Is Tim Ferriss acting like an asshole?

http://www.ideasonideas.com/2009/08/is-tim-ferriss-acting-like-an-asshole/

by karjaluoto • 17 years ago

28 41 17 years ago

ideasonideas.com

SwellJoe3• 17 years ago

I thought this was going to be one of those sites like isitchristmas.com, where it just says, "YES" in big letters.

100k• 17 years ago

istimferrisactinglikeanasshole.com is available!

tptacek9• 17 years ago

So now, look at your job, and ask yourself: How would you feel if your work was reduced to a contest? I’d guess you’d find it rather insulting.

Uh, no?

aichcon2• 17 years ago

I agree that spec work is nonsense, but these things have a way of working themselves out. If you want quality, you have to pay for it, and quality designers will charge you for it. Many times the parties who ask for spec work don't really care much for quality and thus will attract the kind of talent that is willing to do spec work. They'll get what they pay for.

I suspect the time and energy Tim spends trying to organize the book contest, look through the submissions and filter out the garbage would have been better spent just contacting a reputable designer and paying them to do a good job.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

I think that's the cynical way of looking at it. On the other hand, maybe he's not particularly concerned with going through with the effort of finding an excellent designer and spending the time discussing what he wants on his cover and would instead like to give amateur and student designers a chance to possibly get their work on the cover of a book and maybe win $250 bucks for something that they might be able to pass off as course credit (in the case of students) or that they would have done on their own time (in the case of amateurs or hobbyists).

Maybe he's not expecting professional designers to submit their best work.

aichcon2• 17 years ago

Perhaps you're right, but if I was going to release a book and put my name on it, I would want it to be designed by a professional. Books are definitely judged by their covers.

michaelfairley2• 17 years ago

What's next? GitHub is acting like an asshole?: http://contest.github.com/

This is roughly the same situation, but with code rather than art (ignoring the differences with open sourcing and whatnot). I doubt that GitHub expects the guys writing recommendation engines at Facebook/Google/wherever are going to participate in this contest for some bourbon and a GitHub account, and I doubt Tim expects big name graphic designers to make the cover of his book for $250. I certainly haven't seen any Facebook employees blogging about how the GitHub contest is demeaning to their industry though.

paulgb• 17 years ago

Likewise, I haven't seen a single programmer insulted by the Netflix Challenge. Most think it's a great thing.

alanthonyc• 17 years ago

So are netflix for that matter, I guess.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

Summary: this is a long and well-written discussion of how Tim created a contest for the design of his upcoming book, which violates many designers' belief that spec work hurts their craft.

Serious question: I absolutely do not mean to in any way demean or trivialize the work of designers, but how is doing design work for spec any different than other creative pursuits, like writing a novel, painting, or authoring a screenplay? First-time creatives usually do those things with little to no hope of getting paid, and no one seems to be up in arms. Can someone enlighten me as to the difference?

karjaluoto• 17 years ago

When you write a novel, create a painting, or author a screenplay, it remains yours at the end. You take all the risks and all the gains.

Spec is initiated by another party. Meanwhile, it takes advantage of people who have little other choice, and often leaves them with little to show for having done so.

tptacek9• 17 years ago

When you do graphic design work, it remains yours as well, unless you sign a contract that designates your deliverable as "work for hire". [%]

The "taking advantage of people" thing is a canard. Designers are in business like everybody else. There's no reason they need to be protected from the market any more than a carpenter or an architect.

[%] I don't know if Ferriss demanded a contract before accepting a submission or not, but I do know that the anti-spec brigade would have a problem with the contest either way.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

Sorry, but I'm still confused. Aren't paintings and screenplays typically sold to someone else for a fixed price after they're created, assuming someone buys them? With a book, I guess you might theoretically share in the profits.

And while spec is initiated by another party, doesn't that imply that there's at least some demand?

Let's take another approach: what's a better solution? If you have an aspiring designer with no portfolio or references, how should they get started? I hire designers, and I'd be reluctant to hire someone with no track record...what if I hate what they produce?

Alex3917• 17 years ago

"It takes advantage of people who have little other choice, and often leaves them with little to show for having done so."

Not true at all. To get a top job in most professions you need a four year degree from a 40k-a-year school. If you want to be a designer who charges 30k per website, all you need is a portfolio proving you can deliver on your promises.

Doing three websites for free or cheap over a 40 year career hardly strikes me as exploitative. Especially since the winner of this contest is going to get tens of thousands of dollars worth of free publicity.

tptacek9• 17 years ago

It is in no way at all different.

SwellJoe3• 17 years ago

So, now that I've actually read the article I feel like ranting a bit.

The thing about these kinds of contests is that they serve a niche that very much wanted filling: Low budget design projects that "real" design firms wouldn't touch.

Large clients already get ideas on spec from those design firms...this "contest" process just makes it possible for small companies to get the same treatment. Yes, it comes from less experienced designers, and it comes with some additional problems (like the unpredictability of follow-on work, which may or may not be of reasonable quality and may or may not be available from the same designer at all). But, for one-off design work, like a logo, it's simply the best way for a small business to get design work done quickly and cost-effectively.

When times get tough, as in a recession, folks often start looking for people to blame for their own reduced income. Some folks blame immigrants, and this is just an indirect version of that...blaming foreigners for working too cheap and cheapening their trade by accepting these contest terms. Because the reality is that most of the designers taking part in $250 contests are overseas.

The funny thing is that software shops have historically gotten some flack for using design contests and such...but the fact is software development was among the first to experience this pressure from cheap overseas white collar human resources. We hackers have been dealing with it far longer than designers, and though a few among us belly-ache and bitch and moan, most of us have embraced the differences and compete on quality and taste rather than price.

In other words: Tim Ferriss, while possibly an asshole on other occasions and for other reasons, is not acting like an asshole by holding a design contest.

tonystubblebine• 17 years ago

Thank you. I would be interested to hear a designer's take on what the downsides to spec work are for me. But everytime I read an anti-spec rant it includes accusations directed at me that are patently false, like that I ran a spec contest because I don't value or respect the work of designers. No, I ran a spec contest because it was the only thing I could afford.

The second, and most obvious criticism of anti-spec arguments, is that the designers on the other end are choosing to engage in them. If the anti-spec crowd can't convince designers who participate in spec contests, why should we pay them any attention?

For people who feel so passionately about a topic, I wish they would at least put the time into creating a more compelling argument.

potatolicious5• 17 years ago

> Large clients already get ideas on spec from those design firms

No, this is not the same. Large clients get little bits of spec work done for them which, on the whole, are not very useful in an of itself. To actually get the work done they will still need to pick a winning bidder and pay them fairly for the work.

In other words, the invested effort vs. the potential reward is pretty favorable for the design firm. For one thing, you're not competing against 50,000 other people on the interwebs, and secondly there's no danger of the client "stealing" your work - since they themselves would have little use for what amounts to an insignificant portion of the grand project.

That's a pretty key difference - in this case Ferriss has not promised a contract to the winning bidder, and what he is asking for is complete work directly. This strikes me as unfair. Where the traditional spec-work model is supposed to be a "try before you buy" thing, Ferriss is simply asking for a bunch of free, final copies to be produced for him gratis.

tptacek9• 17 years ago

Are you saying Ferris is "stealing" work from his submissions, or did you just mention theft to further muddy the waters?

run4yourlives3• 17 years ago

>for him gratis.

No, not for free - for trade. He's offering all the publicity that he can generate as a return gesture. If you think that is a worthy trade, great. If not, great too.

Stop forcing people to negotiate their deals on your terms. It's called a free market for a reason.

SwellJoe3• 17 years ago

For one thing, you're not competing against 50,000 other people on the interwebs

You're always competing with lots of other people; and there will be more to compete with tomorrow than there are today. That is the reality of the ever-shrinking world in which we live. The good news is that those same people entering the market are also consumers of goods and services, and thus grow the total value of the market, making humanity as a whole richer.

Anyway, if you don't want to compete, you shouldn't be in a competitive customer-facing industry. You should work for someone else, far away from the sales and marketing process. Design is pretty much always tightly coupled with marketing; them's the breaks.

there's no danger of the client "stealing" your work

This is a wholly orthogonal issue.

There's always danger of clients not paying, checks bouncing, promises not being kept, people stealing art from the web. It goes both ways: I've had designers flake on me and not keep promises and deadlines. This is not relevant to the discussion at hand. Theft of design work happens, but it's not exclusive to the design contest model (and I've never even heard that it's a major problem with the model, but I don't follow it very closely; but, I think the very act of putting up the contest indicates the client would rather buy art than grab something off of the Internet and re-purpose it for free). And, we are specifically talking about someone for whom stealing $250 worth of work would do dramatically more damage to his reputation than a measly 250 bucks. I don't think Tim Ferriss would steal $250 worth of design work.

Where the traditional spec-work model is supposed to be a "try before you buy" thing, Ferriss is simply asking for a bunch of free, final copies to be produced for him gratis.

What a tyrant. Good thing you can decline the offer.

run4yourlives3• 17 years ago

The no spec movement is what is nonsense, to be perfectly frank.

Listen, I hate having my work undervalued too. I get it. But guess what? The value of my work isn't what I think it is, it is what other people think it is.

That's the heart of the matter: Designers tend to have inflated ideas of their value; more importantly, non designers tend to have low opinions of design work.

You can't sell BMW's to people who think a Chevy is more than enough. Crying that a person that comes into your dealership and says: "My budget is $20K" is some sort of religious persecution isn't winning you any friends. Even worse, suggesting that Chevy should start selling their cars at $50K so that they can see how much better your bimmers are smacks of self-righteous ego.

The whole point of spec or contests or paying for a cheaper solution is that the customer has already decided that the value of your work is not worth the cost. Get over yourself already and go sell to people who do appreciate whatever it is you offer.

Set your price at what you consider fair, then find the right customer. If you can survive, great, but don't tell others in different situations what to do please.

tptacek9• 17 years ago

A funny part of the AIGA position on spec work is that it "devalues the industry". Which, of course, it does, if by "devalue" you mean "reduces the cost to access". By the same token, you can always "improve" the value of something by colluding with all the suppliers to jack up the price.

stevenj• 17 years ago

Cover artist for "The 4-Hour Workweek": Barbara Sturman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_4-Hour_Workweek

richcollins• 17 years ago

The author doesn't understand spec work at all. The reason we hire people on spec, is because an artist's portfolio usually gives you very little indication of whether they will do a good job of executing the project at hand.

If an artist has good samples of the exact type of work I will be hiring them for, spec isn't needed. It really has nothing to do with a perception of artists as cheap talent.

lionhearted• 17 years ago

Maybe this will get dead'ed, but I understand where the author is coming from. Believe it or not, what designers are feeling and how they're acting is nothing all that special or unique - it's happened to many different fields over the course of history. When a new, cheaper way of doing things comes around, buyers celebrate, and sellers get really, really upset.

Do you know the term "Luddite", meaning someone that's technologically backwards? It came from loomweavers who protested and actually broke mechanized looms that made weaving (and thus clothing) much cheaper. Not too long ago, people bought or made a new shirt every year or two. One shirt. You wore it all year, and patched it up if it tore. It was expensive! It all hand-weaved.

When mechanized looms came in, it sped weaving up - clothes got a lot cheaper, but less weavers were needed. Many weavers didn't like that. Some actually took to breaking looms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite -

"The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their entire way of life."

Horse drivers protested cars once they started catching on too. This is how it goes. It's not a glamorous passing of the torch with dignity or anything like that. Design used to cost a hell of a lot, and now it doesn't necessarily.

But I sympathize. It happened to web designers too. The first website I had commissioned cost something like $13,000 and it wasn't all that long ago. (It was late and over budget - but the features were really good for the era. We had a scrolling news bar - I can't even begin to explain how cutting edge that was for the time)

Paul Graham sold Viaweb for $45 million. I had something with more power and fuctionality put together only a few years later for $13,000. Now you could get similar quality for $500-$1000 professionally, or hack around with a CMS and do it for a couple hundred bucks yourself.

But I imagine a lot of website designers and coders lost their jobs, or changed the way they did business. It was a gravy train for a while - now, not so much. I can imagine that there's a designer somewhere throwing darts at a picture of Matt Mullenweg, saying, "Curse you and your Wordpress! Curse you! Curse you to hell!"

For tangible products, I still pay for design I know is good with someone that can capture emotion very well. But if it's just a project I'm slapping up and come what may, I'll Elance that sucker and get 10 potential, slapped together designs for $50. I'll spend another $20 to $50 to iterate on that and it'll work to start. Actually, forget Elance these days - 99designs.com looks like the future. Fellow Hacker Newser bobz turned me onto the site - it looks pretty amazing for getting a passable design done on a budget.

But I do sympathize. Progress is all the consumers of society, but it can be painful for the people who produced the old way. You can look at the legacy airlines or United Auto Workers or farriering (horseshoeing) or swordssmiths or "workstation" style superpowered computers, or any number of things. People had to radically change how they did their work, or change their work, or not work.

I sympathize. A good designer is worth a hell of a lot, and the proven, world class designers will continue to be paid well for highly leveraged projects.

The price pressure for the bottom is here to stay though - people in rural parts of developing countries, high school kids and maybe even middle school kids, people just casually screwing around who don't care about the craft... and, maybe even, some people who work fast and can put out a first iteration in 20-30 minutes, and revise it in another 20-30 minutes, and win a $200 contest 1/4th of the time they enter. That'd be $50/hour in money and they'd have a huge portfolio that they can use to revise on as templates for jobs or sell as stock design afterwards.

The old way is gone. The new way will work once we all adjust. But we ought to sympathize with the plight of people who are forced to change through no fault of their own - change is typically hard and unpleasant, and you and I will curse the next time our fields change as well.

lacker• 17 years ago

How would you feel if your work was reduced to a contest? I’d guess you’d find it rather insulting.

But, there are programming contests. They are fun, not insulting.

Is Tim Ferriss acting like an asshole?

Related Stories