Do not adjust your set: What’s causing your biggest bottleneck
Last week we asked how our community picks its next job. After all, discussing the ins and outs of software technology is one thing, but we’ve all got bills to pay.
We were curious about what got you interested in a potential new position; with today’s working practices, which are increasingly global in nature, some lucky folks being able to work from their location of choice, and of course internet infrastructure supporting that remote working, it’s not as clear cut as things used to be.
We handed the results of the poll over to our head honcho Al Dean for his wide words of analysis:
“The results were intriguing with three things coming near joint first: salary, career development and self-fulfilment scoring the lions’ share of votes. What didn’t come as the biggest surprise was the software used.
Many of the technology vendors make much noise about the amount of users using their tools and how that has an effect on their strength in the marketplace. A very limited view. After all, these are tools, nothing more, nothing less. Just because a company sees a huge number of job postings on monster.com doesn’t mean that people are actively choosing their role based on a software preference.
A designer or engineer is hired because of their talent, their ability to think differently, their ability to solve problems, not their ability to push buttons.
The final analysis shows that many in the field are much more interested in a challenge, that’s shown by the difference between Self-fulfilment/Happiness and Experience/Familiar industry (which scored surprisingly low).
Louise Cochrane, a recent graduate and one of the stars of our ‘future designers‘ piece comments that it’s a combination of thing, but ultimately, “I chose self-fulfilment/happiness in this poll because if I am where I want to be (location), doing what I want to be doing (career development), gaining experience and earning a good wage, I’ll be happy!”
Finally, I liked a comment from our old friend Kevin Quigley who has some rather salient advice for anyone looking to find work in the field of design and engineering: “On the job front, for all those applying, pick up the phone and call your prospective employer before you even fill in an application form or send an email. Design is a people business. Email is impersonal. Call.”
As many of you are packing up your desks for the day, preparing for the grinding traffic, or are reading this on a sweaty commute home, it’s your chance to vote on this week’s question.
Please feel free to post comments on your experiences of bottlenecks with different software/hardware configurations, and how you solved them….. or not as the case may be.
