| The term "creative" has multiple meanings, and I think in the sense they intend, the software engineers at Pixar are in fact not creative. The following story may make the difference easier to see. I've been interviewing a lot of independent filmmakers, asking if they'd be interested in pitching ideas for webisodes to brands that want entertaining content. The prize if their pitch is chosen is that the brand would pay for them to produce the series. So far the filmmakers I've talked to fall into two camps (actually one camp and one individual, but I'm sure there are other filmmakers like this person): the first absolutely love the idea, and the second basically said the money would never be worth it. The essential difference is whether they are creatives. All of these filmmakers are paid very well for taking someone else's creative idea and converting it into a video. All of them love their jobs. But the first group of filmmakers then spends all their extra time and money making their own creative work. The second group has no narrative films of their own, and talked about what a relief it is that they don't have to be involved in the script, the storyboard, or any other part of "creative" (their word). Software engineering is similar. I became a software developer after being a jazz trumpet player for 10 years, and the single biggest surprise for me was how creative programming is. You can come up with an idea and create almost anything with nothing but your brain and an internet-connected computer! The creativity in that is awesome. But many developers don't actually have an interest in coming up with the concept or UI. And certainly most developers, whether they'd like to or not, have very little involvement in the core concept behind the software they're developing. At Pixar, the software engineers have little to do with the plot, characters, dialog, or storyboarding. While I'm sure they solve problems creatively, and they do actually create the story by bringing the already drawn characters to life with realistic animation, this isn't what Pixar means by creative. |