The End of Creativity in the Tech Industry

Are we still creating tech at this point? Or just manufacturing it.

Raise your hand if you’re still working in the tech industry and you’re still enjoying it.

Oh, hey, a lot more hands than I thought. Wait. Steve, put your damn hand down! I know you hate your life right now. Who are you trying to fool?

So yeah, there are still quite a few hands up, but far fewer hands than there were just a few months ago. That’s the general consensus from my peers, anyway.

Over my own three decades of time served in the tech industry, hopping from one new technological advancement to the next, I’ve never seen tech work become as much of a slog as it is today. There are a lot of reasons for this — macro industry economics, the specter of AI replacement, the general public’s distaste for an alleged nerd oligarchy — and I get it.

But those are just symptoms of a greater disease, and the disease is what I’ve been talking about with my tech industry peers.

Creativity is dying. That’s probably not news to you. But I have uncovered how it’s taking the entire tech industry down with it.

There is no such thing as a flywheel for creativity

As the tech industry continues to spin the giant flywheel of bloated features and AI-driven innovations, let me drop a pearl of wisdom I learned in the long-long ago. Because this problem didn’t start yesterday and it didn’t start with AI.

Some of the best coders I’ve ever worked with — and I’ve worked with some of the best — I would hesitate to work with again, because they couldn’t muster a single spark of creativity.

I don’t know why that is. Maybe there’s something about the profession of tech — maybe because of the emphasis on left-brain skills necessary to muster the desire to get into it — that discourages the right-brain skills necessary to succeed with it.

That said, if I can find a person who can make me laugh and do math in their head, then I’ll pay that person whatever they want. Because they’re going to drag us through the worst of times while pushing us into the best of times.