[greyswan]

My uncle had a successful career in advertising. He would always say to me, "don't be just a wrist." He meant participate in guiding the concept and strategy instead of just being an execution person.

I've been in the design industry for 15 years now. When I was starting out, there was a flurry of philosophizing about design. There was a belief that designers should focus on solving problems instead of just making slick UIs. I don't see that discussion anymore. I see a bunch of "wrists" arguing over which pencil is best.

Maybe I'm just an aging curmudgeon...

[davidivadavid]

I was going to say my experience is kind of the opposite — everyone seems to be waxing poetical about "design thinking" but UI work is more and more cut and paste. That being said, the "wrists" may just have moved one abstraction level higher, and they're parroting design thinking tropes (design sprints, etc.) instead of lower level ones.

[raindropm]

Good execution compliment good strategy. I think you can also be the valuable wrist that hard to replace.

I've seen people who knows about the theory and have creative idea, but the end result they made is just...lacking?, because they focus just about the strategy part and kinda look down on the importance of good execution. They may know that it is not good, not what they envisioned, but they don't know how to make it better because they don't know how the production process works, and usually have to accept what the vendor gives you.

But well yeah, there are certainly people that just want to be a wrist and not thinking too much about anything.

[softwarejosh]

Anecdotes like this are rarely widely seen, maybe its your companies hiring or your location?