Fast Bikes, Slow Food, and the Workplace Wars

I find this perspective appealing and romantic, but there's another part of me that protests that skilled labor is as vulnerable to technological progress as any other work, and that any romanticization of it is in danger of being opposed to progress. Like medieval guilds, it's based on the assumption that there's a fixed amount of work to be done in each profession. What happens when his town doesn't need small engine mechanics anymore? Economic dislocation, retraining in a different profession, something that rips away his basis for a fulfilling life. What happens when time after time, it's more sensible to replace than to fix? What happens if technology removes the mystery and challenge from his job? Any technological challenge or mystery indicates a deficiency in the underlying technology which will someday be remedied. Also, don't forget one of the fundamental laws of software: your intellectual interests and the interests of your users are almost always in opposition. 99.9% of the time, there's an easy, simple, boring way to do something, and you wish you could try something interesting instead.

The Golden Rule prohibits doing things the interesting way at the expense of your users, and in a way it prohibits his entire vision of work. He thinks it's a bad thing that parts are cheaper to replace than to fix. Ecology aside, that's a very selfish way to think. It's Luddism. He wants people to forgo cheaper and more reliable transportation so he can have the pleasure of fixing their engines in a less efficient, more expensive, but more intellectually rewarding way. That's fine if he makes his living doing boutique work for well-off people who romanticize handicraft and buy his services as a narcissistic enjoyment of their own enlightenment, but it takes on a different tone when he's fixing the motorcycle of a working-class guy who needs it to get to work.

The basic problem is that anything done on a human scale is extremely expensive unless the customer makes a whole lot more money than the person doing the work. Again, it's fine when a small number of uncommonly competent people produce expensive, boutique work for the rich. Maybe it's even fine when an extra-smart guy like him decides to live a modest life fixing motorcycles. It's not fine when regular joes have to depend on the limited competence of other regular joes for such a vital thing as transportation. It's fine when it's one guy with a PhD writing a book for a bunch of urban keyboard jockeys, but an entire economy full of the work he imagines would SUCK, s-u-c-k suck. The few areas where people deal with hands-on craftsmen are a nightmare. Plumbing and contracting are crapshoots. You can pay a big chunk of your monthly budget for shoddy work. Imagine that model extending to everything you buy.

If you're over forty, there's an easy way to compare craftsmanship with the soulless corporate model. Remember what it was like to take your car to an auto mechanic instead of a dealership? Remember the grizzled guy with greasy hands and decades of wisdom who loved taking things apart, understanding how they worked, and finding the most elegant way to solve things? Yeah, he took days to work and got things right about 80% of the time. The soulless corporate dealership model actually works pretty well. So what if they don't care if the work is done in an interesting or elegant way? They want EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT which is to get your car back to you quickly in working, reliable condition so you don't go around telling your friends how much they suck ass and how their cars break down all the time. Whereas this guy wrote an entire book about what HE wants to get out of fixing your stuff.

This was an excellent sarcastic commentary on Crawford's book. I thought the reviewer took it apart quite nicely, and filed it in the correct category with so many other similar books with the same essential pattern. It's an over the top, generalized, justification for the author's personal decision. After all, he had to use his PhD somehow. His political and personal conflicts are blown up into societal ills so he can justify the waste of money on his education. :-)

I really have just about zero interest in motorcycles, and car repair in general, or really doing anything similar to that for a living. The whole macho, often misogynistic (which was identified by the review, BTW), motorcycle culture just completely turns me off. It's also seems to be a real attraction for the regressive anarchist/libertarian turned authoritarian type, which is a further turn off.

But the corporate culture is the same -- it may not have the same personalities or political culture, but there are distasteful elements we all know about personally (and from numerous Dilbert cartoons :-)). It, also, seems to be an attraction for the naive libertarian cum authoritarian. :-) I don't like it either, really.

But I like what I do, and I like being paid for what I do, so I put up with it because I can figure out way to do so. Perhaps Crawford found something he really likes and an environment which suits him. To generalize that into a condemnation of "non-physical" work seems like an utter long-shot. An attempt to counter the snobbiness of his UC peers with an snoobiness of his own.

My favorite part of the review is the end, where the reviewer delivers the final blow to Crawford' polemic -- what exactly is "useful" about repairing hobby motorcycles compared to certain forms of "office work"? :-)

IMHO: I highly recommend "Zen" for anyone's reading list.

"... fixing bikes has given him 'a place in society,' as well as an 'economically viable' job that won’t evaporate or get moved overseas."

At least until telerobotics delocalizes skilled labor. Like it or not, there's no guarantee of job security even for the plumbers and electricians and carpenters. Keeping your hands dirty will increasingly be a hobbyist anachronism or affectation. Maybe unfortunate, but so it goes. All is flux.

"Skeptical readers can savor the irony that Shockoe Moto [his motorcycle repair shop] specializes in imports."

Working on non-import (i.e. US-made) bikes would be the specialty. Otherwise, it's like writing that some restaurant specializes in salads made from lettuce.

"But how do you serve craftsmanship without serving the market? How can an independent artisan insure that he doesn’t become an entrepreneur and, in time, a corporate executive?"

What's so bad about "serving the market"?

Many of us absolutely love writing great software. Almost as much as we love watching people use our software.

We are craftsmen, in every sense of the word. We have tools we love, some of which we built ourselves. We may not wash them with soap, but we do collect the garbage from time to time.

Ours is a labor of love, often done alone, and sometimes done only for ourselves. We call that "dogfood" and it's not the only way to be a craftsman. We get double joy when someone uses our products, and no, we don't have to sell out to the man in order to do that.

If Crawford better understood what some of us do with technology, he'd probably realize that many of us are already living his utopia and his outlook would improve. Who knows, maybe his next book will be about programmers quietly building the new order in a million garages around the world.