Many tech industry pioneers – including Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, and others – started in garages. In light of new and more accessible technologies including 3-D printers, as well as funding trends, the age of the garage inventors could be returning.
various tools in a unique way and devising a method around a problem that hadn’t been attempted before. This may require some research and reference instead of rote knowledge, but the end result is something that wouldn’t have otherwise existed, and is something for which there are no guidelines.
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE:3-D Printing Forming the Basis for the Return of the ‘Garage Inventor.’Why Talent For Tech is Different Than SkillIT Employment Growth Rate Increases Modestly – Nov 2014The 5 Must-Have Qualities Of The Modern EmployeeWhy Tech Professionals Need to Be Good Story TellersTHE FINAL WORD |
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3-D Printing Forming the Basis for the Return of the ‘Garage Inventor.’
Min-Liang Tan, co-founder and CEO of gaming hardware and software producer Razer, explains on TechCrunch.com, “Software, once expensive and complicated to make, has become relatively easy…two guys in a garage can inexpensively create an application… [and] Like software, hardware is getting easier.” One reason for the renaissance in hardware is that start-ups have direct access to “low-cost pre-fab components…[that are] very sophisticated…powerful enough to run real software…[and] there are a lot of bottled up ideas like drones and robots that just did not get developed in the last 15 years,” tech legend Marc Andreessen explained at an event sponsored by tech publisher Pando. 3-D printing is at the forefront of this “hardware is the new software” trend. Making prototypes and actual hardware is much, much faster and cheaper with 3-D printers compared to the conventional methods. And when crowdsourcing is used to directly fund these new products and ventures, as Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, said in a Think with Google article, “The whole ecosystem around hardware has increased in viability.” |
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Why Talent For Tech is Different Than SkillWherever you are in IT, you’ve probably come across colleagues who were extremely skilled at their jobs — system administrators who can bend a zsh shell to their every whim, or developers who can write lengthy functions that compile without a whimper the first time. You’ve probably also come across colleagues who were extremely talented — who could instantly visualize a new infrastructure addition and sketch it out to extreme detail on a whiteboard while they assembled it in their head, for example, or who could devise a new, elegant UI without breaking a sweat. The truly gifted among us exhibit both of those traits, but most fall into one category or another. There is a difference between skill and talent. Such is true in many vocations, of course, but IT can present a stark contrast between the two. Part of the reason for that is that we might consider someone skilled if they need little or no documentation to accomplish a certain task. A skilled chef can make a meal without requiring a recipe, for instance, and a skilled network admin can make major changes to production switches and routers without calling up a CLI reference guide to check syntax. A talented chef, on the other hand, may think along different lines and construct an entirely unique dish for which there is no recipe. A talented system administrator may do much the same, assembling To take another example, there are many extremely skilled musicians who play through difficult sheet music with ease, but have problems improvising when the music, the guide, is removed. By the same token, there are many extremely skilled musicians who improvise amazingly well but can’t read a note. Truly gifted musicians excel at both — as do truly gifted developers, administrators, and network and system architects. |
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The fact is that companies of just about any size need people who are skilled, people who are talented, and generally, a few people who are both. Many projects have failed because although they might have been technically sound and functional, they lacked key features, general usability, or the vision necessary to prevent future problems. On the converse, many flowing, visually stunning works of technical art have become mired in technical issues caused by a lack of skill during development. We all have seen examples of each, be it the immaculately functional application that has a laborious interface, or the immensely usable and friendly UI that lacks fundamental power and scalability.
The key, as I see it anyway, is to have a fundamental understanding of the technology in question, if not the particulars. Talented developers view different languages as tools with different strengths and syntaxes, and they will choose the best language for the job at hand, even if they’re more comfortable with another. Others might choose their preferred language due to their experience with the language, even if it’s not as adept at solving the problem as another choice might be. Understanding the fundamental problem and identifying the proper method of solving it require that underlying foundational knowledge of computing in general. Knowing your options and how to leverage them is more important than knowing exactly how they work, at least in many cases. This translates into all aspects of IT. A solid IT admin or developer cannot resist change and cannot resist learning new technologies. It just isn’t an option. Remaining sedentary in this wildly changing world means that sooner rather than later, the steps required to regain currency become far too high to climb, and you’ll remain stuck at your current level. Many projects have failed because although they might have been technically sound and functional, they lacked key features, general usability, or the vision necessary to prevent future problems. This is not to say that you need to learn every new language that shows up or be fluent in every network operating system. But when a new technology starts spreading like wildfire, you must at least understand why, and you should know how it plays within any form of IT infrastructure. If the time comes when that technology might help you solve a problem, that’s when you can dig into the details. One of the reasons we got into deep IT in the first place was that it is an ever-present source of problems that need solving, and we’re junkies for that sort of thing. We just need to remember that sometimes new problems can’t be solved with old tools, but will require learning new ones. After all, our tools — and the skills and talent behind them — are all we have. |
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IT Employment Growth Rate Increases Modestly – Reverses Nine Month Downward Trend; Engineering Growth Rate Remains SluggishAlexandria, VA, November 12, 2014 – The number of IT jobs grew 0.2 percent sequentially last month to 4,701,300, according to TechServe Alliance, the national trade association of the IT & Engineering Staffing and Solutions industry. On a year-over-year basis, IT employment has grown by 3.5% since October 2013 adding 159,300 IT workers. Engineering jobs also grew more modestly in October, up 0.1 percent sequentially to 2,512,000. On a year-over-year basis, engineering employment has grown by 1.6% since October 2013 adding 39,100 engineering workers. |
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“After nine consecutive months of a downward trend in the rate of growth in IT employment, I am pleased to see October’s uptick. While too early to tell whether this is a sustainable trend, the data is certainly consistent with near universal feedback from my member companies who report strong demand and a shortage of available talent in many skill sets,” stated Mark Roberts, CEO of TechServe Alliance. “While the employment picture on the engineering side remains more mixed with a declining rate of growth in October, I am optimistic that both IT and engineering employment will improve as we gain greater clarity around the geopolitical and macroeconomic forces that had been contributing to a general sense of uncertainty,” added Roberts.
IT and engineering jobs are found in virtually every sector and industry in varying degrees. The following table presents information about the total number of jobs in certain sectors that provide a significant amount of employment for IT and engineering professionals.
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The 5 Must-Have Qualities Of The Modern EmployeeDramatic changes in the way we work are being fueled by new behaviors and new technologies. To keep pace with trends that are shaping the future of work, there are five qualities that the modern employee needs to possess. Have a voice in your company Be autonomous Share and help others Filter and focus |
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 Why Tech Professionals Need to Be Good Story TellersAs a tech professional, how important is it for you to tell a good story? Lonne Jaffe, CEO of Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based enterprise software provider Syncsort, says the ability can make a big difference in the course of your career. In fact, he told Business Insider he believes it’s especially important in technology, where things can be “very complex, and sometimes people find technical details to be somewhat boring.” The ability to communicate is a critical skill. No matter what your role, it’s important to be able to share your ideas with others, whether you’re brainstorming or updating team members and managers about a project’s status. Jaffe talks about “creating a compelling narrative,” which “is invaluable for motivating a team, explaining strategic priorities in a way that’s easy for others to understand, or communicating complex ideas to customers and prospects.” Most everyone, at every level, should be a good story teller, he believes. So Jaffe probes for the ability to tell stories when he’s interviewing candidates. But of course, that’s not the only thing he’s trying to figure out early on. Time management is another ability he values in technical candidates, he said in an interview with The New York Times. “Figuring out how to spend your time is almost more important in some ways than how well you execute,” he said. Some might say that a good manager will always make their team’s priorities clear, but the truth is more complicated than that. Team members have to juggle any number of tasks at once. Understanding how all of those things fit together is a prerequisite to planning and doing the actual work. A hiring manager needs to understand how your thought process works when you’re organizing all the projects on your plate. That brings to mind another skill that’s good to have: Listening. Jaffe talks about listening in the context of evolving your stories based on what you learn from people’s questions and reactions. But it’s important, too, in terms of understanding your manager’s goals and priorities. The reality is priorities compete, and candidates need to show they can make intelligent, informed decisions about which project they’re going to tackle first. |
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THE FINAL WORD |
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