Society gets what society pays for: people don't like creative engineers because they don't always solve the problem you want them to solve (they might discover a more important/interesting one and jump to that instead; or maybe discover they have a cool interesting solution... and maybe decide to create a new problem for that solution etc.) and they tend to get bored easily (and may appear lazy) and they are not controllable ("if I can imagine it AND make, why do I need the boss for?") and they also tend to get just a tad bit power hungry (think Zuck, Page etc.)...
So we're optimizing for "engineers that are not too creative" and "artists that are not too technical" because these are the kinds of cogs that fit well in our current organizational machines. And then we have the first read "how to be more creative" books/articles, and the latter "how to be more structured" books/articles.
And most good engineers learn to hide their creativity and focus on showing off effectiveness. Sometimes we even post-hoc invent elaborate ultra-logical explanation for why out intuitions and preferences must be correct in order to sell them. Also, creativity in engineering lowers efficiency and safety, so nobody would be willing to pay more to get less of these two. And if god forbid you are one of those creative-engineers that openly declares he/she "doesn't really give a f about either efficiency or safety, only engineering new and novel stuff that never existed before" you'd have to tapper it off with an "I'm joking" or nobody will want to work with you again :)
I'd love to see a rise of the techno-creatives, but in general organizations hate or fear us, so we keep disguising ourselves as either "engineers" or "artists" or "entrepreneurs", sometimes switching hats depending on the crowd/situation. Oh, and purely business oriented people tend to equate a volatility loving creative-engineer with a psycho with a chainsaw in one hand and a flask of gasoline in another, so it helps to never be too honest with these guys either.
Many engineers and other technical people are so narrow-minded because that's what our society rewards in these fields! Change the reward system if you want different results!
So we're optimizing for "engineers that are not too creative" and "artists that are not too technical" because these are the kinds of cogs that fit well in our current organizational machines. And then we have the first read "how to be more creative" books/articles, and the latter "how to be more structured" books/articles.
And most good engineers learn to hide their creativity and focus on showing off effectiveness. Sometimes we even post-hoc invent elaborate ultra-logical explanation for why out intuitions and preferences must be correct in order to sell them. Also, creativity in engineering lowers efficiency and safety, so nobody would be willing to pay more to get less of these two. And if god forbid you are one of those creative-engineers that openly declares he/she "doesn't really give a f about either efficiency or safety, only engineering new and novel stuff that never existed before" you'd have to tapper it off with an "I'm joking" or nobody will want to work with you again :)
I'd love to see a rise of the techno-creatives, but in general organizations hate or fear us, so we keep disguising ourselves as either "engineers" or "artists" or "entrepreneurs", sometimes switching hats depending on the crowd/situation. Oh, and purely business oriented people tend to equate a volatility loving creative-engineer with a psycho with a chainsaw in one hand and a flask of gasoline in another, so it helps to never be too honest with these guys either.
Many engineers and other technical people are so narrow-minded because that's what our society rewards in these fields! Change the reward system if you want different results!