Work is Play

Work is Play.
Pairing is Caring.
Caring is Work.

— Tim Jarratt

edit : this is part one of a three part post. Click here to go to part two.

Ever since the late 2000s, I’ve been an Extreme Programming (XP) practitioner. Where I once thought that writing software was a slog, a joyless task, and a necessary evil to earn a paycheck, my introduction to XP showed me that there is a better way to work. Discovering practices like TDD and pair programming saved my life and reinvigorated my interest in my career.

After a decade of pair programming the thought occurred to me that our jobs should be fun. Why should this not be the case ? Life is too short to spend it tragically working in situations that don’t make you and the people around you feel happy.

And yet, most jobs in tech suck. Why is that ? What could we do to make the human condition better ?

Caveat : there is a lot of nuance in arguing about how we structure employment. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to be primarily arguing that the work we do as knowledge workers should be fun, although I strongly believe this argument can be extended to other fields (manual work, first responders, healthcare, etc)

What’s a job, any way ?

If people get used to the idea that work can be lighthearted and fun, the existing power structures will be weakened. Chaos! Anarchy!

— unknown