Recently, I’ve mentioned I, in much nicer terms, hate the direction the web industry is going. Partly from my own mishap with an agency on Twitter, partially from working at agencies, and downright to the realization that I just don’t care about the web. The decisions web dev professionals make are entirely based on the newest trend. A web dev may gripe and complain about Twitter, Facebook, and all other social media (with good reason), but I dare you to find the “genuine article”–someone who truly doesn’t care. The only people I don’t see following the trend are then lambasted for not having a personal blog, Twitter, iPhone, whatever, and those people are usually long-time corporate IT people who care more about getting work done and retiring than here-and-gone trends.
I like community involvement. I like to give back, I like new challenges in the work I do. But it’s not meant to be a buzzword every time I turn on Twitter. Just the same, 2 years ago I was hard-pressed to see anyone “about” accessibility on the web. Now every web developer or designer blog features a blurb where the author is all about standards. Well, frankly, I don’t care.
I’m a champion, fan, and proponent of web accessibility. I probably fight that fight regularly but I don’t use the Internet anymore to tell people. I’m probably not “good” at social media, so many accessibility initiatives have falling apart because it’s one of those things people like to say they support until there’s something that needs to be done. Even I’ve dropped the ball on that. I’m almost rarely at social media functions anymore and then didn’t “just happen.” I’ve said it since last year that there’s too much I have to worry about and care about that I don’t. Even though this blog highlights my professional life (or more specifically, I don’t use it to write satirical articles on general topics), I spend a lot of time on hobbies and my personal life in my spare time. And I’m of a breed that says, “No, I don’t want to post pictures of myself at IHOP because nobody cares.” Granted, I’m sounding a bit negative, but the reality is that while we like to go to some websites and ensure the author is a human being, it’s probably not that important.
Anyway, this is often the plague of this industry, and that has made me ask if I want to continue this work 20 years from now. I’ll be 43 by then, the web will change, and I’ll eagerly be reclaiming some time for personal use. I’ll have a much greater investment for causes than I do now, but I’ll also have other things happening in my life. When the next web standard comes out, do I really want to endure another debate between people who don’t want to use a new improved technology over people who see a shiny object they immediately start using? I could think of a variety of things I’d do before I care about that. The truth of the matter is I’ll only care to know about most of these technologies because it’ll be good for my career. No altruism here at all. But is this what I would have a lot of fun doing? No, not really. It’ll occasionally be exciting if I get asked to build a website and haven’t done it in a few months, but these skills were once just hobbies, and when they were, I enjoyed doing it. Once it became my job, so came everything else.
And I know it sounds naive to not expect annoyances in your career choice. I’m not saying I thought it would always be sunshine, but what I am saying is the grief isn’t worth the skill. Is it worth it to spend months finding a job as a web front end developer because the number of jobs that exist for it are minimal, my work experience didn’t include one skill on the grocery list of requirements in a job ad, or because nobody sees the value in that work? No.
I started looking for another job in May 2008. I quit my last one in March of 2009, and have I gotten anything full-time? No. Plenty of prospects, but prospects don’t pay the bills, and it’s time to be serious. Finding a job isn’t easy. If you’re a front end guy, you’re expected to be back end or a designer too. No problem, but how do you build the skills for that? You could do a few things, but those options aren’t always viable, and when you’re working at agencies, you put in a lot more hours, so your free time is slowly disappearing. Did I ever get any work after quitting? Yes, two contract jobs, one ended up with a full-time offer, and that was in October 2009. That was 7 months after I quit my last job, and, since I’ve been looking since May of 2008, that took 17 months to get. If you’re curious, I ended up not taking the job for different reasons, the biggest being I was called back to a previous contract which paid more money and was closer to what I want right now.
I normally don’t apologize, but I’m sorry for what is basically a soap box. I’ve been frustrated with the “geek scene” for a long time now, and I’ve satirically responded to that frustration, but every now and then I just need a little bit of prose venting out frustrations. Anyway, what do I plan on doing giving my dissatisfaction? I give this industry only a few more years. There are very useful skills I’ve acquired as a web dev that I can use to get where I want to be, so I’m not trapped. Will I return to the social scene? Sure, and I would like to have more time to do more activities, but the harsh truth is my current responsibilities have taken over, so I’ll be out of the mix for a bit longer.
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