
The Solvers' Manifesto - hugoahlberg
http://www.solversmanifesto.com/
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Wolf_Larsen
This is not something that anyone should aspire to. You are proud of
mediocrity, desperation, and identity crisis?

"We are experts in nothing, yet we know a great deal about almost anything."

"But most of us are exploited, doing odd jobs for you just because we are the
only ones that know how to do it."

"We are not jobless, yet there is no name for what we do. And because of that,
our craft hasn't earned any respect."

This is just emotional, self-satisfying bait for unsuccessful freelancers and
cheap employees to feel good over. You should not feel good about being a
struggling freelancer (I certainly don't!) or a cheap employee - and you
should work hard to develop skills that transcend such a state.

You should NOT be reading this garbage and feel part of a "tribe" and get
comfortable.

All of you who upvoted: Do better.

~~~
wladimir
Though I agree that the manifest is worded a bit negatively in a few places,
being somewhat of a generalist does not mean that you're mediocre in
everything, or a cheap employee.

"We are experts in nothing, yet we know a great deal about almost anything."
to me, seems to imply that you know a lot about a lot of things, and have
developed your skills, though have not dived deep enough to be considered
expert in some narrow area.

It's the kind of person I've always aspired to be, as I have very wide
interests. Also: technologies come and go, which means that, if you're
invested too much in a specific niche, you might find yourself "useless" some
day.

~~~
Wolf_Larsen
"being somewhat of a generalist does not mean that you're mediocre in
everything, or a cheap employee."

No, it doesn't.

~~~
stcredzero
It's very important that you're not mediocre in absolutely everything. There
should be at least one field you know in depth. As far as I know, this is the
only way anyone ever gets a good feel for what it means to know anything in
depth. It's much better to know two or more things in depth. Then the
generalizations you make about deep knowledge in areas where you're not an
expert will be operating on more data.

It's also common to know one thing in depth, but then fail to realize what
this implies about every other field of knowledge. It's not a good thing, IMO.

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NSMeta
Being able to solve problems outside of your domain knowledge is a very good
skill to have. Especially, in start ups.

This manifesto implicitly states that you're either an expert, or a person
with broad skills. Why can't one be both: an _expert with broad skills_ ?

~~~
stcredzero
It's very important to be both. One needs to be aware of the breadth of
knowledge. One also needs to be aware of how deep knowledge in one small area
can go. Being an expert in a few things with broad familiarity in other fields
is the only practical way to accomplish this.

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olalonde
Sorry for offending anyone but this came off to me as pompous and somewhat
pathetic.

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kilian
Clicking the link I was hoping for a "get shit done" type of manifesto, i.e.
"Stop complaining things are impossible, and try, fail and try until you
succeed", not a "You shouldn't be doing this, but if the client's paying, what
the hey!?" type of thing. Now I want to write that former manifesto.

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ollysb
I certainly know people that would fit into the category that they describe. I
consider them massively underpaid given the amount of value that they bring to
any project they work on. They act as the glue and enablers for product
developers, designers, front end coders and developers whilst being able to
act partially or fully as many of these roles. They all started as designers
but have become much more. I recognise the need for this role to be named but
Solvers definitely isn't it. I've often pondered what this role should be
called but I'm still at a loss. Hopefully we can find it so that these guys
can begin to be awarded the respect and pay that they deserve.

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blatherard
"Webmaster" or "Web Developer" were the terms I remember people like this
having back in the pre-bubble days. They didn't have to know so much about
video back then, but otherwise "Solvers" sound the same.

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kajecounterhack
Nice words, though personally I don't like the sound of "We are a tribe" and
"Just show some appreciation once in a while." Both seem kind of negative in
one way or another, though maybe it's just me.

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KevBurnsJr
I like to call it being an "Intelligence worker" as opposed to a "Knowledge
worker"

