Optimism of the Dispensable

The creative field is a brutal one, in which jobs are lost frequently, often without any correlation to competence. There's a crucial truth to creative employment that makes this happen; a truth that very few of us are comfortable acknowledging: our jobs are dispensable.

The fact is, consumer goods are often produced without the input of product designers, buildings are built without architects, and web sites are created without web designers.

(...) If the designer doesn't do his or her job, on the other hand, the company still exists. It still does what it does, and maybe makes money, at least until a competitor with the ability to be innovative as well as all that other stuff moves in and eats up their market. We constitute a competitive advantage, not a necessity, and lacking an advantage only matters if your competitor has it and you don't.

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