Hey, I'm Jed, a Cakephp developer basically. BTW I just shipped Tweet Caddy the most advanced tweet scheduler. Please check it out!
I remember then when our art teacher asked us to draw something about the Philippines on an illustration board as our home work. I drew a similar mini comic of the late Larry Alcala. While most of my classmates obviously asked their parents to draw for them, or drew all the same things like mountains, rice fields and farmers.
I got the best flattery a young artist would have; my teacher took home my artwork. Then in high school I played the bass guitar. Yes, I was a young creative person back then.
Fast forward into the present, I am now a computer programmer but this industry drained out the creative juice out of me. Bug fixing, Databases and API libraries, frameworks all made me now a complete nerd.
And I know I am not the only one. I know programmers who are good at playing the guitar,some are good in art and some are good in photography.
But generally, companies wants us to be geeks. That’s the reason why they hired us anyway. So eventually that creative urge on us will die. Our taste for beauty will vanish.
But let’s say there are companies out there that let creativity flow around the office culture and what benefits will you get? What will be the end product you have with a highly creative programming team? Creative solutions, clever product names, original UI, wonderful user experience. Overall you’ll get a software product that will stand out, remarkable and viral worthy.
This problem is prevalent in the industry, just look how nerdy Google+ is compared to Facebook and Twitter. Google spells nerd. While even older, Facebook looks cool and fresh. Even naming a product with a plus sign is totally nerdy. For business softwares, a good example would be Mint.
Creative teams will win, hire the artists and cultivate their creativity.
