Your Career in Digital

How to Become a Specialist in the world of digital fastfood

So, you’ve decided to become a Digital professional; you’ve chosen to start with design or programming, or maybe marketing, or perhaps you enjoy drawing or modeling 3d stuff in your free time? That’s great, what’s next?

All these professions, as others say, are professions of the future! Suddenly you find yourself needing to acquire one of these skills…

Nowadays, everyone around teaches various things, but how does a person who has never encountered the industry understand what needs to be done to acquire a particular competency?

Of course, you can say something like — “work hard, look for opportunities and, sooner or later, you will get what you deserve”, but usually, life makes its adjustments and demands much more from you than just acquiring certain hard skills. I wanted to describe some behavior patterns that can give people who have never delved into the industry an understanding of “what knowledge is needed?”, “is it worth spending money and time on popular online courses?” and all the accompanying concerns down the list.

The main thing in all this, as always, is your direct desire to participate. If you think you need to do something, but don’t know what exactly, this article will probably suit you, and you will finally decide to act, or maybe not, I don’t know.

I’m not an expert in employment issues, I don’t understand all the nuances that may await at the approaches to a particular position. I have never worked as a 3D/2D artist and do not know how the industry differs from country to country and what skills a particular employer expects from you, but I can roughly imagine some general context that you will need to follow in order to go in right direction.

The only thing that should drive you when you decide to change your profession and start training at a school, a course, or an online university is the understanding that it will take a very long time to reach such a level of income when you can say “all this was not in vain.”

Mastering a profession is not a sprint, but a marathon, it will take at least a couple of years before you are fully satisfied with the place you occupy in the space, so the only way to show some quality result is to fall in love with what you do and then think about it 24/7, otherwise, after a few years, you will suddenly grab your head and realize that you just wasted time, and it turns out you are sick of work.

I am not a fan of the modern trend towards digitalization (the desire to solve all the problems of the world by creating any software products) and I believe that real professions, such as a doctor, teacher, social worker, are much more important and will always be more important than fashionable and popular now technological professions.

At the same time, I do not belittle the contribution of engineers to development, automation, and improvement of all areas of modern life. But it is worth understanding — all things created by man have a property to disappear, and the global Internet is the first thing that can sink into oblivion at any moment. Do not focus on one thing, and especially do not waste time on what you are really not interested in.

Since our article is of the type — “How to feel comfortable in this new reality?”, first I want to give some advice from my bell tower regarding the moral principles that should be observed.

Perhaps for you this will be meanless, but I really want to explain some things that many do not understand.

For those who work in the field or are going to work in the field (I judge by the opinion of my friends who also work as designers, QA, engineers) and I want to convey a simple truth that should be understood — you are a tool for the development of someone else’s business and all the money you earn is the money that customers pay you, interested in promoting their product. And if you create your own product, your client will be the end consumer.

Most of the things that are sold are created in order to bring profit to their investor. Some of them really bring benefits in addition to profit. But others definitely will not be able to pass quality control and moral and ethical standards. Nevertheless, all this is consumed by millions and millions of people who create the environment in which we all live. Perhaps this is not important at the level of a developer or tester, but in total, you create and support products that shape the consciousness of the masses of people, so be more responsible.

Here I would like to explain how to understand what is specifically important for you. First of all, you need to know what kind of product you want to create, regardless of your position, whether you are an engineer, designer, manager, or product owner, you are part of the mechanism that creates a commercial product or a product designed to support other products.

A note to the above — this is what distinguishes a person who works as a regular developer from a person who leads teams: the latter understands the environment, user needs, and the goals that must be pursued in development and therefore is more valuable to the business, while the former is simply a means of production. Strive to understand what product you are producing, for whom, and why.

Another point is about how the company that hired you works. There are a couple of options that are radically different from each other — outsourcing and product. A company that develops its own product is primarily interested in thorough development and profiting directly from what it creates, using its internal resources and unique teams, therefore the level of specialists there is higher. Teams that work with clients around the world and develop whatever is needed are outsourcing, and in some particularly neglected cases, outstaffing — when your body is sold to the wrong project. Thus, if you want to gain high-class experience, your path will lie directly through a product company.

Outsourcing companies are factories that process workers by converting their time into money for the company.

Product is something more, where you can spend your time and not regret it (but this is ideally, of course, and depends on the product itself).

You might not be thinking about this now (what the hell is the difference if you need money and you are looking for where to put yourself faster), but after a certain period of time, this thought will still visit you, so do not underestimate the factor of sudden death.

Choose. Spend time on things that really are worth something, such as your time.

So, now you understand — you need to figure out the direction and understand what is really interesting to you. You need to find a product company and if you make the right choice, put enough effort into searching, then most likely the product will flourish, the company will be able to earn more, you will be able to receive more — everyone will be happy.

How to learn, where to learn, and what to pay attention to.

There are now a huge number of courses of different levels and costs, and you will probably not guess what you get for a particular amount.

I can confidently say that if you do not complete the tasks that the course offers, then most likely nothing will work out. You need to spend a lot of time and feel that it is difficult for you, that you need to figure it out (your mentor should help you with this). The more difficult the better, if something comes easily to you, then most likely the information offered on the course is worthless and accordingly the knowledge gained on the course too.

Any modern course implies self-study. In general, you could learn all this for free, but for your money, you will be guided through all the main topics required for the profession. This is not bad if your mentor gives you direct feedback. It is extremely important to understand how much your knowledge differs from a person who already works in the industry. If you speak the same language with them, you are most likely on the right track.

Most digital professions are not so complex and do not require as much time as, for example, mastering the control panel of a Boeing, and certainly do not require such responsibility as sending a person to the moon, all this is not rocket science. The only thing you need is your own interest. And here’s the paradox — if you are really interested, you don’t need courses at all! You are able to independently study most topics and will probably understand much better than the graduates of these courses.

Programming is the foundation on which most digital stuff is based.

Without programming, the entire interactive internet would not exist. You would continue to read information from punch cards. Thus, programming is highly valued, and programmers (in the enterprise sector) receive high salaries. A programmer can create software without an illustrator, designer, marketer, but the reverse is not true.

To write code, you need an understanding of data structures and Boolean algebra. You need to understand what product you want to create. Perhaps you like mobile applications or video games, or maybe interactive websites/applications. Once you have decided on the final product you want to create, you can begin to study the technology that allows you to do it. First of all, learn the syntax of the language, then you will need courses to go through the main topics and build a portfolio. Your training should boil down to writing code. As with the 10,000-hour rule, you will need to write 10,000 lines of code. Then look for companies hiring trainees or mid-level employees. If you have HR acquaintances, write to them. Watch videos by Sergey Nemchinsky, there are sound thoughts that reflect the realities of the industry.

Design — creators who design the product, its information architecture that users will work with.

The main goal is to satisfy several stakeholders. To sell the service to the customer, meet his interests, as well as the interests of the end consumer. Unfortunately, in the modern world, the role of interaction designers is turning into pure marketing. If you feel that you are being forced to sell something, end cooperation with such a company.

You can’t be in two places at once, so it’s hard to create a really useful product that will also make money. Most companies that use designers on their projects want them to be able to sell the service of planning, design, development, marketing. Thus, they shift the responsibilities of sellers and save budgets. I believe that the only interests a designer should satisfy are those of the end user. Business goals are secondary and have no meaning for the product itself.

As a designer, you need certain knowledge of psychology, as well as practical experience in analyzing and testing hypotheses on real people, the ability to create interactive prototypes (which is the main tangible product created by the designer). I will not distinguish between a visual designer and a user experience designer; I will say that nowadays, a designer who can create interactive prototypes and conduct analysis, create personas is likely competent in UI. Sometimes companies use graphic designers to get visually beautifully designed products. If you want to understand what you will need to do at work — most likely everything! Now it’s one big separate piece of work, but it’s still useless without code. Start by reading all the books in the A Book Apart series, Alan Cooper, first the hospital, then The Design of Everyday Things, then Don Norman’s About Face 4, and for example, Golden Krishna’s No Face, also if you want to understand design better, I advise reading Grady Booch’s UML User Guide. Then go for courses by large IT companies, such as EPAM Design Spot, they are free. Build a portfolio.

Start looking for a job when your portfolio contains works reflecting your expertise. Meanwhile, read articles from nngroup.com, baymard.com and others.

Read more

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UserTesting Platform Review(read article)

Simple Principles That Can be Helpfull part 1(read article)

Simple Principles That Can be Helpfull part 2(read article)

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