[AttakBanana]

I agree with most of the article. There's a part of the world that makes a distinction between "technical" and "creative" which bothers me even more.

Putting yourself or someone else in a bucket of "technical" or "non-technical" creates a subconscious barrier to expanding your skills beyond your label while also giving you an excuse, and others the same low expectations.

It is also a gray area I feel. Is writing efficient code a technical skill, while keeping maintainable or readable a soft skill? The difference seems similar to me.

I might be totally off here, but having a distinction has always felt weird to me.

[atoav]

As a guy with an MA in fine Arts who now leads a technical job I think this is an arbitrary decision.

I would draw the line differently. The line needs to be between people who have to care about how things work and people who are not willing to or don't have to care.

If you are in a tech company ideally everybody cares to some degree about the product. And caring about the product means understanding the different alternate-reality versions of that product and comparing them. And that requires some technical knowledge.

If you're the janitor or the security at that company that does not apply to you. If you are running a team, guess what.

[krisoft]

> There's a part of the world that makes a distinction between "technical" and "creative" which bothers me even more.

Depends on context of course. In game dev someone who is "technical" can be asked to make the FPS higher during the boss fight, but can't be expected to re-sculpt the boss to make them look more muscular. Someone who is "creative" goes the other way around.

Someone who is "creative" uses blender/maya/z-brush/photoshop to solve problems, someone who is "technical" uses a text editor/compiler/debugger/profiler. It is a very different role. Some can do both, which is great of course, but pretending that everyone is a unicorn will not make happy outcomes.

> Putting yourself or someone else in a bucket of "technical" or "non-technical" creates a subconscious barrier to expanding your skills beyond your label while also giving you an excuse, and others the same low expectations.

Or describing someone's skills accurately they can figure out what they could be improving on.

[AttakBanana]

Your first example is precisely what I mean.

Making the FPS higher, might require some creative hacks. Making a 3D model look exactly like your vision might require highly technical knowledge about your tools.

Going beyond acceptable standards, imo, requires both technical and creative skills. And I believe the split is closer than we think.

On the second note, I understand the point, however, it's subjective how it makes the person feel. I have seen many instances of "creative" people shy away from technical things because its "not who they are" and vice-versa.

[krisoft]

> Making the FPS higher, might require some creative hacks. Making a 3D model look exactly like your vision might require highly technical knowledge about your tools.

Of course everyone in a knowledge economy needs to use technical skills and also be creative. That is not what those job categories mean.