Comments on: Will the Real Tech Community Please Stand Up

By: David

David — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:08:16 +0000

Thank you for posting this! The wannabes of this community really need to be exposed while the true should be recognized.

By: John Tindale

John Tindale — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:57:22 +0000

Aaron,
I run into this all the time. We’ve developed our own system interface device that basically takes an existing building control systems and makes it wireless. We also have software that we’ve written to make wireless devices and building controls talk to each other- yet when we attend “social media” events, we’re the wierd ones because we’re dealing in hardware and embedded systems, and we’re not just blogging about what we had for lunch today…

I’ve really cut back on the amount of time I spend attending “tech” events, because it really ends up feeling like a colossal waste of time to get business cards from “social network specialists” and “web 2.0″ liasons.

Maybe web 2.1.4507 will be an internet that we can all use to actually get some work done.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:07:04 +0000

I agree completely, Aaron. I was a bit surprised when I saw my name showing up in some technology-related Twitter lists.

The most I can hope for is to be guided along by some of the smarter minds in the technology world — you’re one of them, Aaron — into understanding the technology, and then I can figure out how brands can actually use the tools.

By: Addison PSF

Addison PSF — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:09:52 +0000

Excellent advice! I personally am not a technologist, but I can see that being an annoying situation – especially when you invest time and resources and everyone tries to take credit.

By: John

John — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:58:09 +0000

Yes, we will stand up and we will teach this kind of people a lesson. Each time we have a chance we will make them fill so bad that they will regret it.

By: sasamat

sasamat — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:33:23 +0000

Interesting post, thanks. As Steve commented above, it’s a tad unfocused and a bit of a rant. Any technology company, or technology group within a none-technology business (I’m a technologist in the insurance industry for my sins) should be perfectly capable of filtering out none-pertinent referrals from HR.

A social-marketing type will fall at the phone-interview hurdle, if not at the randomly-buzzword-infused resume detection phase. If by a miracle they do make it to the interview, at the end I ask them if they think WE pass the Joel test (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html). Social marketing types most likely won’t have passed the earlier coding test and will have no idea what this is about, so apart from wasting time I don’t see how they can possibly be preventing any legitimate developers from getting jobs.

Granted, they may have wasted some time and been guilty of creating more heat than light; but when they do finally get a job, isn’t that what they will be paid to do anyway?

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:53:24 +0000

I hate to admit that your post really made me chuckle. I’m a network engineer and while I relate to your clarification of who is and who is not a technologist I think it’s important to remember that the more technology is adopted and integrated the better it is for the tech purists.

In the end if people are using technology to make their lives better then I don’t care what they call themselves. Geeks will always know the difference.

Honestly, we can’t expect too much from HR managers ;)

Enjoyed the post.

By: Joel McLaughlin

Joel McLaughlin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:01:58 +0000

This reminds me of the Real Estate industry. During the boom and height of the real estate market, everyone was a Realtor and a loan officer, but they weren’t talented, because once the boom went away, 90% of these people couldn’t sell a house or sell a loan, they just disappeared. They were riding the wave

By: Sanghmitra

Sanghmitra — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:19:33 +0000

I don’t get it. If the companies are okay with using social media experts for technical development, may be they don’t need such highly qualified people after all. The kind of self regulation you expect from people has no place in contemporary economic system. People will always do whatever it takes to compete in the market, tech community on the other hand should compete on their domain and for companies which actually value your skills. If some ‘non-tech’ person gets hired for ‘tech’ position, it is either the company not worthy enough for real tech guys or the ‘non-tech’ guy does actually know a little ‘tech’. After all, is that not the way capitalism works?

By: Ghennipher

Ghennipher — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:58:15 +0000

Great post! Funny how back in ‘98 I started as a technologist – spoke at Search Engine Strategies and PubCon as a technologist – and now 11 years later, I can’t even begin to compete on that field anymore.

Web technology is like water and changing shape faster than a lot of us can keep up with it. I’m an Agile Scrum Master and I can rewrite/hack almost anything, but I certainly can’t write clean code from scratch – the kind that powers Twitter, Facebook, or any major site today. I’ve always felt kind of weird admitting that even though I was once a pretty dang good technologist, I’m now the liason between technology and people. But that’s what I am because that’s what’s needed. Straight up.

The division should always be there…I agree with you. When I’ve got to hire a tech, it’s ‘write the working code I need, or go home’. I don’t need them to give me their take on web marketing strategy. I had a blowup with a tech Friday who wanted to give me more of his ideas on PPC than he did on writing the code. Needless to say, I didn’t contract that ‘technologist’ because he gave a clear impression to me that he didn’t really know how to build what I needed by spending so much time talking about marketing. But to an unsuspecting HR person, that could easily sound great, so they hire the tech who knows how to do marketing! In my experience, the tech part of that scenario is invariably broken. Thanks for the reminder!