[nubbins]

Not sure who your friends are but where I am half the young people are creatives or otherwise not traditionally full time employed and my experience has been people are far more likely to avoid you for being a boring banker/lawyer/accountant in a suit (which I used to be) than unemployed with a good story about what you are doing, which could spark a decent conversation.

[txcwpalpha]

I live in Dallas, which is notorious for being pretentious, not very creative, and pretty "corporate", so that probably contributes to the experience I've had.

[tomrod]

Hear here.

[Aeolun]

I don’t know. I’ve had to actively hide my unemployment as well to get people to take me seriously. Even switching to ‘I am a freelancer’ makes you so much more desirable as a conversation partner...

[Drdrdrq]

That's actually a great way out of this situation. Recruiters know that there are many gems among freelancers, so working on side projects or on short paid projects should put GP in a whole different category.

[nwellinghoff]

What the fuck is a "creative"?

[yoz-y]

An encompassing term for artists, designers, illustrators and other profession where your job is mainly to get original ideas and implement them.

[Latteland]

So does that mean using engineering and math as the basis of building bespoke software is not creative in that sense? Just curious, not criticism - because I always thought of designing the architecture of a large software system, making it work within constraints, codes, making it easy to work on, fit withing design constraints, a beautiful UI, even a new programming language as creative.

[yoz-y]

As far as I know no. I do agree with you that programming (and many other professions) can be/are creative. Still having the term "creative" as profession does not mean that other professions are un-creative. People like to put people in bins and give them labels, and I suppose that creative is the main ability these professions require.

Maybe one thing that is specific (at least from when I spoke with people employing creatives) is that they have more leeway on what to do.

[nwellinghoff]

yes, exactly. Its an offensive term to say the least. Scientist are the ultimate "creatives" as they create fundamental things that all other fields depend on. But somehow they don't describe themselves as "creatives". Calling yourself a "creative" at best doesn't make any sense and at worst makes you look like a jerk.

[Latteland]

I'm guessing it's "not like a boring programmer"?