
Oh, I’m not a… — Medium - benhowdle89
https://medium.com/career-pathing/349656f95dab
======
buro9
We do a great disservice to others by not appreciating their craft.

I wonder if the author would feel as accomplished in his primary craft if
someone who used a bit of jQuery for the first time went and declared that
they were now a JavaScript developer?

After 10,000 hours of practise a master craftsmen knows he still has a lot to
learn. The problem with job title inflation like this is that it bloats the
already large crowd of people who do not have the humbleness of a master
craftsman and claim to be more than they are.

I realise defeating negative thought is important, but the process of becoming
something is possibly more important than using a claim to be something (to
overcome such negative thought).

~~~
ebbv
Exactly my reaction.

I specifically call myself a developer and say "I can design but I am not a
designer" because I am not as good as the pros at it. I have respect for those
who are better than I am.

Put another way; I can change my brakes, oil, spark plugs, and other basic
maintenance items on my car. But I'm not a mechanic. I can't rebuild a
transmission.

~~~
farmdawgnation
Ditto here. I'm a software engineer who is capable of improving or tweaking a
design as the project requirements change, but I can't do the entire process
from conceptualization to visual design. I'm sure with enough practice I
_could_ , but to get good enough to say that I'm a designer I'd have to
neglect development. And I, quite honestly, like development better.

------
krautsourced
This article actually makes me angry, because this kind of attitude is why I
have to deal with such on amount of clueless hacks, who call themselves
something they are not. Sure, if it's between you and your mom, you can call
yourself whatever you like. But if I pay you to do something, and you say you
are that thing, but all you did so far is read a "... for dummies" book and
plan to learn on the job - paid by me, that gets my blood boiling. I'm all for
personal growth, and I've switched careers a number of times in my life, but I
came prepared with long years of study each time, and at least some
experience. And I was always open about it. So, please, if you follow this
guy's advice, at least make sure to be open about your _level_ of being a
developer or whatever.

~~~
EnderMB
My thoughts exactly.

I've worked with far too many freelancers that claim to know something in
order to get business, only to then realise that what I'd paid for was hacked
together; the kind of work that I wouldn't hire if this freelancer had come in
for a full-time role.

This advice works, but only in certain jobs/situations. If you're an internal
developer then this is an entirely reasonable thing to do, but more often than
not some poor person is going to have to go through your awful code. It's this
attitude that adds countless hours of fixes onto a system several years down
the line.

------
juice13
I don't agree with you. I'm a developer and I can't design.

After designing many frontends I have come to this conclusion. I'm just not
good at it. It takes me ages to get anything done, I have very little original
ideas of how to make a page more functional, or even pretty. I can recognise a
good design, but I just can't seem to produce it no matter how hard I try, or
how long I try for.

Also, doing frontend design just seems to make me miserable. Much happier
coding the backend where I'm good and paying a frontend person who does good
work there.

~~~
davidw
> It takes me ages to get anything done

... and then people tell me "you probably haven't considered it yet, but you
should spend some time working on the design of the site". Argh! I wish I were
better at it though.

------
supercoder
Exactly, how dare they suggest I'm not a surgeon. I'm off to buy a scalpel and
put out a few craigslist ads. In a week we'll see who's got a new job title !

~~~
DigitalSea
"Have you tried our website and open heart surgery package, good sir? You get
a website professionally designed and developed while we open up your chest
and unclog your arteries all done by our resident genius
developer/designer/surgeon, Ben Howdle for just $599"

------
jongold
Great post; really resonates with me.

I've come to realise that it's a linguistic thing.

"I can't do that" vs "I can't do that yet"

Personally, I've always hated sysadmin and as a designer I can rely on Heroku
for everything I'd conceivably need at the moment. I've dipped my toes into
setting up VPSs in the past but I always get frustrated and give up. It's
definitely not my thing. _but_ I hate the idea of not getting the gist of how
things work even more than I might not enjoy doing them.

So this weekend I learnt the basics of Linux sysadmin & setting up a box with
Nginx & Passenger and all that jazz. Now, in my own ethical system, I'm happy
to ignore it again for the next few months/years and going back to Heroku
(which I enjoy using). Is that really weird?

~~~
div
Not weird at all. For starters, this gives you the tools to think about what
could be wrong, when stuff goes wrong. Or at least a vague idea of where to
start looking.

The more of these 'entry points' you get the easier it gets for others, whose
specialty you know a bit of, to communicate with you.

Bonus points if you have a 'relative difficulty' idea for most of those entry
points.

------
davidkatz
"A 'designer' and a 'developer' are made of the same stuff, all that separates
them is the label they place upon themselves."

I'm also made of the same stuff as heart surgeons. Want to get under my knife?
Didn't think so.

I'm all for expanding one's skill set. Please say 'yes' to learning new
things. That doesn't mean you get to be good at what you started last week, or
even last year.

------
DigitalSea
This post sort of makes a good point but also somewhat insinuates that you can
spend a week on something like D3.js or design and then call yourself, "X" it
is good to learn new things and never confine ourselves to what skills we
think we should know, but I feel it's somewhat of a smack in the face to
others who spend hours, days, weeks, months and years perfect their craft only
to find themselves working with others who feel as though they're entitled to
call themselves the same. Just because you learn the basics of something
doesn't make you an expert nor give you the right to a title of said skill. I
know the basics of car maintenance and repair, does that give me the right to
put, "Developer and Car Mechanic" in the title of my website or resume just
because I hustled the knowledge of basic engine maintenance and repair?

Is Johnny who's been designing websites for 2 weeks now truly able to call
himself a designer when Michael who's been designing websites for 12 years is
also a designer? It doesn't feel fair that anyone can label themselves based
on only little amounts of experience. I guess "Johnny - Developer and Junior
Designer" doesn't have the same ring to it, "Johnny - Developer and Designer"
has.

You might be able to learn how to increment a counter, set a timer and master
if statements and functions in Javascript in about a week, but you'll never
truly learn anything in a week, you're just scratching the surface you don't
know about all of the methods the String object has, you don't know about
closures, global variables, xmlHttpRequests, prototypes and dealing with
arrays. There's a difference between learning something and actually learning
something well. Sort of like those, "Build a blog in 20 minutes" tutorials
most languages love to perpetuate when describing how easy their language or
framework is.

As for the statement that developers can design, I disagree. It has always
bugged me when I see a business advertising for a designer and developer, you
can't truly do both at once and do them well, it's merely a way for businesses
to skimp on hiring two great people instead of one mediocre at best (if you
specialise in $200 websites then maybe it's fine). In my opinion you're either
a designer or you're a developer. I'm a developer and I've been trying to
design my own sites for my ambitious personal ideas for about 3 years now, but
I lack the knowledge of grids, colours, typography, ideal reading lengths,
line heights and all of the other advanced aspects a designer faces. If I were
to call myself a designer, I would feel like I'm insulting the actual
designers that I work with and respect. Most of the designers I work with know
a little CSS and HTML but they don't call themselves developers because they
know that knowing the basics of something isn't enough to be good or even
mediocre at it.

Would you trust a car mechanic who decides he's going to give hairdressing a
go? We all use different parts of our brains, we have our own likes and
interests and these are what make us great at what we decide to do. People
become mechanics because they have an interest in engines and getting their
hands dirty, they have a thirst for mechanical knowledge just like developers
are mostly people who grew up taking things apart just to see how they worked,
endlessly reading other peoples code and the desire to solve complex issues
with a text editor and a keyboard.

I'm all for learning new things, but pretending to be something you're not is
something I do not advocate. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an oil change
and haircut appointment to attend to...

------
kmfrk
I'd be much more interested in Medium as a blogging platform, if they instated
a ban on memes in posts.

Hard to take someone seriously when they use the modern equivalent of lolcats
to make a point.

~~~
darkxanthos
I enjoy the levity and am fit to do it myself. Is your aversion to it about
personal taste or is there something else to it?

------
Osmium
I often agonise of this, especially on a CV. e.g. I know how to use (say) a
certain programming language a lot better than _people I know_ actually being
paid to use said programming language as their full-time job. On the other
hand, I know my knowledge is really quite limited and no where approaching an
experienced developer--certainly at present I could code up a smaller project
or a prototype, but probably no more than that. So what could I say on a
CV/resume without being misleading, but also without underselling myself in a
job market where the people you're competing against are quite happy to
exaggerate or outright fabricate?

~~~
darkxanthos
I personally don't put years of experience in technologies on my résumé. Just
add a section for projects and list those smallish projects and what languages
you used.

As you do more independent projects with given language it becomes more
impressive even if it were only 6 months of experience. If you get an
interview and anyone asks how long you've been using the language be honest,
but don't offer that until they ask. They may not care.

~~~
mostlystatic
Neither metric really captures proficiency accurately. Not sure if that's
possible.

Years of experience is difficult to measure. If I have a node.js build script
that I update occasionally, do I have one year of node.js experience after
working on the project for a year?

A pure front-end developer will know Javascript much better than a back-end
dev who started using it at the same time.

I also spent 3 years working with MySQL before actually learning to use joins
or grouping.

Doing several independent project instead of a large one only makes it more
impressive, but doesn't indicate greater skill.

Sometimes I wonder if I should add small half-baked projects to my portfolio.
I may only have worked on them for two days, but they would make me look super
prolific. Do you think that's a good idea?

~~~
darkxanthos
I'm not saying it does capture proficiency accurately, I'm saying it's better
marketing.

Marketing isn't about painting an objective picture, your interviewers will be
critical enough to balance it out. Don't do their job for them.

------
lotsofcows
I agree. I'm a great designer. I design my own UIs all the time. The only
problem is that everyone else hates them...

------
mehwoot
This is garbage. I say I am not a designer because my design work isn't of a
high enough standard to be professionally acceptable and because it is a waste
of my time, and thus my employers money, when I do so. Specialization is a key
part of an efficient economy.

------
tathagata
Polymaths often make lasting contributions to world knowledge. It is narrow-
minded to say that you don't want to learn something because of some pre-
determined notion that you might not be good at that thing. Of course, saying
(or suggesting) that you are proficient in something when you know that you
are not is not fair. I am a programmer, but I am also an amateur designer and
an accomplished artist. I am also a wannabe mathematician and one day I will
write about my own accomplishments if nobody else does ;)

------
TamDenholm
One exception to this might be that we dont want to do the thing we might not
know. I tell people i'm not a designer, because i really dont want to learn
it.

~~~
taylonr
100% this. I spent the first 12 years of my career not writing a single line
of production JavaScript or CSS. I did it on the side for my own purposes, but
never professionally. Why? I didn't want to. (I still don't really want to,
but I like the job I'm at more than I like writing JUST server side code.)

So am I a front end developer? No. Will I be in a week, month, year? No. Why,
I DON'T WANT TO BE. Can I use js to manipulate the DOM? Yes. Have I used
Backbone.js and Angular and others? Yes. But I will only mention that
technology in passing, to show "Hey look, I learn new things"

------
blacktulip
This might be off topic but I feel that it is much easier for a designer to
learn coding than for a developer to learn design. Anyone shares this feeling?

~~~
jongold
I think we've just not done a good enough job of providing resources to teach
people design.

Notable exceptions like <http://hackdesign.org/> excluded, It's either 'go to
uni for 3 years' or 'figure it out yourself'

~~~
mnicole
Ditto. Unfortunately, the type of people who have the skills worth teaching
are often not the ones doing the teaching.

Being primarily non-designers who don't know any better, HN users are often
quick to upvote posts regarding design and take these people up on their
offers, despite the fact that -- as many of these posts are by people who are
merely trying to get their name out there -- they could be doing themselves a
disservice by listening to someone who is just trying to promote themselves
rather than promote good design practices.

------
AndrewWorsnop
To head off the comments that are already starting to appear: Correct, you
can't become an expert at most things in a week and probably misrepresentative
to advertise yourself as an expert if you aren't.

That's very different from approaching life with a growth mindset.

Maybe the title shouldn't be "Oh, I'm not a ..." but "Oh, I can never be a
...".

------
mostlystatic
Maybe one situation where this is a good idea is when the current "designer"
is even worse than you are. In that case you add value through your design
skills and you're the lead designer in a designer-free company.

Obviously that only works if you know the company isn't actively looking for a
real designer, in which case your work will disappoint.

------
super_mario
Really? I know quite a bit about von Neumann algebras (unital weak operator
topology closed *-subalgebras of the algebra of bounded operators on arbitrary
Hilbert space). It takes about 5-8 years of hard study before you can even
begin to understand what this definition actually means.

So, come up to speed in a week please.

------
blacktulip
"Be confident enough in your own adaptiveness and aptitude to realise that you
could learn almost anything in a very small amount of time, if you really
wanted to."

I don't know about that. I guess "know how to do something" and "do something
that actually useful" aren't quite the same.

------
thejosh
Sure, be a developer AND designer, even though you may suck at design.

Some can't design, even if they do they have wasted so much time doing
something which someone else can do, especially if you are on a team, or for a
simple idea isn't the mantra "outsource outsource outsource"?

------
michaelochurch

        Recruiter: Do you have any experience with SQL?
        Schmuck: No. I have no SQL.
        Recruiter: Then put "NoSQL" on your resume.
    

In all seriousness, I actually agree-- to a point-- with the OP. Employers
tend toward a denial mentality. "You can't <X>, because you're not a real
<X>." Employees tend toward aspirational claims, at least according to employ
_er_ suspicion (Theory X). However, many workers (especially programmers)
shoot themselves in the foot by buying into this "not a real <X>" nonsense
that their bosses shoot at them as an excuse not to think too hard or take
employee development seriously. They start to believe in their bosses'
negative, limiting opinions of them and get a slave mentality. As an awake
person, I say: Fuck That Shit.

You have to be honest, though, especially with yourself. I will certainly
describe myself as a "machine learning guy" (I'm averse to the word "expert")
on a job interview, but I also know that there is _a lot_ that I have yet to
learn. It's at a few months that you get the right to present yourself as "an
X guy" on a job interview because everyone does it, and if you grade-deflate
yourself you do the world no good, but if you actually _believe_ that you're
as knowledgeable as a real expert at that point, then you're delusional.

If you want to call yourself "professional designer" after your app nets you
$2.97 (your parents and your grandma) then go ahead, because your bosses--
this is _why_ they are your bosses-- have been using that kind of self-
inflation since they were 15 (to pwn girls, while you were studying
computers). Just recognize that, in reality, you have a long way to go and
there's a lot out there that you haven't learned yet. And if it interests you,
then go and learn it.

------
DanielBMarkham
Design is a tough one.

So I took 12 years of piano as a kid. Love playing the piano, although I only
play once a week or so, and only play fun songs for an hour or two when I do
play.

I do not consider myself playing the piano. I think of it more like "playing
_at_ the piano" I understand what a tough art form it is, I am not engaged in
structured learning or skill-honing. I am playing. It is a piano. That's about
it.

Design, to me, is like that. I have built between 20-40 websites. I love
typography. I've laid out a newspaper front page. I've taken all sorts of
pictures and love photography. I've even taken pictures for the covers of
small regional magazines.

But I still don't call myself a designer.

I think the reason is that, as I learned to play the piano, I learned how to
practice -- how to create a mental image of where I wanted my art to go and
how to reach it. (Even I spend zero time doing that any more) I understand the
art form. With design? Beats the heck outta me. Design is beyond my ken. I've
bought all kinds of books on design, I've done many things people would
consider design, yet I feel I know as little now (or less) than when I
started.

So whether you call yourself a designer or not, beats me what kind of criteria
you use. I'm designer in the same way I'm a piano player. It's there, I do it,
and I enjoy it. But with design I just don't know enough to know if there's
more to it than that, though.

------
binarydreams
You've inspired me to learn designing (I did take a look at your dribbble
shots :) pretty good for a web dev).

------
jacobparker
The text on this page is barely readable in Windows/Chrome.

