Tech Top Trumps - which job in tech?

Internet DNA Podcast

Abi talks in schools about the different jobs available in tech. As tech touches every industry the variety is huge and kids need to know that whatever their subject, secret power or cool rating, there is a place for them. This week we discuss Developers and Programmers, the array of Designers, Systems Administrators, Operators and Architects....it may not sound fun! but that is where you are wrong! 

Transcription

Hello. Hey, I'm me down this week. We are going to be protected tech. What I do is I go around schools and I talked to them about the different types of jobs in tech. His, although they've grown up with texts that digital native, a lot of them, I've never really, I thought about the fact that we're all going to work in the tech related job, especially as primary school children going to becoming a job age and they all think, I can't program, I can't do a job in technology. But there's so many different types of jobs that anything you're good at be that great Instagram or good at writing at old jobs that you can have in tech. So we'd play top tech trumps. So I thought it'd be quite fun today just to go through a few of those jobs and when we go through the jobs, we will talk about the type of subjects you might be good at, the Cyprus personality you might have, how much you can earn, the secret power and your cool rating. Sit down. Why don't you start with a job in tech

project manager.

Oh, let's start with exciting ones.

Okay. This is one of the more exciting ones. Straight. Yeah.

I mean, none of us can exist really without a project manager on a large job. So what do you think their best subject might be? What are they going to be good at to be a project manager?

I actually think they've got to be good at English and I think they need to be quite good at subjects in and around economics and philosophy and that sort of thing. Because strangely, a project management job is all about communication and understanding what is important and what is not important. The economics, you're effectively a politician and you're trying to, we're not a politician, but maybe more Whitehall, civil service type. What you're trying to do is move a project along when you have lots of people with lots of different views and you've got to be able to really understand what's important and what's not. So okay.

Right. Democratic and unlikable. For me, the personality is organized, organized, organized, actually use, you want got to be a multitasker.

Yeah, you have. You have to be organized, but I don't think that that's your key. I mean there are so many tools now for the organization of it, whether you're using something like Jira or get done done or thousands and thousands of tools to get you organized. The actual difficulty part of project management in my opinion is man management. It's actually getting people to deliver what you need to deliver at the time it needs to be delivered and I can tell you from working where I work, the difference between a good project manager and a bad project manager is literally successful. Failure of a project. Yes,

and everyone's got to like you and feel that you have their back at all times. I would just want to bring out the tool thing, which makes me laugh. All these tools for organizing our lives and you know what? I think about them, I've talked about them before, but only disorganized people try and use organization tools and then they have so many tools that they're trying to fit in that they forget to do their job. Organize. People don't need tools. They could use a spreadsheet, they could use a bit of paper. They don't need the, so you're obviously not an organized person.

Well I'm not project manager. You're probably very well aware.

Yeah. I tried to push you into that position. It's like putting a square peg in a round.

Yeah. That's not my role. I mean we j because it's tied into the bit bucket and get and so that it integrates the whole workflow. But as you say, it doesn't matter. You could do it on a piece of paper. It doesn't matter what the tool is that you use. It's just that people who are naturally good at project management naturally will have some form of system for organizing stuff. What I'm trying to say is they're not spreadsheet mad people cause those guys, the database admins.

Okay. Potential earning out of five, five being really good, one being not very good.

Yes. Three, three and a half. You can on a lot of money as a good project manager in bid project, secret power. Secret power is got to be something in around politics, hasn't it? It's got to be about persuasion. They're not meant to be leaders. They're the power behind the leader. If you think about it,

you make everyone else think that they are leading and making the decisions and do you make them all feel that it is them doing the right thing and doing the best, but actually it's a, you maneuvering all these people into the right position so they feel good about themselves and there is a word, but that's quite a long description. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, so

cool. Cool. Writing five again that go, I'm going to give it a two. It's not the coolest job. It's probably one of the most important job.

Okay. I'm going to say the next job as systems, and I'm only saying this because I just love the word CIS admin. Oh, we've got a sizzle.

Oh, so they're called sis ops in my company, which is us this up, cause I'm head of infrastructure. I manage both ops and Dev. OPS OPS are people who run servers, they manage servers, they manage the optimization of networks, they do routines, all the underlying technology that everybody is going to work on. Oh Wow. These guys. For me, they're the real tech guys. You need to be good at maths. You need to really like things like engineering, electronics. You have to have a really good understanding of operating systems. I don't know. I use the word yeah and really

paypal, and I'm going to get class though they had, but these are the people that would happily sit in a dark wearing them all day. Just tinkering

these year old school geeks basically.

And we decided to say, I'll talk. It's, we really like you. Even though you've got a really stupid name.

I love old school geeks. You wait until they get there. Cool. Right?

Yeah. Actually that's quite interesting. Let's do cool rhetoric because nerds and geeks used to be really uncle and now they're super cool. Uh, when they got cool, they thought, okay, we've got to exercise a bit. So they're hot and cool at the same time. I'd give them a four and a half.

So for me it's the fact that these type of people are really, usually very interesting because of the types of person that they are. They've often got very unusual interests and obviously we can go dungeons and dragons, but actually you know, if you want to learn some really odd stuff about some really odd subjects,

it's dragons battle reenactment.

Yeah. Or cost play. Any of cos players when you dress up as a game character and go to a convention and go and meet lots of Pika choose and Harley Quinns and all sorts of really, really get into it. Go to comicon or something like that. It's full of these cos play characters.

Yeah, in Japan every weekend and took it. They all dress up like they'd been injured in war and then lots of doctors and nurses and people in bandages and blood and they will go and hang out in the park all day.

When you say they all all are we talking about,

well the ones that aren't shopping in Cincy, that's a long time since I that, but there were a lot of people in the park all covered in blood.

I've known ones who've been really interested in civil war reenactment, for example, which no, I think that you think you'd get into, some of them are into mountain biking, but they're into it in a particular way and so I always really liked them.

Quite introverted. Quite intense.

Quite intense. Yeah. Yeah. But that quiet sort of tech cleverness. Yeah. Knowledgeable, very knowledgeable.

Well yeah. And you'd be able to ask some questions about any subject and then we'll generally have quite a wide knowledge of that. And it could be a really obscure subject.

Yeah. Like, oh my sickness of world war two tanks,

cameras might be one. And I feel like I'm being rude here. I'm not. I'm generally in all of these guys and think that amazing. Okay, cool. I think, I think I just did that then.

Four and a half. We liked them. Secret power is knowledge

had been spoons just with that brain.

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much.

Okay. Your turn.

Oh, we're going to love this one. Web designers

waiting to get rid of them. They're all over the place. They're like the acceptable face.

But actually, you know what? The funny thing about web designers is they've really hard to stereotype because they're not like in the early two thousands where they were all snowboarding 24 somethings. There's such a big range of them. Now

the thing with web designer is the so many actual subcategories.

Yeah, but I'm wondering about the general web designer. Maybe front end coder,

the person that does everything. You could use the interface designer, you could be a designer that builds websites on platforms such as wordpress, Shopify. You could be user experience designers. So you're designing the experience. You could be an interaction designer. So you're designing the transitions, the unit.

Yeah. Really. You kind of do all of it. Yeah. No one would say you're a UX specialist. That's not because you don't, I like them too, but you know what I'm saying. Your desirability is quite broad. Very specialized. Yeah. Cause if I wanted to talk about UX designer, I would be very specific about that. I'm talking about your General Garden web designer. Web designer.

Okay. So subjects there probably were quite good at art. It doesn't have to be fine or it could be design. It could be sort of spacial awareness actually more than fine art so it will be creative in some manner. You see a lot of designers, I think that really is their area of expertise, but others when they start getting into the coding side and things possibly maths, English

I think really? Yeah. As you said, it's spatial awareness. Makes a great designer. I appreciate great design and I know it when I see it, but I have no idea. I mean I know the rules that you do, but it's that beyond the rules it's the taking the rules and then deconstructing them. That actually makes you into a great designer, so thanks. Well you know I think anybody who sees a skill that they don't have as special does she what I mean,

oh thanks Vic. Just like getting rid of that fine from for moment. I felt really good. Personality. Personality is quite difficult. I would say that we were quick areas, quite outdoorsy. We're not introverted. Quite the social bonds in the scene

and generally quite fashionable, quite sociable. You require that knowledge required. Very funny. Most designers actually are quite funny. I mean, not all of them, obviously. I'm not exactly, but what I'm saying is actually that common or garden design is quite a difficult thing to pigeon holed because actually different types of designers and you need that range. Otherwise everything would just look like a Nissan Micra.

Yes, exactly. You do need the want to explore and try new things and so when you say fashionable and stuff, I'm not fashionable, but it's the want to try things

interested in fashion. Not In fashion like this season, but interested in clothes and how you put

anything that is design ratio. Yeah. I want to know more about cultural creative side of things. Okay. Secret power.

Secret power. Wow. The designer expression.

Good. Potentially learning. I'd say probably it's not as great as data heads and stuff. I'd say

three. I think designers span, don't they? So you be anything from a two to four but yeah, three as an average

I you start low, but you have a long career path as a designer.

Yeah. And you should not try and shortcut it. I think it's something very much like Dev ops or being a developer. It's not a job where you should try and be senior too early because you will miss a huge amount of the learning early on.

That's interesting. Actually. Spirit counts to so much and until you have the experience, we'll like anything you don't know what you don't know. Yeah, and lots of our designers work is translation and also communication. So you're translating what your client needs and you're communicating well, they use it.

I'm actually, I'm going to change them. Special power to empathy because actually I think if you're a really good designer, what you understand is what other people are wanting from things writing, I'm going to give him a three. You know, some will obviously, but I think on average, I think the thing about web design is that it used to be very cool because it was much more frontier, much more the wild west. An unusual job and commanded are relatively inflated wage for the skill level just because they were new skills. I think it's become a lot more normal now and therefore I think the wages have, and in some ways the coolness has waned slightly.

We will go, oh that's the thing. Yeah I know. Web designer because the web wasn't old.

Yeah, exactly. And so they were all young snowboarding earning a little bit too much and that gave rise to that look. That actually was never true. But that idea that they were all seeing on their laptops up a mountain,

hey actually I'm, I do marketeers cause I'm going to get away from something that's really sort of techie based, right. You know, digital marketing, social marketing, offline marketing, even that sometimes that is really good at being able to get caught up steps. So best subject.

Oh Wow. So I don't know if they have a subject because I think I quite get it shopping damn. Just like the social bees, if you know what I mean. So I don't think any subject

people wouldn't be with them.

Yeah. Make friends easily. Chatty's the easily talkers because that world is so much built up on

relationship.

Yeah. I mean you have to be reasonably good at math, let's put it that way, because it is about sales. At the end of the day, it's a funnel to sales. So you need to understand efficiency and budgeting and that sort of stuff. But the real part of it is a sort of a social empathy and understanding what resonates with people, what are people's pain points. This

is the person that just is at going out for a drink down the pub or a girl's not talking to them and just literally getting everyone talking about whether it's the latest Netflix Romcom or whether it's the latest new Chile bottle. They can get a whole group of people all chatting about the same thing. Really it's the water cooler sleep.

A lot of marketing as you know is effectively cold calling, talking to people you've never spoken to before. And then when I say cold calling, I don't mean you're actually on the phone cause does anyone use a phone anymore, but it's that whole, how do we create a relationship quite quickly so that I can gauge what you're interested in. How do I understand people in terms of segments, like what types of people, like different types of things. And so I think marketing is a really interesting job. I think a lot of the day to day parts of it are really boring because if we talk about marketing, it's advertising. Let's be honest.

Well, that's so funny. I always say marketing is coming up with campaigns to improve. One thing is about social media getting influences involved. It's very creative. It's right next door to design.

Yeah, it does. It's the transition. Yeah.

Well you were saying like cold calling and stuff. To me that's more on the sales.

Yeah. Well I'm saying is that it's a transition point to say, I mean marketing is the funnel to sale and most people as smaller companies will call that role sales and marketing because marketing is basically the drumming up of interest to find leads. That's essential point. It's basically about how do you foster that?

Yeah.

How'd you find and attract people to you that would be interested in your product? That is what it is about. It's real nugget, but there's a lot of creativity and interest because you're going to get into sociology, you're going to get into psychology, so all of those types of sciences are also really interesting.

You had a degree in anthropology or yeah, sociology

or even like linguistics. Any of those sort of social things.

Yes. Yes. A really good background for it and also I think the secret power here is the ability to network. The ability to everyone knows you by the time and evenings finished up at a party and that they know they're going to enjoy talking to you another time. You've got a vivacious personality. Attractive personality, cool writing.

Who were thinking? I think they have a four if they do it well. Hopefully we're talking about good examples of these people because otherwise ratings are always one.

Okay, we've got time for one more. I think we should do this again next week cause there's so many more jobs. We haven't even touched on that. We've got time for one more before we go and put our bets down on the grand national. Are you going to be betting on the grand nationals?

Oh it's companies sweepstakes is now I work in it.

Yeah.

I don't know. Some 50 to one outside. Never going to happen. I mean sweepstakes isn't it? I don't take any notice of it. Someone just came round and relieve me a five pounds. And that's basically the way I look. Okay.

Safe Sex. But I'm here with my children and I'm not going to do it because I know that one child would just be really upset if she doesn't win. Even if [inaudible] wins, I'll end up having to pretend that holes when, so anyway,

I'm going to give you, cause we've done yours, so we're going to do mine, which is solutions architect, which is my role basically.

Okay. So what is the solutions architect?

So she's architect is someone who designs full systems. Everything from interacting with sis ops to get networks and servers set up in the correct way. How you're going to build websites, what micro services you're going to use, how everything interacts together as a full system. Yeah. Uh, I am, yeah, I sit directly.

Yeah.

I literally sit below the CTO. So I am the basically implementation of all things that have lights on them basically. But everything. So what software do people run? How does that interact with some of the hardware that we run? How do we connect to web servers? How does Dev ops work? How to sis ops work? What are the core principles of what we're trying to achieve? And so it's an ideas thing. So you basically come up with an idea and then you work each detail of that idea to make sure that it all works together.

Let's say it's very logical and very out of the box thinking you've got to solve problems.

Yeah. That you haven't had yet. Yeah.

Let's see. Think of a solution that may not even exist.

You've got to think of a solution to something that isn't yet. So we're planning our architecture for the next five years. Now God knows what's going to be going on in the next five years. So Hey, you have to read a lot about the industry. You have to know what's going on, what people are talking about now that may become things and watch stuff. What technologies are likely to become the winners in two or three years time? So there's a lot of research that has to be done and then there's a lot of creative problem solving going on

and not only the sort of the blue sky, the big idea, but also then drilling down to make sure that that is actually even possible.

Yeah, or economic because you've got to think about the money as well. Most of my job is about, and not most of it is about budgeting, but a large proportion of mine is saying this is solution a and these are the benefits, these are the disadvantages and this is the cost implications. And then I'll go and this is solution B, which is my preferred option. And just see what I mean and the following, and I prefer it because of x, y, and Z. And you do a lot of presenting of stuff, not only to people above you, but also now I have to present this now to a Dev team so that they actually build what I want them to build. A lot of articulating principles and ideas.

So what's your best subject?

I mean, I was into math and physics when I was at school. You need to want to read. You must read every day, all the time. Got to be literally interested in just the tech.

Well, you are very knowledgeable, I'd have to say, and perhaps you'll secret is problem solving in this case. Yes. What's your potential learning? How much do you,

um, potential learning? And I think about my role, there's a lot of it is to do with certification. For example, cloud infrastructure. You really have to understand in the modern world how it all works together. I don't have to be able to actually do it, but I have to understand how it works together.

Um, earnings pretty high.

Yeah, they are. They are. I Haven't fully leveraged that. Yeah.

Is, yeah. CTO. And so you're getting up to five. How cool

do you think you are? I think it's a cool job. I don't think I personally am very cool at all.

Okay. I don't think it's a cool job, but I think you're right.

Okay, cool.

Oh, that night we'll be good to go. Alright. I've enjoyed that. That's, carry that on that. So I should say apply for now. Good question, mate. Bye. Bye.

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Dan & Abi work, talk & dream in tech. If you would like to discuss any speaking opportunity contact us.