The Gatekeeper
Recently read some articles from Julie Zhuo’s, she is a Product design director in Facebook. Although her posts are not about engineering, I still feel connected with most of the topics. I wrote some of my thoughts originally, but I think just put the quotes here is enough.
If you are somebody with an incredible amount of passion for high quality, you may be compelled to become a gatekeeper at some point in your life.
If you are a gatekeeper or find yourself thinking we need a gatekeeper, the thing that is broken or missing is trust. So instead of judging yes or no, good or bad, consider this instead: what could I do to make it so that I have more trust in the people around me?
Every person who works in a creative field has an aspiration for her work, a yearning for that ideal plane which is the culmination of her taste.
When an environment fails, over and over and over again, to provide her with a means to follow her internal compass, then she will leave.
If you are in a position to influence that kind of environment, take heed. Lay the foundations for a space that nurtures, that yields the kind of work the best creative people can be proud of.
Quality is a bar, not a tradeoff.
It just doesn’t work like that.
Why? Because to create high-quality work, there has to be a minimum acceptable bar. And high-quality creators cannot trade off below that bar. They simply can’t.