I guess I'm just touchy. I've also followed that career trajectory, though I actually started with something more akin to über-traditional IA (building taxonomies for search), then made my way from back-end towards the front, now splitting time between front-end development and IA/IxD.
I will say this, I think that the Bay Area has many more do-it-all developers/designers. My experiences as a dot-commer in SF actually made me into the generalist I am -- there was a much greater, um, respect (?) for the well-rounded geek. On the other hand, I've found that being a generalist is often scoffed at by development team managers in other places I've lived (including New York, and particularly at agencies). (On the other hand, it usually ends up earning generalists the respect of both fellow team members, as well as leaders of other teams. Go figure.) ~ yoni Jonathan S. Knoll email: jonat...@infinityplusone.com web: http://infinityplusone.com/ linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanknoll twitter: @yoni On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Scott McDaniel <sc...@scottopic.com>wrote: > > On 24 Apr 2009, at 15:52, Jonathan S. Knoll wrote: > > [snip] > >> > >> My experience, in both agencies and large corporations, is that the > >> front-end team tends to be semi-autonomous, but organizationally closer > >> (and > >> often beneath) the back-end or systems teams. Ironic, since the good > ones > >> tend to be more philosophically aligned with Design teams. > > > > [snip] > > > > That's interesting. My experiences with the org-chart split is about > 50/50 > > design vs systems. UK/US difference maybe? > > > > Adrian > > Perhaps, but I've found it to be about 50 Tech/Engineering, 25/25 > Design and Product/Marketing. > I think this is very much variable from company to company. Almost > all of my friends in SFO, for example, own an entire vertical of > their projects/products -- from back-end to IA to front-end. It > ~blows my mind~, and some are miserable about it, but I don't get the > impression it's a Bay Area USA methodology. > > Er...is it? > > I didn't find the initial question condescending, speaking as someone > who came from doing > front-end development exclusively and gradually moved into more > conceptual design, as Dave > mentioned. In this case, 'just' speaks to me as 'only thing done', > much as my best friend "just does Oracle implementations." > > The companies with which I worked moved in that direction > chronologically as I went > along my career path: just HTML/CSS/Javascript, to doing front-end > production code and IA/IxD, just using > HTML/CSS/JS/Flash for prototyping and presentation to not doing it all > all except as an artifact of particular programs such as iRise or > Axure. I like how various tools can help me reach certain ends, but > sometimes...I just gotta whip something together by hand, both for a > particular end and so I don't lose my edge. > > Scott > > > On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Adrian Howard <adri...@quietstars.com> > wrote: > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
