Back in 1995, when I first became interested in the internet, everything seemed promising. The idea of working “with the internet” was fascinating, but at the same time completely mysterious. There were no places where you could learn to build a website, learn a programming language, or learn to use the systems. There were sites and portals that “sold banner space.” You know how people say everything is on Google today? Back then there wasn’t even a decent Google to make your life easier. Basically, there were no ready-made tools. It was a time when you had to be self-taught, curious, and ambitious, maybe even audacious!
This was Google in 1995. When I joined Catho, we were the “internet department,” where a bunch of kids (yes, we were 17, 18, 20 at most) shared the same ambition: to explore that still uncharted territory and find solutions to problems that no longer exist today. We all had the same interests and the same strengths; we learned the hard way, by trial and error, with our own algorithms and our own processes. Everyone was “full stack” in their own work environment: “the marketing guys,” “the creative guys,” “the programming guys.” Over the years, things started showing up ready-made on the internet: frameworks, software for this and that, templates, guides, ready-to-use code, and so on. And what happened? Professionals stopped creating and started consuming ready-made packages, software that hands you everything, quick fixes for complex processes, manuals, standards, ready-made recipes for every single activity. Yes, it’s encouraging to see that many startups were born to solve problems, that the solutions to our problems are just a click away, handed to us simple, fast, and outsourced. But I wonder: where are the real developers these days? This lack of self-sufficiency, disguised by software and tools, has greatly undermined our ability to act, putting us in a passive stance toward creative processes that reach us already finished. Just as Ford predicted, we increasingly take part in only one part of the process, without understanding the whole or how it got there. There are far more code customizers, tool customizers, framework customizers, and dashboard operators than real developers, and when I say developers, I don’t mean programmers, but every professional who is there to develop some activity. In marketing, for example, with so many tools, so many solutions, and so many ready-made recipes, we end up leaving our processes, data, and results stored with third-party companies, without the two sides (your company and the vendor) talking to each other. That is why so many other platforms are built to integrate with others. It seems that by solving one problem, we end up creating many more. Welcome to the age of having everything, but nothing integrated. Today, in times of crisis, I see many companies hiring full stackers, those multitasking professionals who have more than 20 tools on their desktop to handle each function. We have gone back to the days when a professional mastered the whole and not just one part. Personally, I love working with full stackers! What if we turned everything upside down? What if we rethought our work environments? What if we used only paper, pen, and our ability to create to rethink some of these paths? Our organizational deck has been stacked for a long time. We need a new deck.
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