I've found many of pg's essays very illuminating, but a few of the more recent ones seem less well thought out. Maybe I've just learned a lot over the last decade and it's me who has changed, or maybe his process has changed.
The first thought I had after reading the thesis of the essay is that some people don't make new things but instead maintain important things. I'm more of a builder and if wager pg considers himself one, and I assume the majority of authentic HN users are builders. However I suspect the majority of people are maintainers.
Nurses, electricians, emergency dispatchers, firefighters, mechanics, etc.
We all depend on many complex systems working in order for our lives to not fall apart. Our homes, electricity, running water, soap manufacturing, etc. Choosing to be someone who makes sure these systems keep working is a good thing to do and deserves respect and appreciation. Someday AI may do all this stuff, but someday AI may build all the new things too...
So my response to this specific essay: PG, your answer is incomplete and biased towards your own values. ikigai does a better job of answering this question already, why not build on it? Also thanks for your writing, don't stop.
My biased answer to the question:
- do lots of different things and stay curious, and with enough time, effort and luck you will find something you're good at, enjoy, the world wants, and will reward you with all the resources you need and then some. Just keep doing different things and being curious until you get there.
One last thought:
Is PG publishing less robust essays in hopes that people will be more compelled to comment and discuss them, bringing together the best ideas on the topic? Something like "the best way to get a question answered on the internet is to post the wrong answer" or however that goes...
I had completely the same thought. No everyone is a creator, and we don't want to bias the world into everyone being a creator, or a scientist, or an engineer.
Today, I feel we have far too much of a focus on "business" and all my nieces and nephew are studying some sort of business focus in their university degrees. I feel it such a waste. If everyone in the world learns to only make businesses (ignoring that a degree is not required for that), who is going to build. If everyone becomes a maker, who is going to support all the non-maker roles.
There are many people for whom their job is not their craft. They're focus - much as PGs now is, is the raising of their family, guiding their children to become good people, showing love, etc etc.
Some may argue this is "making", but that's maybe a different argument.
Your last thought is an interesting one, I hadn't heard the quote before.
> I'm more of a builder and if wager pg considers himself one, and I assume the majority of authentic HN users are builders. However I suspect the majority of people are maintainers.
A dichotomy like "builder"/"maintainer" just doesn't make sense to me anymore.
Let's take software as example:
- Is someone that pushes their project from version 1.2.1 to 1.4.7 a "builder"?
- Are Linux contributors "builders"?
- Is someone porting CLI Y to rust a "builder"?
- Is someone that wraps a GenAI LLM into a web app a "builder"?
- Is someone in offensive security a "builder" of something?
...or let's ask it differently:
- Is performance optimization "maintenance"?
- Is the fix that prevents a user of your software from accomplishing their task "maintenance"?
- Is the work on a solid infrastructure, one that brings your time to resolution (TTR) closer to zero, the work of a "maintainer"?
- Is a dependency upgrade in your project the work of a "maintainer"?
Everybody builds and maintains all the time, and every artifact once built is in need of maintenance. Technological advancements will always be a collective effort through some form of feedback. Whether you're (re-)building something frequently [0] or advancing through maintenance [1], both are just categories of equal practice.
With more time to think about this, and after rereading your comment I'm providing a new answer. Every example you listed I would consider building.
You only listed examples that relate to creating software. I'm sure the PG essay didn't mean to restrict all possibilities of what people could do to just creating software.
On one end the distinction is clear to me.
A security guard maintains the security of a facility.
A nurse maintains the health and well being of patients.
A janitor maintains the cleanliness of a facility.
Once you start bringing repairs into the scope of maintenance I can understand the distinction being blurry. I'd draw the line where a repair restores functionality to a previous state without any material improvments (to functionality or longevity). If there is a material improvments to the previously optimal state it's augmentation and therefore building.
I agree that there are roles with lots of maintenance and building in them, and you shared a lot of good examples. I also know of roles where a person does almost entirely maintenance type work or entirely building type work.
To me the distinction is whether you are restoring functionality that previously worked and then stopped, or are you creating new functionality. I would also extend the notion of functionality to include what people perceive as value. So new art that makes someone feel something would be creation. A therapist that helps someone restore their emotional wellbeing is maintenance.
My subjective anecdotal observations are that some people seem more wired for maintenance and some more wired for building and like with any attribute some are wired for both or neither. They are independent attributes that are not mutually exclusive.
So I disagree that there is no distinction, but I agree they are not mutually exclusive.
All this is kind of beside my original point though, which is that it seems like PG left maintenance out of his proposed value system.
> you are restoring functionality that previously worked and then stopped, or are you creating new functionality
Good maintenance prevents something from stopping to work in the first place. I'd frame maintenance as someone's care and effort to put up with something (Bernard Moitessier and "built to be low-maintenance" from my linked article [1] comes to mind), so I'm in strong disagreement with your distinction as stated.
Maintenance, unlike building, is a task that will inevitably occur, but it's the question if you want to put up with it and how you're doing it. Building while ignoring maintenance is just complete negligence, and if you want to allow yourself and others to be negligent, I repaired quite a bit already to understand that fixing stuff can require quite a lot of unforeseen (re-)building. I honestly think this mindset was appropriate 10-30 years ago, but doesn't sit well in our current climate anymore, whether politically, economically nor otherwise.
> I would also extend the notion of functionality to include what people perceive as value. So new art that makes someone feel something would be creation.
I wanted to avoid bringing art into this discussion because art exists purely by maintaining a dialog about it. Artifacts need to be created first, sure, but as soon as they're published they'll just become excerpts to advance in that dialog (hopefully), and there's still the artist/viewer dichotomy in the perception of value and its affiliation of feelings. Making those pieces parts of art history requires maintenance, and that's the same collective effort as with technology.
> it seems like PG left maintenance out of his proposed value system.
The first thought I had after reading the thesis of the essay is that some people don't make new things but instead maintain important things. I'm more of a builder and if wager pg considers himself one, and I assume the majority of authentic HN users are builders. However I suspect the majority of people are maintainers.
Nurses, electricians, emergency dispatchers, firefighters, mechanics, etc.
We all depend on many complex systems working in order for our lives to not fall apart. Our homes, electricity, running water, soap manufacturing, etc. Choosing to be someone who makes sure these systems keep working is a good thing to do and deserves respect and appreciation. Someday AI may do all this stuff, but someday AI may build all the new things too...
So my response to this specific essay: PG, your answer is incomplete and biased towards your own values. ikigai does a better job of answering this question already, why not build on it? Also thanks for your writing, don't stop.
My biased answer to the question: - do lots of different things and stay curious, and with enough time, effort and luck you will find something you're good at, enjoy, the world wants, and will reward you with all the resources you need and then some. Just keep doing different things and being curious until you get there.
One last thought: Is PG publishing less robust essays in hopes that people will be more compelled to comment and discuss them, bringing together the best ideas on the topic? Something like "the best way to get a question answered on the internet is to post the wrong answer" or however that goes...