The Hidden Costs of Creativity in Tech: A Personal Reflection

The financial pressures of modern life can make it hard to justify creative pursuits that don't promise immediate returns. This post explores the hidden costs of creativity in tech and society and the value of creative work beyond monetary gain.

Published on: 2025-01-12

Written by Schalk Neethling

Recently, I shared this thought on Mastodon:

It is amazing how much creativity, joy, and innovation are lost when one is forced through the pressures of life to view everything you do through a financial lens. It should not have to be this way.

This led me down a path of reflection, having a chat with old Claude, and then this post emerged from a growing frustration I’ve been experiencing with my side projects and creative pursuits. I find myself building small web applications, solving problems that have undoubtedly been solved before, writing blog posts, maintaining a bi-weekly newsletter, and various other creative pursuits — all without any immediate financial reward or guarantee of future returns.

The Financial Pressure Paradox

The question that keeps surfacing is: “What’s the point?” Why spend time building things that might never generate income? Why write blog posts that might never find their audience? The pragmatic voice suggests focusing solely on the 9-to-5 that provides a reliable paycheck.

This questioning becomes even more intense in our current economic reality. As the cost of living rapidly outpaces income growth, there’s mounting pressure to find ways to supplement our fixed monthly income. Every aspect of life seems to demand more financial resources — from the rising costs of medical, life, home, and car insurance to those unexpected life events that inevitably arise. Add to this the necessity of building savings, both as a safety net and enabling those shared experiences that create lasting memories with loved ones.

In this context, every hour spent on creative pursuits without guaranteed financial return feels like a luxury we can’t afford. The question transforms from “Is this worthwhile?” to “Should I instead be spending this time on something that will definitely bring in additional income?” When basic financial security feels increasingly precarious, it becomes harder to justify investing time in activities that don’t directly address these pressing needs.

This financial pressure creates a complex web of consequences that affects both immediate decisions and long-term career trajectories. When every creative decision must be filtered through the lens of monetary return, we often find ourselves:

These choices, while completely understandable given the financial pressures many face, can paradoxically limit our professional growth and future earning potential. The very actions we take to secure our financial present might be constraining our financial future.

In an environment where the mere act of creation, experimentation, sharing, and learning is valued, these pursuits would bring pure joy and fulfillment in and off themselves. However, when finances and the immense cost of taking care of oneself and a family in our modern world enter the picture, that joy quickly dissipates. Add to this a constant sense of judgment, destructive criticism, and the fear of being “discovered” as an impostor, and what should be fulfilling creative work becomes an exercise in self-doubt.

This thinking reveals a deeper issue in our industry and society at large - the pressure to monetize every pursuit. We’re caught in a difficult cycle: the very pressures that might make creative work more necessary as an outlet or form of growth are the same pressures that make it harder to justify and enjoy that work.

The Value Beyond Money

The truth is, that these creative pursuits have inherent value that can’t be measured in monetary terms. When we build these “frivolous” applications, write these posts, or solve these seemingly solved problems, we are:

Critics might ask, “Why not just contribute to existing projects? Why solve problems that have already been solved?” But this misses the point entirely. Some of the most valuable learning experiences and innovations have come from people who decided to rebuild something that already existed.

Consider how many text editors exist, each with its own take on how things should work, or how many blogging platforms there are — each created because someone thought they could approach it differently. To bring it to the present moment, there are a mind-boggling number of artificial intelligence projects that exist, each trying to solve similar problems with different approaches while almost all having started from the same baseline. In the frontend world, we need not look further than the proliferation of JavaScript frameworks and libraries, each with its own take on how to build web applications.

The impact of creative work isn’t always visible or immediate. Countless developers have shared stories about how some seemingly insignificant blog post from years ago helped them solve a problem or understand a concept. The person who wrote that post might never know their impact.

Yet, there’s an undeniable tension here. These projects often come with actual costs — hosting fees, development tools, and time investment — with no guarantee of return. When every expense must be justified, these costs can feel like an indulgence rather than an investment in personal and professional growth.

Pushing Back Against the System And Systemic Challenges

These personal struggles are inseparable from larger systemic issues. When critical challenges like the climate crisis and poverty (the two most critical challenges of our time in my mind) demand attention, our economic system continues to prioritize short-term profits over long-term well-being. The pressure to focus solely on financial returns affects decisions at every level:

Consider the current state of artificial intelligence as a striking example of these systemic priorities at work. The advances in AI technology are truly remarkable, with the potential to help solve some of humanity’s most pressing challenges. This technology could accelerate research into solutions to our climate crisis, advance medical breakthroughs, enhance our understanding of complex systems, and help us find answers to questions that might otherwise take decades to solve.

However, this potential comes with significant environmental and human labor costs. The training and deployment of large AI models require enormous amounts of computing power and energy. We could justify this environmental impact if we were primarily directing these powerful tools toward our most crucial challenges — finding cures for diseases, developing sustainable technologies, or discovering ways to protect and heal our planet. We could view it as a short-term trade-off while we develop more ecological means of powering these systems.

Yet, looking at how AI is predominantly being deployed today, we see a distorted sense of priorities. A vast amount of AI computing power is being directed toward creating entertainment, generating quick content for profit, or developing features that offer little more than momentary amusement. This mirrors the larger pattern in our industry and society: the tendency to prioritize quick returns and immediate profitability over meaningful long-term value.

This misalignment between potential and actual use isn’t just about AI - it’s a symptom of a system that consistently pushes us toward short-term thinking and immediate monetization and gratification, even when the costs to our environment and society are clear. The same pressures that make it difficult for individual creators to pursue meaningful work without immediate financial return are driving decisions at the technological frontier, potentially squandering transformative tools on trivial pursuits.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where financial pressure stifles the very creativity and innovation we need to address our most pressing challenges. When every decision must be justified through immediate financial return, we lose the space for experimentation, learning, and the kind of long-term thinking needed to tackle complex problems.

The answer isn’t to give up on our creative pursuits. Instead, we need to view continuing to create, share, and build — even when it doesn’t make “financial sense” — as a form of gentle rebellion (as mentioned in a previous post) against a system that wants to commodify every aspect of human experience. We need to find ways to support and value these pursuits for their own sake, recognizing the intrinsic value they bring to our lives and communities.

Moving Forward

While I don’t have all the answers, I’ve come to realize through reflection that this isn’t just about building things, writing blog posts, publishing newsletters, or add your creative pursuit here — it’s about seeking connection, community, and support. It’s about feeling less alone. It’s about not feeling like the old man screaming at the kids to get off their lawn, or waxing poetically about the good old days. As an introvert and a neurodiverse individual, I find meaning in small gatherings with like-minded individuals who share similar interests and values. These connections don’t necessarily mean everyone works on the same projects, but rather that we can share our work, ask for help, and learn from each other’s experiences without judgment.

I’m learning to navigate this complex landscape by:

The challenge of balancing creative fulfillment with financial reality remains, but perhaps by sharing these thoughts and experiences, we can start building the kind of supportive, value-aligned communities that make these pursuits feel less solitary and more sustainable. Maybe together we can find ways to create space for meaningful work that isn’t solely defined by its monetary value.

I wish to leave you with the following quote from one of my all-time favorite movies, Dead Poet Society:

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” “Answer. That you are here — that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.” That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?” — John Keating (Robin Williams), Dead Poets Society

Have you faced similar challenges in your creative work? How do you balance the passion to create and share with the pressure to monetize? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences—share them in the substack comments or connect with me on Mastodon, BlueSky, or LinkedIn.