A List Apart Survey 2008
August 14, 2008 at 11:22 am
Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.
Last year 33,000 people took the A List Apart Survey on working conditions of people who make websites. The web is such a new invention, I think it’s really important to start looking at the lives of those who make it happen. Interesting findings last year. What I noted:
- Massive gender imbalance (82.8% male). Why oh why? I believe that the web more than any other industry offers many types of roles that suit different types of brains - whether you’re a designer, a writer, a marketer, a linguist, a mathemetician, a programmer, a planner, a spatial designer, a project manager… there’s something for you. Add to that the fact that this is a young industry where a certain degree of democracy and flexibility exists, I really don’t understand why more women aren’t working in the web. The results of the 2007 survey shows that most people have come to the web having worked somewhere else. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking of making the leap over to the web side, come on over. It’s fun!
- Most respondents who were developers and designers are white, university educated, and located in the United States (48%). This is a pity because their wage data means nothing to me. I wish they broke the wage rates down by country!
- Heart warming stats - 97.1% of respondents are ‘excited by the field’. I wonder if that kind of statistic exists in any other industry? Of that, 35% are very frequently excited by it. This is evidenced by the fact that 72.5% of respondents have a personal blog. We tend to live what we talk.
There’s lots more interesting stuff in last year’s survey. Take a look - it’s easily scannable and digestible.
But the big news is that now is the time they’re calling for people to take part in this years survey. Go to it. Let’s get our voices heard and a bit of a EU (non UK) bias going on.
Thanks to Eric Nieudan for bringing this to my attention via Twitter.
Update: I took the survey and it took me 11 minutes
10 Things Customers Would Tell You If You Asked
June 26, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Great talk by Eric Reiss. Someone should get him to Ireland to talk on customer service. Passionate, engaging and very very entertaining.
- Don’t tell me how great, be great
- Go the extra mile
- Don’t get in my way when I’m trying to shop
- If I know what I’m looking for help me find it
- If I have questions, I want answers, not sales talk
- Tell me you’re looking for my size, don’t just turn and leave
- If you expect me to buy something tell me what it costs
- Are your own affairs so important that you feel justified in ignoring me?
- Don’t make me feel stupid
- If you make a mistake admit it
He goes through wine.com as a case study of the above being done badly. I’m thinking - he’d have a field day going through the Golden Spiders nominees!
If we do not demand good service we are never going to receive it.
People of Ireland are you listening?
Addendum in September
In the last three days, I’ve been helpful to 3 different people and in every case I did not receive a thank you for my help. The first was in the supermarket when an Eastern European couple dropped €200 in cash on the floor. I picked it up, ran after them and gave it to them. They didn’t say thank you, their faces remained impassive. I stood there waiting for some sort of interaction and they thought I wanted money!! They tried to pawn me off with €10. How insulting. Not having command of the language is no excuse. I can say thank you in 8 languages, I’m sure they can say it in 1.
Today I noticed a prominent website that had a prominent typo on the home page. I was on to their Head Office about something anyway, I told the receptionist about it, and she was quite rude about it. I know it’s not her job to look after the website, but it is her job to be the voice of that organisation and at the very least placate an old spelling nazi like myself. For God’s sake is she thick - if you’re just about to put someone through to the MD, surely you’d have the cop on to be polite to them?
Lastly, I’ve just bent over backwards for a client. Delivered more than was required and way more than is being paid for. This client hasn’t said thanks to me once. They simply take and don’t give the slightest thanks back.
I’m feeling a bit disillusioned. Representing Brightspark I try so hard to do points 1 & 2 above. Yet people’s rudeness throws it back in my face and makes me question why I bother trying at all. As a customer I consistently do not experience point 10 and that really irritates.
Ireland - you’ve lost your manners. Dunno how or where, but they’re gone.
