[Sigia-l] What happened to the good IAs

[Laurie Gray]

Dmitry, as one of those who entered the field in the late 90's, I will be
the first to say that it's not about denying someone the career path that I
have benefitted from. In the late 90's, IA didn't exist as we know it today.
Jakob Nielsen was preaching the web usability mantra, and the human factors
folks, classically trained with their Ph.D.'s,  were feeling the pinch from
the new blood entering the field and specializing in making the
then-5-year-old Web a better place to be. I worked with those folks and they
didn't know what to do with me then.

In the ten years or so since then, we've made progress from even becoming
aware that our specialty even needed to exist to developing (like it or not,
folks) de facto standards for what we do. There is a more or less general
consensus in the ranks of what it is that we do (granted, perhaps it's
better defined by what we do NOT do) and a momentum toward defining that
more clearly on a day to day basis. And, we're interconnected. The work that
YOU do as an IA has, down the line in some dotted line, zig-zag pattern, an
impact on the perceived value of what *I* do as an IA, and vice versa.

So no, it's nothing about protecting any kingdoms and keeping the goody for
ourselves as your post suggests. It's about taking responsibility for the
destiny of our careers. It's about taking responsibility for the quality of
our work and our titles and not diluting the value of the work we do so that
this value is maintained and increases for all involved, junior and senior
alike. To that point, we have some level of responsibility to the field to
shepherd the forward momentum, since as founders of sorts, it's unreasonable
to expect us to simply hand over the reins to someone else to drive. And I
do feel strongly that we *do* have the responsibility of helping to "grow
them (the junior level staff) up", in order to preserve the quality of the
work and the vision of the field.

Now, if you want to take issue with how we've collectively not mentored our
junior staff, I'm with you. To the audience: if you're having issues finding
quality junior staff, are you a mentor? If not, why not? I dare you...
<stepping down from soap box so someone else can have a turn>

Laurie (an IAI mentor, incidentally)

On 6/20/07, Dmitry Nekrasovski <mail.dmitry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The question of "what level of experience makes an IA/UX person
> senior" seems to be a recurrent theme on this list in the past year or
> so. I empathize with hiring managers who are having to make this call
> on a daily basis without a clear basis for decision making.
>
> At the same time, I'd like to point out that many of these hiring
> managers started their UX careers in the late 90's, when all you
> really needed to call yourself a Web/design professional was a pulse.
>
> It seems a bit hypocritical to me that some of them now want to deny
> recent entrants to the field the kind of rapid career progression they
> had enjoyed themselves.
>
> Dmitry
>
> On 6/20/07, Giovanni Fortezza <giovanni at fortezza.com> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I have been on the list for a while and follow conversations as much as
> I
> > can and was wondering whether anyone else is currently having these
> > problems.
> >
> > In the New York market there is a shortage of Junior IAs and IAs but
> there
> > are plenty of Senior IAs. Which would suggest that there are no IAs
> entering
> > the workforce, however that doesn't seem to be the case. The majority of
> the
> > senior IAs I am interviewing are at best Junior and the rest are
> certainly
> > not senior.
> >
> > That raises the issue that have seen on this list in the past, should
> there
> > be some kind of certification or a certain number of years/projects or
> both
> > that an IA should have under their belt in order to move up a level?
> >
> > I understand the issues around it i.e. who gets to decide what the
> criteria
> > is, who will enforce it and so on. But I feel that as professionals
> whose
> > primary objective is the development of a great experience we need to do
> > this. I have some more ideas as to how to pull this off but I was
> curious as
> > to what the rest of the community feels.
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> > Giovanni Fortezza
> >
> > No virus found in this outgoing message.
> > Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> > Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.9.1/854 - Release Date: 6/19/2007
> > 1:12 PM
> >
> >
> > ------------
> > IA Summit 2008: "Experiencing Information"
> > April 10-14, 2008, Miami, Florida
> >
> > -----
> > When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
> > *Plain text, please; NO Attachments
> >
> > Searchable Archive at http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
> > ________________________________________
> > Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l at asis.org
> > Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l
> >
> ------------
> IA Summit 2008: "Experiencing Information"
> April 10-14, 2008, Miami, Florida
>
> -----
> When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
> *Plain text, please; NO Attachments
>
> Searchable Archive at http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
> ________________________________________
> Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l at asis.org
> Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l
>