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Can you talk about what you mean by technical ceiling, and high/low technical ceiling? I've heard the ideas in your last paragraph referred to as the 'rule of

Can you talk about what you mean by technical ceiling, and high/low technical ceiling? I've heard the ideas in your last paragraph referred to as the 'rule of least cleverness', avoiding wizardry always good imo.

j45 13y ago
Sure, I share 2 stories I like to explain with: 1) When someone wants to hire a web developer, I say, make sure they don't just know how to do things limited to a few ways. You will inevitably run into needing to do things that you did not expect and don't want to be beyond the technical skills of who you hire, so hiring someone with barely enough skills to put together a Wordpress site using the admin only will certainly not be able to code/modify much of anything custom you might need. If you hire someone with a higher technical ceiling, who has more skills than what you need at the moment (knows more/knows that they can learn what they need), they will be better positioned to not only grow with you, but give insights instead of just saying yes to everything. 2) Let's say there was a time where the only way to do Windows Updates was manually, by hand on each computer. Companies would hire someone to come in, once a month, to perform updates on each computer. Service Providers would spring up, providing windows update servicing, which could be relatively taught to anyone. They might have a minimum of technical skills, but they could follow along to a certain point. The ability of the service provider to grow, now was limited to how many windows update patchers they could hire, train, and retain, which over time, meant, hiring less and less technically skilled people to do the work to grow the business as much as possible. The result? The IT company's had demand for windows updating, which it wanted to grow, and now you had to find people who could do this, and keep doing it reliably so the business could grow. Windows updates become it's low technical ceiling, and it became integral to their business to keep customers dependant on hiring them every month to do it because it's about the limit of what most of their techs could do. Ask those people to solve something else? Too many will try to fake it till they make it. A high technical ceiling? The IT company that might do it a few times, recognize it to be a very bad use of their time, instead offer to teach the customer how to do it for themselves, and request that they instead invest the saved money in IT services that might help the business more directly, and be a part of learning things with them. The tricky part of all this? Realizing how much more skill than you need to hire.

j45 13y ago

Sure, I share 2 stories I like to explain with: 1) When someone wants to hire a web developer, I say, make sure they don't just know how to do things limited to a few ways. You will inevitably run into needing to do things that you did not expect and don't want to be beyond the technical skills of who you hire, so hiring someone with barely enough skills to put together a Wordpress site using the admin only will certainly not be able to code/modify much of anything custom you might need. If you hire someone with a higher technical ceiling, who has more skills than what you need at the moment (knows more/knows that they can learn what they need), they will be better positioned to not only grow with you, but give insights instead of just saying yes to everything. 2) Let's say there was a time where the only way to do Windows Updates was manually, by hand on each computer. Companies would hire someone to come in, once a month, to perform updates on each computer. Service Providers would spring up, providing windows update servicing, which could be relatively taught to anyone. They might have a minimum of technical skills, but they could follow along to a certain point. The ability of the service provider to grow, now was limited to how many windows update patchers they could hire, train, and retain, which over time, meant, hiring less and less technically skilled people to do the work to grow the business as much as possible. The result? The IT company's had demand for windows updating, which it wanted to grow, and now you had to find people who could do this, and keep doing it reliably so the business could grow. Windows updates become it's low technical ceiling, and it became integral to their business to keep customers dependant on hiring them every month to do it because it's about the limit of what most of their techs could do. Ask those people to solve something else? Too many will try to fake it till they make it. A high technical ceiling? The IT company that might do it a few times, recognize it to be a very bad use of their time, instead offer to teach the customer how to do it for themselves, and request that they instead invest the saved money in IT services that might help the business more directly, and be a part of learning things with them. The tricky part of all this? Realizing how much more skill than you need to hire.