Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether.

Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

The paradox is baked in, and some of us do our best to navigate it.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made.

Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.

>Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether.

This is a mixup that the author of the article makes as well:

>Copying and pasting code without understanding it.

>Sending resumes and emails that aren’t proofread and edited.

>Asking others to review code without giving it a self review.

>Noticing a quality issue and failing to document or fix it.

These are not issues of taste.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do

Why's that? Profit, of course, is just the measure of how much trade is undelivered.

The old: I give you my corn to feed your chickens, and at some point in the future you will give me chickens in return once they are fed and grown. The amount of undelivered chickens are my profit. But eventually you will provide the chickens as promised, theoretically. Fair trade doesn't seem tasteless.

And if I forever hold on to that profit and never expect you to give me the chickens in the future as you originally promised, then I literally gave you the corn for free. How could it be tasteless to help someone out by giving them something for free?

Perhaps you are actually thinking of something like regulatory capture that is oft associated with profit? I can see how that becomes quite tasteless and certainly the tech industry in particular loves to exploit that. I am not sure that underpins our professional efforts, though. The tech industry would still exist even without all the insane laws that surround it.

Pretty good comment. It's a spectrum right? So if you went all in on profits you are likely all in on tastelessness. If you profit a small amount your probably only shedding a bit of your taste.

However I would wager the argument many people have is that they view their professional life as not utilizing their taste and that is reserved for decisions in their private lives (for those who still keep the two relatively distinct). For those who have truly merged professional and personal and gone all in profit -- original point probably stands. Thats pretty tasteless!

Almost all the artifacts considered beautiful from the last 500 years came from the use of excess profit invested into beauty and legacy.

>Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

Speak for yourself, not everyone works for the paycheck.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

This needs some justification. Profits are what you get when you can do something for less than you charge for it, and be competitive. To not be good enough to make profit you need to be able to force money out of people e.g. with taxes.

Hang on, it depends on the intent.

Should an entity strive to be profitable? of course. How else will it be self sustaining?

The problem arises when entities maximize for profit with no non-financial values that underpin their decision making.

OK, Banksy.