Think you missed the point. Burn out can come from working in a sclerotic organisation where you fail to achieve your goals (despite doing fine professionally and financially and going home at 4pm). This became obvious to the author when other aspects of life were diminished. It also seems procrustean to assume everyone should conform to your notion of work life balance. Working hard on a problem of perceived importance may be exactly what someone wants from life.
I mean sure, the author is in a somewhat luxurious position. But then, why does anyone leave Google if not for some version of this.
Ultimately people like to have some ownership in direction of projects and products.
Many times that is taken from you on larger teams.
It is odd that HBS and value extractors (business/finance/project/marketing) have taken so much power from value creators (creatives/developers/product people) in terms of the power balance, most people know that makes bad products and was really the basis of capitalism starting, ownership of direction.
> In his landmark 1776 work The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith showed that a clever division of labor could make a commercial enterprise vastly more productive than if each worker took personal charge of constructing a finished product. [1]
The project managers and finance want to make the product now, from a value extraction viewpoint over a value creation one. It ultimately leads many value creators to go do their own thing.
No matter how hard they try to remove the creative element of product creation, it is actually a key input to successful projects.
Products are like creative works, they should be built with depth, deep dives and aim to be a fun experience and friend of the user.
Bottom up processes can create great products with polish and love, they are value creation processes.
Top down processes and deadlines create shallow features and products, they are value extraction processes.
The best value creation process is just an iterative/incremental cycle, with lots of power in the court of the value creators over the value extractors.
What is bottom up vs top down process? It isn't mentioned in your link.
> The best value creation process is just an iterative/incremental cycle, with lots of power in the court of the value creators over the value extractors.
This is consistent with the development process I've used with my game/app (nebulous) for the last 7 years. I learned very early on that players responded directly (as in told me via reviews and emails) and overwhelmingly positively to frequent substantiative updates. Early on it pushed me to find my absolute limit: ~2 weeks of < 4 hours of sleep each night, on a ~28 hour day schedule.
I kept bureaucracy, overhead, and expenses to a minimum and have been fortunate enough to reap the rewards over an extended period of time. My focus has always been on maximizing user experience first, revenue second.
More power/product decisions from the bottom or the developers/creatives/value creators than the top down project managers/finance/value extractors.
Yes, making your own projects is almost a requirement or having side projects when work in on a big team on your day job or other projects. Everyone needs a creative outlet and programming, no matter how hard they try to remove it, is a creative process.
While revenue/value extraction is important long term, it is much easier to sell when love/value creation is present. You can't market and extract value from value that isn't there. You can't rush a quality game mechanic that makes all aspect of your game fun.
Creativity doesn't always fit a 8-6 tightly wound agile process focused on just revenue, you need some open mode or play with that closed mode. It is why indies and artists or writers perform better when they can control their own destiny more. With less oversight directing you to short chance important parts or prototypes, there is more play and open mode which always leads to a better refined product especially where "fun" is part of the product.
Thank you for teaching me two new words and their expressions. English not a first language for me so it is nice to encounter new expressions, which actually isn't that often. Thanks
I mean sure, the author is in a somewhat luxurious position. But then, why does anyone leave Google if not for some version of this.