something when I'm not given the space to actually do what I feel needs done... that's pretty unhealthy, too. It can destroy you. So most of us respond by stopping caring, in self defense.

So, yes, that's kind of our fault. But it's also our employers. You want us to care about grinding out an endless stream of Jira tickets? Human nature says that won't happen.

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