Every morning I spend a half hour reading blogs and forums related to search optimisation, web tech, design, marketing, etc., as a means of keeping my skills and knowledge current. (It is something that I think everyone should do as part of their job.) One of the blogs I read is IttyBiz, because I <3 very smart people who swear a lot.
She had a post that really made me smile: Get Out of My F*cking Shop. This, my dear, is the story of my life.
Web Design
Out loud: “Maybe we should go for something cleaner.”
In head: “There is no fucking way Im putting this shit in my portfolio. Get out of my fucking shop.”
If you know me in real life, you know that due to the recession and the meltdown of the last startup I worked on, I’ve gone from leading large-scale web projects to working as a search optimisation specialist – not the most creative job in the world, especially for the type of clients that we have. Let’s just say that generally they are not blue-chip companies.
My current stress-level and depression are largely a result of having fallen so far off the career ladder that I have a concussion, but also a result of the sites that I have to look at day in and day out in hopes of getting them to rank well in search results. The problem with most of them is that it is entirely a futile exercise – yes, we could probably work at getting them there, depending on the brokeness of the bad CMS that they use. But it would be ultimately useless, since these sites couldn’t convert a nun to religion. No one would ever buy from them, and their bounce rates are close to 100%.
I long for the day that I can say “get out of my fucking shop”.
Hi, could you list some of the mentioned blogs/forums you frequent? I’m kind of looking for a kick-off point, (reading thedailywtf.com probably isn’t going to help my skills much) and i do have to admit i share that particular liking for swearing developers.
IttyBiz, as above. Also:
Seth Godin for marketing – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
SEOmoz, for search: http://www.seomoz.org/blog
ClickZ, marketing – http://www.clickz.com/
Jeffrey Zeldman – http://www.zeldman.com/
Smashing Magazine – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
The Register – http://www.theregister.co.uk/
…and a bunch of SEO stuff that would drive anyone else mad. :)
My last job was working on a social networking site, and my reading was a lot more interesting: virtual worlds, online communities, and a lot of metaverse/3D web stuff.
I come read your blog everyday.
What does that say about my career?
It says that you have WAY too much time on your hands if you’re wasting it like that. :) You’ll never get on the NYT Bestseller List lke that.