There are articles about what you do in Serious Tech Business Magazines That Nobody Actually Reads when there didn’t used to be.
Someone gets a million dollars in “seed funding” to make an app that does your job but worse at more expense to the customer.
You meet a rich person with a dirty shirt at a party and they’re interested in what you do.
You google what “seed funding” is.
Some guy comes to your office and removes the vowels from all the signs.
Your new cubicle-mate is the “Vibes Master In Residence.”
Your boss suddenly really hates the city council and is handing out copies of Atlas Shrugged.
A memo you receive is very interested in Gamifying The User Experience to keep pace with, uh, something (???)
Some guy at a bar tries to explain your own job to you.
You flip through the seed-funding-guy’s book at the airport Hudson News and your company gets called a “dinosaur.”
There’s free lunch in your office sometimes, but you gotta listen to someone with “Techno-Seer” on their business cards with a bad haircut talk the whole time.
You get a bunch of self-righteous 20- and 30-somethings as customers because it doesn’t “exploit its employees.” You suppose this is true but still don’t get overtime.
You get sent to a convention and someone flies a quadcopter into your head.
Tags: business, disruption, signs, tech
This post made me realize that my admin job is probably safe from apps, because people who try to make an app that does my job, but no one knows what I do. Thanks, I think?
Samesies.
Lawyers are CONSTANTLY worrying about the automation of the legal industry.
Ridiculous. Lawyers can’t even use Microsoft Word but they think someone’s going to automate the work?! (Also: please please yes omg I’d love to see some automation in here.)
There actually is quite a bit of automation going on. Think of sites like LegalZoom. I’m not worried about automation myself but that’s because the clients I represent have extremely complicated issues and those really can’t be automated away. For regular people, I am a big fan of more access to information/knowledge/forms and not needing to use a lawyer, but someone’s got to employ all those poor souls who graduate from law degree factories… Also, if you’re interested in more access to legal information, I like the Legal Information Institute run by Cornell: https://www.law.cornell.edu/
They can’t use Word because they’re still clinging to Word Perfect.
I didn’t know Word Perfect was still alive until I started working. Law School should have warned me.
I just got asked in an interview for an associate position what word processing program I preferred. I didn’t even know there was a choice? BUT I managed to work the words “law review” into my answer and I’m still patting myself on the back.
but WHY?
I don’t knoooooooow, but I almost had to stay late yesterday so I could install a trial of it on one of our computers so I could open a doc that was sent over in Word Perfect format to confirm that it actually was messed up at the source (so that lawyer doesn’t know how to use Word Perfect either). (The actual reason is that it used to be the standard in the legal industry so some people are still using it because they don’t like change and some people are using it because there are still a (very) few courts that require certain documents to be electronically submitted in that format)
I was wondering why my first word processor growing up was Word Perfect! My parents are lawyers.
Now I feel old, mine was Bank Street Writer.
OH MY GOSH! YES! and like the 1998 version, which doesn’t work so well now that we’ve upgraded all our computers from Vista last year (mine was already 7, I would have quit if I had to use Vista in 2014)
I spent far too long trying to help a barrister save and print a Word document recently. You are not wrong.
I wonder if part of that fear comes from people having more access to information. Even just thinking of lawyers on twitter who share their knowledge/advice for free, never mind the access to laws and rulings that allow non-lawyers to feel a bit more empowered.
I’ve always considered law kind of like admin with more complications. No one knows what lawyers do but they’re sure they could do it themselves.
except the guy at the bar, he not only knows exactly what you do, he knows how to do it better. It’s tempting to let him appify it just to see him flail.
In my experience not understanding what something is or how it’s done is no barrier to making or marketing an app for it. It just means that thing will be broken, indefinitely, from that day forward.
“Some guy at a bar tries to explain your own job to you.”
This is a fact of life for women, doesn’t have to be a tech job
Oh my goodness, I literally JUST had a mansplaining experience with my brand spanking new husband. We had gone out for barbecue, and he was trying to explain to me why it was so much better to just eat the brisket instead of eating it on a roll, and I was like “but the roll soaks up the barbecue sauce better JUST LET ME EAT MY DANG ROLL.” Finally I said “hey honey, I think that I am qualified as an expert in Things I Want To Eat.”
Train him early, train him well.
The other day my husband was trying to find the right words to describe a coworker of his whose habit is to just assume you don’t know what he’s talking about and to explain it in simple terms even when, as my husband has, you’d been specializing in that sort of thing for over a decade. I informed him he’d been mansplained to, but he was not convinced.
YUP. I am a woman, and have worked in health policy in DC for 8 years now, and during that time advanced pretty significantly (went from completely new to the industry to now managing a team and being invited to guest speak, etc). I don’t say that to brag, but to point out HOW RIDICULOUS it was when a guy my friend (female longtime healthcare reporter) and I met at the bar who had just moved here straight out of an MBA program, was trying to tell the two of us what government agency he was hoping to work at to get an edge on a career in healthcare. He seemed to base it on proximity to the Capitol?? Which made no sense. And mentioned the Department of Labor, because it’s so close?? My friend then said, “Um, well Health & Human Services is really close to the Capitol too”, and he tried to explain why we were wrong. Oh, ok, then. Your MBA program definitely makes you an expert in my field!
And uhh, just about all of Military Health Systems is out in Falls Church, and most of their governance is actually in the Pentagon… Was out there for three years, you’re not as close as you think you are, little fella. (Also, major props to you for lasting 8 years in that field. Better woman than I.)
Let him loose at that intersection where I-66 meets the Beltway and let him try to find his way home.
You won’t hear from him for awhile.
For extra fun, a guy in the construction business explain my job to me while sitting at MY OWN bar in MY OWN restaurant.
When did you tell him?
Did you have one of those experiences like Rebecca Solnit when her friend was like “Dude, she wrote that book” and he just blinked for a couple of seconds and then went right on mansplaining her own book to her like friend had never said anything?
And a fact of life for librarians. I love my job, but I hate telling people what I do. Everyone has a [wrong] opinion about it!
I heard literally every line of this in Erlich Bachmann’s voice.
sorry not sorry
I just started watching Silicon Valley and it is making my LIFE
I’ve rewatched the joke from Season 1 finale (the big one) (no spoilers) like a dozen times.
BEST SHOW BEST SHOW
I love that show an unreasonable amount. Especially Jared, bless his awkward heart.
(i will always post a silicon valley gif wherever there is the slightest bit of relevance)
don’t be sorry. this is perfection <3
I work in the financial industry and hand to God at one point a Serious Banking Magazine had an article devoted to Dogecoin.
You need to shift focus to The Internet Of Things. No one will explain why you would want to focus on that.
‘m srry
YAAASSS. I still say “m srry” to people, and I had actually forgotten where it came from? Oh teen girl squad.
I also sing the “what time is it? It’s valentimes!” song at my fiance every year. She is very entertained at the idea of us getting “several boys.”
VOODOO!
FLOOR TOM’D!
STEP MOM’D!
POM POM’D?
I’m a librarian and people keep trying to tell me that my job is getting replaced by Google, but (a) I don’t actually work directly with the public looking stuff up and (b) our library is full of college students who are coming to us because they can’t find what they need on Google.
Sometimes what they need is even *in* Google, but they have no idea how to find it. I don’t know where the people who claim Google’s replacing libraries think that info-seekers learn *how* to search. Osmosis?
I don’t know where the people who claim Google’s replacing libraries think that info-seekers learn *how* to search. Osmosis?
They’re Digital Natives! They don’t need to learn, they just know!
I. Will. Hurt. You.
I had a job where everyone was ‘Digital Immigrants’ and therefore didn’t bother how to use powerpoint or, like… double click.
URHGHGHGHGHGH
Metadata? Taxonomy? Classification in general? Information design? Meh! Who needs it! Totally irrelevant to HOW THE INTERNET WORKS
I work in software development and I use what I learned at librarian school EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Google isn’t even very good anymore!
At least, judging by how I search for “librarything.com book-title author-name” and LT isn’t even the first result (it’s the THIRD!!!). I mean, I know about “site:” but that’s too much typing. And it makes me very very curious about what other searches are coming back with less than ideal results. (The best part is that I have Google search tracking turned on and stuff, so shouldn’t they know that I never click on Goodreads links? why is GR more relevant than LT??)
I became disillusioned with Google about four years ago when I discovered that when I was actually looking for information about something, the first, oh, thirty pages of search results showed me nothing but people SELLING the thing. That was when I began to 1) really hate SEO and all the marketers who use it and 2) distrust Google deeply. Ugh.
Oh, yeah, I haven’t trusted it for years and also use Duck Duck Go when I can (often comparing to Google), but I at least have a pretty good idea if I’m about to fall into an SEO landmine search. But this particular search where I specify the website name, and then it isn’t even the first, most relevant result? There’s no reason for an exact match to bring up a different result as being a better fit!
The worst thing about that is when I am actually looking for suppliers for that thing, it’s STILL not useful. If they’re going to creepily collect my data and use it to sell me stuff, could they maybe actually send me links to places that will ship to my country? Or at least sell the thing I’m looking for?
And I live in Australia so if I google a thing and it gets me a Walmart page that won’t sell me that thing…. I shouldn’t HAVE to click ‘search tools’ ‘in Australia’. How is that even a search tool? Isn’t the POINT of google that they’re collecting all my data and creepily serving me things?
ETA I realised I basically poorly paraphrased what you said, sorry, I blame the rage. Solidarity?
Because Goodreads pays Google more?
Are those paid results, then? Because that’s super shady that it isn’t obvious.
I’m a LibraryThing user too and it feels like everyone uses Goodreads instead! In some things Google is scary intuitive and in others it’s very not.
I’ve always wondered why LT didn’t come up much. Maybe it’s just too independent. (Isn’t Goodreads owned by Amazon now?)
Yeah, LT used to come up about equally with GR, but over time GR has had a lot more traffic and therefore links. It also has more popular items catalogued. (I saw a list of Novels Featuring Asexual Characters on tumblr the other day and 1/3 weren’t on LT yet, though to be honest those 5 or so were trash as far as I could tell, but all were on GR and most had multiple copies catalogued).
It’s been better integrated with Facebook longer than LT has, which also gives it more link backs… and that’s one of the things that moves results up in the search rankings.
(Yeah, it was bought by Amazon 3 years ago, iirc.)
More links to the GR site? Incorporating links as a measure of relevance was Google’s big thing when they got started. (And it got gamed to hell and back, of course, because human nature.)
Oh, yeah, I don’t doubt that there are more links to GR, but if they’re gaming the SEO by putting Librarything into their keywords??? Because until a couple months ago, specifying LT in the search gave it more prominence in the results. :/
*Cheshire Cat voice* We’re all librarians here.
Anyway RIGHT? Like sure, we don’t need doctors either because of WebMD.
The two classes I took in college that have been most valuable outside of academia were each for a single credit: 1. Library Skills (mostly search) and 2. Science Writing for Humanities Majors (aka writing for clarity and content versus elegance and form).
I was just talking about this with my co-worker – my mom is a librarian who gets that same “oh, soon we won’t need librarians because internet!” – and we both agreed that if librarians had been involved in the internet from the ground up, it would actually work way better than it does, because librarians are magic.
After all, why would you ever need to know more about a thing than Wikipedia and a hobbyist website run by an anonymous schizophrenic have to tell
Your new manager dismisses all your past accomplishments because they were “waterfall thinking”. You are no longer allowed to plan more than two weeks out, and two hours is better. Your new team can turn on a dime, throw away all its work, start anew. Unsurprisingly, after a year of this you release a shoddy broken product that in no way resembles the spiffy keynote demo the CEO keeps showing to clients.
I don’t know what “waterfall thinking” is, but I really want it to be related to the moral of TLC’s iconic hit “Waterfalls.”
*looks up “waterfall thinking”*
*regrets immediately*
You have a clear goal and want to work thoughtfully and carefully to execute it in beautiful form? You poor relic. YOU ARE CLINGING TO OLD WAYS. If market research tells you weekly that the winds have changed, why not jettison everything you know and brainstorm for new directions? Aren’t you READY For this new world?
“We’re agile! Let’s scrum!”
My company was all “We’re doing agile with our releases now!” A (female) friend of mine who has a similar job to me (we’re not programmers, but we work closely with them) described “agile” as “let’s throw a bunch of stuff at the wall, go with whatever sticks, and pretend that we planned it that way all along.”
My last job decided to adopt an “agile” strategy that basically consisted of doubling our release count without actually making the releases any smaller, and then never having another programming meeting ever again. But we were using JIRA Agile to handle our broken-ass development and testing process, so we were agile!
Ugh, hitting close to home. I’m saving this entire thing, may it be balm I return to and check my sanity against.
Oh gee, we must work together.
I would not be at all surprised.
All of this is 100% true
**Looks around at the labrythine international bureaucracy in which I dwell, where efficiency and up-to-date technology would be curses words if they were even presumed to exist**
Come at me, tech bros.
YOU SHALL NOT PASS. — Gandalf, in opposition to that flame of Utumno, called Udûn, the VC himself.
Some guy at a bar tries to explain your own job to you.
I’m a cartographer and this is the STORY OF MY LIFE
I mean, just use Google Maps?
(I’m sorry. I’m kidding. I have a GIS background and am very aware that cartography is both hard and A Thing.)
I’m a cryptographer! people often mishear my job as your job!!
I still get explained to about my job, though, once the tech dudes decide they’ve figured out what I do.
I actually *misread* your job as cartographer, and now I kind of feel a little bad about it.
All I know about cartography is:
I feel like this is a pretty good place for a link to Entrepreneurs don’t have a special gene for risk—they come from families with money. I mean, quelle surprise right.
(drops monocle in surprise) I simply must stop being so horrified.
Trust fund babies, but also people whose partners/spouses work full time+ to support the family and the start up. (I’m a the partner with a good paying corporate job living with a type 2.)
Yep.
How to Succeed in Business 101– Send your spouse out to work.
Whether it’s a tech startup or a gourmet mustard shoppe….
I’m in higher ed in a techie part of the country. The last time a 21 year old whiteboy in a bar tried to tell me how to do my job, I started answering him in German. The bartender comped my last drink because it was so entertaining.
Bless you, you are doing good work.
When I’m tipsy, I do not suffer fools.
ugh i work in the tech so all of this was true when i started my career and now i’ve never known anything different. add, “everyone you report to wears a tshirt” and “everyone tries to describe your company as the uber of X/airbnb of X/instagram of X”
And this is the point where I thank God that I work in a dirty mechanical industry that no IT guy wants to touch!
YOU SHALL NOT PASS. — Gandalf, in opposition to that flame of Utumno, called Udûn, the VC himself.
Matt stop giving them bad ideas they have enough of those already.
Matt stop giving them bad ideas they have enough of those already.
Bless you, you are doing good work.