Finds

In April, I read an email newsletter from Vivianne Castillo that I still think about at least weekly. (I don’t have a direct link to that newsletter, but you can learn more from Vivianne at Choose Courage Inc).

In that April newsletter, Vivianne drew a strong distinction between commerce and capitalism:

“Commerce is ancient. It’s the act of exchanging goods and services, rooted in mutual benefit, community, and often reciprocity. Indigenous economies, barter systems and local markets have existed long before capitalism.

“Capitalism is a specific economic system where trade and industry are driven by private ownership for profit, often prioritizing profit over social, emotional, physical, spiritual or environmental wellbeing.

“Commerce has been around for thousands of years. It’s often communal and rooted in relationship, a give-and-receive between neighbors, makers, and healers.

“Capitalism … is not. It’s an economic system built on accumulation, ownership, and extraction. It measures success by how much you can scale, dominate, and monetize.”

- words of wisdom from Vivianne Castillo in the April 24, 2025 newsletter from https://www.hmntycntrd.com/

To me, this understanding is the best attitude to take into the business of UX: charging money, as an employee, consultant, or freelancer, for doing the good work of designing experiences for people. We love our work so much, we should do it for free, right? But economic systems are also social systems. We don’t have to be cut-throat, or model ourselves after tanks of misunderstood sharks, in order to value the work we do.

The same theme appears in the article I want to share with you today, In Defence of Enshittification by Andy Budd. Andy makes the argument that if companies are offering products at free and premium tiers, then it’s the paying customers that are subsidizing the experience existing at all. It’s an important argument (and it defends enshittification in pretty limited circumstances.)

In my experience (in the USA, working primarily in high-tech), the concept of the square deal of “charge a fair amount of money for services provided” has never applied to software. Perhaps that’s why capitalists like it so much? Even in the early days of software, the actual bits and bytes that were sold were unconstrained by supply. The capitalists are free to create circumstances that make as much money as possible, and that is understood to be (and required to be, for publicly-traded companies) the company’s sole reason for being. Hence the shitty purposes for enshittification that Andy Budd doesn’t try to defend.

But this capitalistic tendency is how the software manufacturer can afford to pay salaries out-of-scale with the other jobs available locally. The goods themselves (the experiences and services, delivered electronically) cost so little on a per-item basis.  I can’t help but notice the effect of those out-of-scale salaries on my region, where Microsoft and Boeing grew up. The people with the most money didn’t necessarily work harder or smarter than their neighbors, but they did make a heck of a lot more money.

I don’t have any answers, but I recognize that I have more thinking to do—as a person running a business, as a technologist, and as a citizen. If I want a fair deal, a “square deal” for others, I would need to accept that I have benefited from the inequities, too. One step, for me, is to recognize the importance of commerce and not throw it out with the capitalism.

Flex & fumble

I was excited to get the feedback from our technical reviewers of the full manuscript of UX Skills for Business Strategy. There was quite a bit of constructive feedback, for which I am very grateful. In more than 500 pages of text (in the Google docs, not the final layout), there are many things we want to improve, and the reviewers helped us find ways to refine the structure, organization, and details within the text.

Also, I’m immensely grateful for my co-authors, Maya Joseph-Goteiner and Kim Mats Mats. I can’t imagine writing this book without them; it’s so big, it’s so comprehensive, it’s so many details and interrelations. It is the most ambitious project I’ve ever initiated, and it’s audacious in what it’s trying to do.

Which also means it’s terrifying. I’m the leader of this escapade, but I’m new to leading intense, massive, concentrated projects that I came up with. I definitely pushed us too hard last weekend: Even on the third straight day of hard work, on the final afternoon we were together, I brought up “Let’s get clearer on how we talk about strategy…” And somehow I was baffled that my co-authors weren’t fresh as daisies to jump into this concept that would have been challenging at the beginning of the weekend. I was absurd about this, and in that moment, failed to trust that they weren’t just mad at me. What a fumble! In the week since that weekend, I’ve had time to get over myself. My co-authors and I have all been working on the new skills identified, and the tweaks to the organization that will make the book maximally useful and understandable.

Philosophy

I love the sense of anticipation when the weather changes in ways that foretell bigger changes ahead. Here, it shows up as cooler mornings, the ragged bottom edges of clouds that skim the ground, the geese in constant conversation as they practice flying in formation for their migration, and the brilliant sunshine tilting more sideways than overhead.

Those bigger changes ahead include more constant cloud cover, more constant precipitation, more orb-weaving spiders, and fewer leaves on the trees. In my opinion, the destination (winter) is not as beautiful as the journey (autumn). But the sense of anticipation—that’s worth savoring.

This is a harder lesson to apply to book writing, though! I’m trying to remember to savor the anticipation as I wait to hear how people receive the new book (Strategic Writing for UX, Second Edition), and as my co-authors and I figure out how to make the other new book (UX Skills for Business Strategy) as good as it can be.

I hope that people will enjoy these books more than I like a Pacific Northwest winter, but I’m not in charge of that. What I can do is to work diligently and courageously to make them understandable, useful, and available. That work is saturated with anticipation. Like an excellent chocolate torte, that anticipation can be overwhelming and satisfying, simultaneously. Whatever you are anticipating, right now, I hope you can find something to enjoy within that anticipation, and I hope you find other people to share your joy with (including me! Reply to this email to tell me what you’re anticipating.)

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I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey