Ten Bullets [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
I confess I have his ten bullets on my wall because I think it helps me be a good contributor to my team. I think you can boil it down even further to Brancusi's 3 bullets: "create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave".
What does "organized" mean to you, if not these?
For some people that's a tautology, but not for everyone.
Is it just an empty phrase that means nothing, so the speaker and listener can both nod and think they agree perfectly, when in fact they have no common conception of this idea at all?
If you don't want to be in my studio, and follow my rules, I don't want you to be in my studio. The length and tone of the video ensures that non-compliers will self select out of the applicant pool.
However, not having the content available in written form is really not acceptable.
A lot has been made of the conceptual underpinnings of these sculptures: how Sachs' sampling capitalist culture, remixing, dubbing and spitting it back out again, so that the results are transformed and transforming. Equally, if not more important, is his total embrace of "showing his work." All the steps that led up to the end result are always on display. On a practical level, this means that all seams, joints, screws or for that matter anything holding stuff together, like foamcore and plywood, are left exposed. Nothing is erased, sanded away, or rendered invisible. On a more philosophical level, this means that nothing Sachs makes is ever finished. Like any good engineering project, everything can always be stripped down, stripped out, redesigned and improved.
The reward for work is more work.
--Mark van de Walle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFl31p89VCM&list=PL9DA5B1371...
EDIT:
In case you need English translation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCpbBVthD7o&list=PL2FC1B24C6...
It's easy to see shop rules as overly controlling, until you've had to work in a shop for a few weeks or months and seen things get completely out of control. It's no different than working on a software project. Non-programmers (and beginners) will try writing a 30-line program, without knowing any of the best-practice conventions that experienced programmers know about. Then they post their mess on StackOverflow to get help. What's the first comment? Always: "We can't read this. Fix your indentation! Fix your capitalization! Remove those unused variables!" In other words, knoll that source code.
Either way, whatever point is intended, it doesn't justify the video length.
And that soldering job was weak.
The aesthetics of the video are cool, though, and the ideas are okay, though presented in an extremely patronising way.
A comment on the video put it nicely:
>I think Ave pranked us all. My eyes are twitching I'm so triggered by this;-) A great example of the kind of person you never want to work for. Someone who's utterly concerned with trivialities of HOW things are done instead of the reasons you're actually in business. Someone who can't see past their own way of negotiating the world, imposing their own way of doing things on their staff. I can assure you, being told what to do and how to do it are two different things. HR nonsense aside, I'd last 10 mins working for someone this short sighted. The end result is the goal. How you get there is irrelevant, beyond following some basic safety protocols. And cats should be at home.. litter boxes stink.
At the end of the day, today’s collectors aren’t buying for a specific end product— they’re buying for an artist’s name and the STORY of the work. Better story -> bigger valuation -> More effective tax shelter
I view that as a problem. And it's not unique to the art world.
All else equal, we should favor buying products and services from employers who treat their employees well.
One could even argue we should be willing to pay a premium for it.
Consider Marina Abromovic’s “Rhythm 0” or RAE’s residence in a storefront window. Consenting, controlled discomfort can be a medium in itself.
I've developed software in places where we:
* had coding style guides
* promoted many compiler Warnings to Errors
* worked off of Bug and Feature lists, not just going off coding
* had to document all changes (for the FDA) in a certain way
* were expected to keep Continuous Integration tests running
* were expected to write unit tests as much as possible, and have very high code coverage
* attempted to do Test-Driven Development for most work (because it was the best way to make sure our code was testable [see "Working Effectively With Legacy Code" by Michael C. Feathers for inspiration)
* had a strict process for handling customer feedback, to ensure we triaged it appropriately
* had to lock our workstations when we stepped away (Sarbanes–Oxley)
* had a code review process for submitting changes
* had a design review process for larger changes (especially including adopting new tools)
* used a very restricted set of programming languages for any new work, even for small tools and one-offs
* followed SCRUM (daily stand-ups, story points, etc.)
* used Objectives and Key Results to plan our work
* had a process to discuss changing any of these
* all used one tool to manage our calendar (even for personal time blocks that didn't impact anyone else)
* all used one messaging tool
Every single one of those is an example of being told how to do my work. And they all existed to set expectations about how I was supposed to interact with my teammates. Whose responsibility was it to do things, how do we keep track of the things, how do we make decisions, how do we stay out of each others' way, how do we avoid unnecessary interruptions.
I've heard someone express the phrase, "We don't do that here." What was meant by it is, don't get dragged down into a discussion about whether something is right or wrong. We have a culture. There are rules. We follow them. (And there's the door, if you don't like it.)
At that level you are much more engineering than throwing stuff over the wall and running away.
I wish the system I inherited was structured that way!.
I got the code.
No comments, no tests, no test environment, no documentation, no history and the code is hilarious.
At that point your job is archaeology not engineering.
It's definitely not that I disagree with every point he made, but an open and honest dialog with your team feels so much better than having ten commandments hanging over your head at all times. Your personality mesh either works or it doesn't.
I, personally, really liked the video. I, like you, couldn't work at that place. But, I appreciate a lot of the ideas presented in it, some more than others. As with just about every piece of advice you can find: Take the things that work for you, leave those that don't.
One thing that shop rules like this are very effective at is: weeding out the people he doesn't want working for him. He has his way of working and he could either do it all himself, or he could find people who work in a way that's compatible with how he works. I suspect that the kind of people who just want to do their work in their way without having these sorts of rules imposed on them, just wouldn't work for Tom Sachs.
Buellet 12) Remove that idiotic video from youtube.