Anil Dash writes about a career path for people who are coders but not necessarily computer scientists. We already see this to some degrees in areas like ops, data center work, and desktop support. I certainly think there is plenty of room for this idea in software development as well.
Rafe
I agree with you and Anil that’s there’s room for “those kind of people” in coding and sys admin work – but I’d like to ask you to expand that notion – which is the comment I left on Anil’s site as well.
There are a few highly technical jobs on the “top of the pyramid” and we’ve seen (in the past 10-15 years) the invention of the “digital salt mines” at the bottom of the pyramid (call centers, BPOs, non-thinking technical jobs.)
But isn’t there – shouldn’t there be – a huge middle ground? Where folks can use their minds, their instincts, their creativity, the motivation and areas of responsibilities – and make a living utilizing a computer as the tool that they use to make a living?
Since almost 1/3 of all jobs are freelance today – it’s not too much of a leap of faith to see a culture of project-based, virtual jobs – which range from creativity (blogging, video editing, media and event production) to #’s and office related work (research, project management, book keeping, ops) to new kinds of sales and marketing – all done out of the home. Right?
And those jobs will get done by college grads who were promised something better, but never got it. But intelligent, laid off blue collar workers. By moms returning to work after raising their kids. Or returning vets, re-entry population or the disabled. These kinds of jobs HAVE to be pervasive across our society – if we’re EVER to complete the transition from manufacturing to service based economy.
Right?
So the next time you think about all these coding jobs – multiple that x1,000 and think about normal people doing on-line, virtual, project based jobs – and pray that we can convince government – that that’s where they should be putting their workforce training and economic development efforts.
‘Cause how many, snotty nosed kid, VC funded startups – do we need?