Blake - Dissected

Try to think of an industry where entire business processes change every 12 months.  Think about a business where yesterday's cutting edge is today's passe.  Think about working in a field where having to relearn your entire craft every year with a new set of abstract fundamentals isn't just encouraged but required to succeed at even a minimal level. 

Industries like entertainment and fashion come to mind - where what's in today is out tomorrow and what the consumer wants is what they are told they want.  All in all though, they are still just making movies; recording albums; selling clothes.  The automobile industry - every single manufacturer has a one year release cycle with major revisions ranging from 3-5 years (albeit some are faster, some are slower); but last I checked, cars still have 4 wheels, and engine, some seats, and a handfull of other miscellany that gets it's passengers from A to B. Manufacturing, retail, finance, medicine, law.  Most of these fields are as old as "business" itself.  General stores of old have become today's Walmart.  Doctors way back when might have been using leeches and blood-letting, but they were arguably still fundamentally the same as doctors today. Time and technology change the way the business is run, but don't change the business.

Maybe I'm biased - alright, I'm definitely biased - but there's no business in the history of the world that's as fast paced and metamorphical than the business of tech.   In the past 20 some-odd years (my lifetime), a bulk of the world's citizens have gone from being an island unto themselves to a member of a connected global community.  We now live in a world where a seemingly infinite amount of information is at the fingertips of anyone willing the pay the (seemingly) low price of admission.  But it's not the politicians who made this possible (though they would have you believe otherwise) nor is it financial leaders.  It's not this country or that country.  It's not one man, but many.  It's the nerds of the world, the geeks, the dorks, the enthusiasts, the fanboys.  A field that barely even existed 20 years ago is now one of (if not) the most profitable industries ever.  We're designers, developers, programmers and digital artists alike and without us there would be no ebay, no google, no myspace, no youtube.  8 of the top ten visited websites in the US (from Alexa) were born out of basements, garages, apartments, and lofts.  Of those 8, exactly ZERO started as a for-profit venture, but all of them ended up there. 

The business moves faster than most on the outside of it even consider.  In the last few years alone we've seen a drastic shift toward lite, web-based applications; toward user generated content; toward free, sponsor based services.   Not only that, but the tech moved with it.  From static HTML to PERL to straightforward PHP to frameworks (with many, many steps in between).  Each step forward in hindsight was a leap in response to the ever changing world we work in.  Sure, 90 or so percent of the world still uses IE 6, but they all want to experience their crappy, low-res youtube movies in the same way - on their time, as fast as possible.  As bandwidth becomes cheaper and more widely available that trend will keep growing exponentially and we are the ones that are forced to keep up.

In my short time as a gainfully employed web designer / developer my career has seen 3 major shifts (to standards compliant web development, to dynamic online data driven applications, and now on to version controlled framework based development) and I've never left the only job I've had.  All in response to an industry that shows no signs of stopping. 

What does the future hold for me and my cohorts?  No one can really definitively say for sure.  I can only hope to be able to spend enough time learning in what little free time I have in order to keep up and that maybe I can make a small mark on the world that's big enough for at least one or two people to notice.

It's Friday; it's raining; i was up until almost 1am cleaning my apartment as a direct result of not being able to fall sleep because of finding ants in my kitchen; oh, and I've got no desire to drag my ass in to work. 

The point of this post is this: I've never understood why certain employers require it's employees to work 8-5.

Now, this is a broad generalization on my part in that I know that there are in fact businesses that have a "be here between 7 and 9:30 and make sure you make 8 hours" attitude and I also realize that the sales industry, education and labor divisions of our work force (an I'm sure many others) have set schedules that have to be followed.  That's not what I'm talking about here; I'm talking about creative positions, any job where you're required to think for yourself, where you're not reading from a script or asking "would you like fries with that".  I'm talking about engineers, web designers, artists, advertising designers, software developers (ESPECIALLY software developers) and their kin.

My problem with the 8-5ers is that creative people can't just think about work for a specified 8 hours (with a one hour break) and then go home and let that be that.  I don't think about work every second I'm at work.  I know, it's horrible, right? Well, everyone does it, I'm just admitting it.  By the same token tho, I can't count the number of nights I laid in bed trying to think of a new site design or how many times I've gotten out my laptop for the sole purpose of seeing if an email from a client had arrived yet (and proceeded to respond to said email) after dinner at night or on the weekend. 

Should I start recording my time down to the minute?  Should I bill my employer and/or my client for all of the time outside of the office I spend thinking of the project or doing menial tasks like checking or filing emails?  No, of course not.  In my mind everything balances out so long as I'm being productive and getting my work done.

Lucky for me, my employer is far from strict and although most days I am a 8-5er, it's because I choose to be, not because I have to be.  Creative people can't be forced to be creative.  Half of what I do (the design half) is completely subjective.  If I'm on point and knock out a web design comp in 3 hours and it's phenomenal or if I'm completely at a loss for inspiration and something mediocre takes the better part of 2 days it doesn't matter.  All that matters is the client's opinion of my work.  I can't divine inspiration any better than a writer or a painter and I certainly can't be made to do it during a certain range of hours during the day.   Forcing employees into a regime of  shirt-tie-work-lunch-work-home, rinse, repeat stifles creativity and in turn results in those employees not being at the top of their game.

We all know that everyone's an individual, so why don't corporations treat their employees like it?   Not everyone does their best work in an 8'x8' cubicle under florescent lights.  Some like sunlight, some like it dark, some like couches, some like desks.  That's just how life is.  Walking through my office you'll meet 10 different people with 10 different opinions about what the temperature should be. 

So... why bitch about a problem that doesn't affect me? Because it affects a lot of close friends of mine, and changing this one thorn in creativity's paw could very well change the way companies do business in the future.  So here's my solution (which is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it meant or should be taken as a business plan.. it's just an idea):

• Stop requiring 9 hour blocks of work for you employees.  Cater to the early birds and the night owls alike and let them choose their schedules.  If there is time where teams need to meet or people HAVE to be present make it in the afternoon and only for a few hours.  Your company will be making more money as your employees are more productive, so let them be
• Don't imprison your workers. We're not slave labor.  We chose to work for you remember?  Everyone has the internet, so use it!  There's no reason why a person who spends most days working individually needs to be kept inside a cubicle.  With cell phones, email, instant messenger, and now the pervasiveness of webcams in laptops (thanks Apple), everyone is connected and it shouldn't matter whether we're two cubicles apart or two countries so long as we're getting our work done.
• Do away with the dress code.  If there's a web designer out there that does their best work in a three-piece with a tie, I've never met him.  I do my best work in a tshirt, jeans, and flops and that's just one persons opinion.  Yes, I'm very aware that appearances are everything so always encourage employees to look their best in front of clients (khakis and a button down at minimum) but is it really a crime to bring a pair of flip-flops to work so you can change out of those penny loafers you had to wear to your 8am?
• Keep them happy.  Happy employees are efficient employees.  Spoil your hard workers.  If someone lands a six-figure deal or nails down a project ahead of schedule and under budget reward them!  Buy them food and drinks, make them as comfortable as they want to be, give them an atmosphere that they will look forward to spending time in and they'll never want to leave. 
  

Like I said, these aren't hard and fast rules, more like guidelines from the trenches.  Kudos to companies like Google, Best Buy Management, Apple, and the pile of all of those other forward thinking companies that workers are there because they want to be, not because they HAVE to be.