Duties

Defining ourselves not so industrially #

I’ve just got back from FEL One Day, a new mini-conference, hosted by Made by Many. As well as me being one of the speakers, we got to enjoy seven well-crafted talks. A thoroughly good show.

One of the talks, by Jon Gold, developed the discussion about our job titles in the Internet, Software and Design industries. This got a lot of attention from the audience during Q&A: with suggestions from people who have coined the term polymaker; as well as a general consensus that reusing creative technologist in the new-age tech startup world may actually be a good idea.

But Jon’s talk also touched the idea that our titles overshadow our duties. I think it’ll always be hard to find that one true job title. And maybe that’s fine. Maybe we can describe what we do and why we do it, and leave it there. After all, that has more heart than a job title by itself.

Furthermore, if you provide a multi-layered service to your clients, then choose a suitable sub-line for that particular direction of service. For instance, front-end development might be suitable for a client who’s wanting to grow a solid JavaScript codebase; but UI development might be a better fit for the more visually architected projects.

Our aura as makers in these industries will still exist without job titles, and, possibly, will be even brighter still.

I think, at least at Strobe, we’ll be winding down on job titles, and focusing on our duties.

 
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96
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