How to do the work

> I am a terrible employee. I don’t like being told what to do. I have a very hard time not calling out bullshit coming out of someone’s mouth. I don’t like having my time monitored. But the thing that really made me a terrible employee is that I like to work. Honestly, I love working. I love doing things. Making things. Solving problems. I fold socks for fun, man! And working for other people was more about the appearance of work, and making sure certain people saw you putting on the appearance of work. And being put in situations where I was kept from working. None of this is meant to disparage people who enjoy being good employees. This is just how my brain works. > But I needed money for things like rent and food and records, so I had to figure out a way to earn that money without getting a job. So Erika and I built ourselves a little design company that worked the way we wanted to work. And while I’m not saying that was easy, it meant that we were in charge of our own decisions, both good and bad ones. And whenever we tried to blame management for something, well it was just a Spider-Man meme. > As tech changed, so did our relationship with it. But we’ve never stopped doing the thing we love doing. We’re a design shop. And while we may not have the same relationship with the industry as we once did, our hearts will always be with helping other designers. > My love was never for an industry. My love was always for design, those who practice it, and the people whose lives we can improve with it. > The good news—the very good news—is that our dismay, our frustration, comes from a desire to continue being useful. That desire to continue being useful is a feeling to hold onto, and to cherish, and to honor. That desire to continue being useful is what makes us human, and it’s incompatible with an industry that wants to exploit and murder other humans to maximize profit. And despite the savage way in which the tech industry is casting its workers aside, I’ve found that the percentage of those workers that want to continue being useful is high. Which begs the question, where can we be useful now?