This post was inspired by something a little different. Simply enough I received a vendor sales pitch for advanced business process tools and consultants for a particular software environment I have used before, and it sent me down a slightly winding path through memory lane. So it is off of my regular topic -
What are “High Tech” careers?
We all hear about current unemployment numbers, some job gains here, more losses over there, it is not a kind environment right now. Being in the technology field, the technology related press repeats this up and down news with IT related job gains over here, losses in this field, etc etc -
What bugs me about these ‘technology’ numbers is that that they really only consider hardware designers with Engineering degrees and Software programmers with Computer Science degrees. Just reading these things makes me shudder because these designations probably turn many people off about thinking “technology” in any shape or form. They associate ‘tech’ with geeks or movie video game type hackers.
To me that is a mistake, the skills that you as an individual possess, can be wonderful if you have the basic computer skills to leverage them in new ways, in ways that simply use a computer as a tool.
What do I mean by that?
I met a young woman years ago whose education was in theater arts, hardly technology right? Sure – not classified as a technology career, but on her own, she learned how to use a computer to model stage sets to the smallest inch, this allowed the theater companies director to determine that Act 2, Scene 3 needed more room on stage right, long before a carpenter was paid to hammer a nail, or before calling the carpenter to rip out what had already been built. (this was a community volunteer theater, not an On or Off Broadway big budget type of theater)
Several years ago we implemented a document management system that was critical to the maintenance and growth of our ISO 9000 certification. (if you are not familiar with ISO audits, they are not very forgiving of errors or omissions) Our most important consultant on this project? An individual with a post graduate degree in Library Science. Library Science you ask? This brilliant woman also knew the software tool we were implementing, but think about it; They weren’t hard cover or paperbacks, but there were over 10 Thousand documents in that tool that needed taxonomies and metadata that would allow them to be found and used. (without a Dewey Decimal System!)
Lastly, I know so many people with educations in Graphic Arts or Graphic Design – Traditionally those skills would be found mostly in photographic layouts or other design – today? We hire these geniuses to use their skills with software tools that create the imagery and video we create on a daily basis – again, not considered in ‘technology career’ statistics.
The Takeaway
Regardless of your education or skills, if you are comfortable around a computer keyboard – someone, somewhere, can use those skills – they may just not know it yet.
So I urge you not to think ‘technology’ is Engineering and Computer Science degrees alone.
Best Wishes in your career
Elliot