Shop Class As Soulcraft

Today I finished Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into The Value Of Work by Matthew B. Crawford.

The book makes the argument that separating knowledge from being able to work with the physical world is bad for workers in many ways. It is push back on the knowledge economy. The story is based on his own experience working as a motorcycle repairman after getting his PhD and working some office jobs.

If the subject makes you think of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, there are a few shared ideas, but this book isn't insane.

I have mix feelings about this book.

First some good:

Sections of the book are clear articulations of thoughts that have guided my career and education. If anyone wants to understand why I chose electrical engineering over computer science and engineering over other fields, this book would be a good place to start - the core idea being working within the constraints of the physical world and seeing ones efforts cause something to actually work both theoretically and practically. Even though he does makes some comments about repair being superior to design (I think most of those comments are based on ignoring several aspects of design).

He even made some comments on creativity that very nearly matched my own.

Some ok:

He makes some good points about the modern office. Especially about how when people work in teams on poorly defined tasks it is difficult to evaluate the success of both the group and individual, vs in repair where either the repairman gets the motorcycle to work or doesn't. And how this puts managers in a strange position. Also how the knowledge of success vs failure is key to satisfaction in work. He also gets into how demoralizing it can be when the goal is something monetarily based, such as number of pages written, instead of working towards quality.

He also discusses how advertising and marketing reveals people's desires to build and repair their own stuff. He discusses marketing campaigns such as the Scion where they have people purchase options to make them feel like they are working on their car, when they are really just buying more stuff.

Some bad:

He takes most of his points to extremes - such as I toned the comments about the office way down.

My biggest issue with the book is that he encourages people to consider vocational school over college, especially since for some people they can make more money if they are willing to accept blue collar jobs. First, I question if that's true, much of the recent discussion of the labor market I've seen is about how recently those with college degrees are pulling even further ahead of those without. Second, even if it was, there are other reasons to go to college, such as just being an education person. Also this is one of the most "academic" books (outside of science and textbooks) that I've ever read which seems somewhat ironic given its subject matter. It's also a bit odd that a book suggesting going to votech made me feel like I should have taken a philosophy class before reading it.

The author doesn't bother at all with balance. He's all about getting away from specialization of labor as well as other aspects of corporations, but doesn't address what would happen if there was actually a major shift back to engineers doing their own building and writing their own user manuals. It never comes up that products would be significantly more expensive and the economy would tank. Not to mention that he does not suggest how reasonably complex projects would be designed or built. A good example of the lack of balance is when I made comments about creativity on this blog several people made good counterpoints and that's my personal blog - this book did nothing to address that there is more than one side to it.

Finally the size:

I really like the size of the book - it isn't a little pocket book, but still fits in a pocket so as I read through the wheel of time at home, I've been reading this book while doing laundry and hanging out on castro st. All books should be this size and if they need to be longer they can be split into multiple volumes. Also makes me wish there was a mini-kindle that bends a little.