Over the weekend, I spoke at the D2WC conference, a conference on how designers and developers work more powerfully together to prevent breakdowns. The purpose of my talk, The Ambition of Design, a philosophy of design and technology, was to help designers and developers prevent breakdowns associated with their own career.
The global marketplace rewards you when you produce the assessment in others that you are valuable and can affect concerns. The global marketplace is indifferent to you if you are common, ordinary and high cost relative to the market. If what you do is indistinguishable from what someone overseas can do for much less, you WON’T be a highly sought after technologist commanding a six figure salary. If you are just using tips, tricks, and techniques that others have developed for you, you are running your career through a copy machine and immediately diluting the value of whatever tip, trick or technique you have borrowed or stolen.
My fundamental claim is this:
I claim that the majority of individual contributors that companies rely on today are not able to produce the type of satisfaction demanded by the global marketplace for the following reasons:
They are not competitive.
They are unconcerned with reality’s forces. Biology, History, Physics, Economics . . . Without knowledge of reality, a person cannot design for it.
They are waiting for someone to hand them . . .requirements.
They are blind to a tradition in which they value what they “do” as more important than what they know.
So what can you do?
You must have a strong ambition. You must know about concerns. You must have knowledge about reality and the forces at work. You must have a philosophy about your life and career. What do you stand for? You must use all this knowledge to design for yourself and others a situation where people take notice and don’t compare you, and what you do, with people who do something similar overseas for pennies on the dollar.
And most importantly, you need help. You probably won’t be able to do it alone.
That’s it.
Actually that’s not it. After you do all that you need to accomplish to fulfill your ambition. You need to further your career and the lives of your family by earning more money. You need to be conscious of your dignity. If people are going to notice you, they are going to notice how you act, how you move, are you trustworthy? You won’t be compensated highly if you aren’t trustworthy. You must also do research so that you can anticipate and assess where the marketplace is moving with regard to technology and then MOVE there.
And then you cycle again to your ambition and so on.
You can’t take a break, not anymore. You are competing with people all over the world. You must look after your career like it is one of your children. You can’t take a break as a mother or father. You can’t take a break from being a husband or wife. You can’t take a break from your career.
What is your mood after reading this? Does it excite you or does it depress you? Were you expecting a tip, trick, or technique you could just do and, poof, your career is suddenly more powerful?
You must be in different practices, because it is those practices that will set you apart and produce the assessment that you are different, superior, uncommon and scarce relative to demand.
Come back this Thursday and I’ll give you a practice that you undoubtedly will be able to use to further your career.
I’d have to say that it depresses me a bit.
I know that a good deal of what you say is true – I am essentially replaceable, either as an individual or because my employer (in my area of responsibility, so again it is down to me to make a change) is sometimes seen that way.
The thought of having another item in my life that is an always on responsibility doesn’t sound all that appealing.
However, as you said in your speech at D2WC, I also know it isn’t personal. Globalization, technological advances, and increased competition will happen whether I like them or not, and whether I am ready or not.
I just have to find ways to increase my value and my preparedness.
That part can be exciting – as I find little reward in not being the best I can be, and not functioning at my best is depressing in its own way.
Scott,
Thank you for such an honest and open post.
Your career should be fun. It should be fun because it should be profitable. If you are superior, uncommon and scarce relative to demand, you should be compensated accordingly. Biologically, we learn to ignore what is common so that we can conserve our resources for what is uncommon.
I speculate this mood is similar to finding out that you are going to be a father for the first time and it wasn’t expected. You have a career that needs care and feeding.
You aren’t alone in feeling this way. This culture, in general, feels entitled to exceptional wealth without really earning it. There are a lot of people out there who are pretending to be rich. You see them all the time. They drive cars and own houses they really can’t afford. Life will hit a wall for them if they don’t act.
I’m going to give you something you can use that, I speculate, will help you on Thursday.