Posts in category: Biz
11 October, 2007,
A Web designer announcement
The candidate should perfectly know Dreamweaver, Flash, CSS, AJAX, Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D Modeling.
He should also know very well PHP, MySQL, ASP.
He should be able to work under pressure and cooperate with colleagues.
He should be no more than 35 years old.
We offer good salary.
Does it look familiar to you?
I picked an average announcement around my activities to show what’s wrong with it. It is actually a bad job position though it doesn’t look like. Obviously the one who wrote it has no idea about Web design and he also needs to refresh his grammar skills. The words “perfectly” and “very well” can’t reveal what’s on his mind.
First of all, this announcement covers at least two different positions. To come up to the expectations a candidate should have abandoned sleeping by the day he became 20. Since then he should try to prepare such a salad of requirements.
If someone really wants a good Web designer, he should also care about Information design, Usability, Accessibility, SEO, Web Standards and Semantics. Unless he really cares for an Indiana Jones of IT.
Why? Because the perfect usage of Photoshop for example is something that very few people can do. If someone is a Photoshop guru and he also is a Flash expert then we are talking about a phenomenon. How much he should gain per month? €3000? Sounds like a good salary indeed. So if you find this employee don’t worry about pressure and cooperation.
Two more things: What 3D Modeling has to do Web design? I don’t know. Furthermore, Dreamweaver is just a tool. There are dozens of tools which do the same. So if you find someone who has no idea of Dreamweaver but he knows HTML would you reject him?
Beyond what is required, such an announcement suffers from what it doesn’t require. If someone really wants a good Web designer, he should also care about Information design, Usability, Accessibility, SEO, Web Standards and Semantics. Unless he really cares for an Indiana Jones of IT.
Last but not least, a job position includes more than technical abilities. How about judgement, rationale, logic, organization etc? How about opportunities for personal development via certain ways e.g. conferences?
I won’t try to reveal what is hidden behind such announcements, about the people who compose them or their companies. And I won’t talk about what is really meant behind the “We offer good salary” context. I ‘d rather see the clumsy and funny side of such “opportunities” which certainly prevails over the serious one.
Day by day the Web is becoming more approachable and open to people. Now almost anyone can have his own website without spending much money. Furthemore he can configure it the way he wants without too much effort. That’s good news. What comes next is how a website can become a really valuable tool.
Things are pretty simple when we are talking about e.g. a personal blog. Nonetheless, there is a wide range of professionals who can use the Web to promote their activities easier than ever before. These people need more than a standard solution. They need customed ones.
Before Web development there are several issues to be addressed such as:
- How any activity is going to be presented?
- Which part needs to stand out?
- Visits are good. What comes next?
- How a website becomes a source of earnings?
Such questions deploy non technical decisions. Is everyone capable of taking them? No. The Web is a vehicle which needs special treatment. Text and articles for example should be treated a different way than in a newspaper.
Similarly, there also some technical questions of great importance:
- What is going to be the hierarchy of information?
- What is going to be the aesthetical approach?
- What is going to be included in the end? Is there a need for a lot of different components e.g. a forum or not?
- Which piece of software is going to be used? Why?
This set of questions works seperately from the first group and afford all websites. Combining both sets and adding all the relevant issues becomes prominent the fact that any success is determined before the real development. Someone must be able to provide answers to the questions above. But who?
Who can answer such questions?
Let’s see first who can’t answer. By all means a business consultant is not capable to solve such problems. Most of the times people who are experts in business can’t tame the Web because they don’t know how it works. Usually, business practices cannot be applied to the Web. Here different things are required. On the other hand Web technicians very often are experts in a specific IT area whereas they can’t see the whole picture. As a result they get lost.
So, people who aim to give specific answers which will work need to have a good view of the Web as a whole, they must be able to create a strategy and to communicate effectively. At they same time they should know how to use modern technology, know the details of certain techniques and what is proper for a specific client. This is what I call Web culture.
Who are these people? Where are these people?
I don’t know. I may be able to count a few who live outside Greece. But in Greece?
In Greece someone looking for such a person would come to nothing I suppose. It doesn’t have to do much with how to find him but with the general idea that Web cultured people are considered non important. I tend to believe the same happens everywhere, not only in Greece.
How many companies would look for such people? How many CEOs and other consultants would sacrifice their ego in front of someone who would come and go? How many half educated technicians and managers would admit they don’t stand a chance when compared to these people? Almost none.
Things are getting even worse if one considers that Web cultured people should be fairly paid for their services. What does this “fairly” mean? I won’t answer to this - consider the width, the quality and the difficulty of the job and do the math.
However the gap still exists. Certain needs exist too. Reality shows that most of the websites fail. I am not talking about design or coding. I am talking about websites which have no reason to exist even if they have been designed by the best designers and coded by the best developers. I am talking about a holistic view of the Web and about people who are professionals or amateurs who want to act like professionals. You get my point.
Transparent people are vulnerable. They are less stylish than the people who don’t talk much and keep things for themselves. They are no mystery.
Transparent professionals are even more vulnerable to the danger. “Why should I tell you the way I work, what I can do or what I can’t do for you? Everyone is going to eat me alive.”
Two scenarios
Well, all these are nonsense. We grow up learning how to hide things or ourselves. Why? When someone is hiding he either has done something bad e.g. being illegal or he realizes he is weak to certain aspects.
I don’t care about the first scenario. All my life I ‘ve been honest in my work. Others have cheated me, I didn’t cheat anyone. The only thing I should care is to take precautions. Apart from this, I don’t give a damn about those people. They caused troubles and they should find a way to solve their own problems.
Let’s focus on the second scenario: “I am not good in this and that. If I reveal my weak parts, I will lose.” Fair enough. But show me someone who ‘s good in every thing he does. There isn’t such a person. Here it is the difficult part. Covering up things will give you some time. It is your choice how you will use it. You may use it to become better and gain some more time. In order to become even better. And so on.
On the other hand you may use this extra time to rest and try to leave everything behind. In reality you can’t leave anything behind. It will come back. And then what? I used to follow this approach for some years. I realized it wasn’t an effective way to evolve. So, I changed.
Switch to transparency
This “learn and evolve” thing is more than it looks. It changes you. You find no peace, you become egoist, you become tough and you ruin the weekends of the people around you. You don’t realize it until you live into that mode. But when you do you become transparent.
Transparency means trust. I don’t hide from you. I don’t know everything but there are two or three things I do know well. It is my knowledge which makes me an egoist. You can count on me. You know that I ‘ll find a way to help you, because your problem is mine too and I don’t avoid problems anymore. On the contrary I rush them. I tend to be tough at certain moments because above all I am tough to myself.
I have a huge ego and thousands of weak moments. My ego exists because I am good at what I do. My weaknesses spring from the fact that I learn new things every day and I need some work to do on them. What you see is what you get. It’s your choice.
Photo by matratze in Flickr.
I am using the same title with Eric Meyer since I need a common ground to start from and Meyer’s post is an excellent one.
Let me show you the flip side of the coin. Here in Greece people who care about being professionals in web design or sticking to web standards are a weak minority. As far as I know there hasn’t been even a conference about web design ever. And I am not very optimistic for the future.
We
feel are isolated. Universities just don’t care. Companies mostly seek for flashing elements on the screen and people around you tend to believe that designing is something everyone could do. Jeff Croft wrote about it much better than me. When I read his post I had a bitter smile on my face. I couldn’t believe that same things happen elsewhere too.
The thing is that creating an organization for designers would be something we really need. However, even if I could join such a group I couldn’t afford participating in seminars, workshops etc around the world since noone would assist me. Even if I could prove my skills to the local web market noone from the market would invest some money on me to become better. Being a freelancer and covering your expenses is out of the question in Greece. We remain helpless and the only chance to become better is to find the gurus and follow them by visiting their blogs and listening to what they have to say.
This April Molly E. Holzschlag announced an analogous effort from the Web Standards Project talking about an International Liaison Group. To my surprise this endeavor stuck and I am wondering: if not WaSP then who?
I don’t question great designers’ intensions because these people are open minded and they show it every day. With this post I am asking them to keep trying closing the gap because this benefits all. Since they are more powerful than me they can use the relevant mechanisms which bring all of us closer to each other.
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