Writing this is putting my respect on the line, it may even affect my business. I hope instead that this will prompt people to speak out about what they believe in.
There has been a reason that I have not blogged for a while. One part laziness, but about 4 parts being fed up with the whole web industry scene.
When I first joined, I saw the industry as a place where an artist could have fun, discover their talents and enjoy the close knit social community. 10 years later, I now feel completely different. Although I have felt this many times before, never have I been so close to giving up all the social aspects and keeping my head down. The web industry has taken a lot out of me. I have literally served my adolescence years behind the web and I feel that as this was a big character development period, I have a bigger link to the web compared to some, as it defined who I became.
Now what is annoying me the most is the social ladder of the web industry. Not necessarily the social ranking ladder. There are some people out there who have been working on the web for a while and who do a lot for the greater good of the internet, rather than for themselves. On the opposite side, you have a slew of people who work for the greater good of themselves, for their bank and for the internet fame. You are allowed to do both, but the amount of fake people on the internet. What is worse than that, is people look upto them and thus causing an undying cycle. These people will do anything for the internet-fame, which in reality, is meaningless. It is close to the social ladder of a High School.
Hell, there was a while where I would of done anything for the fame too, it would be wrong of me not to admit that, but my eyes have opened. I have seen people who have spent 4 years training to be a designer, but at the first chance of a big company talking with them, jump over to coding. I’ve seen people with no coding experience, write books on coding, and become internet famous because they do. The industry does not mean much when a well selling book is written by someone in the field, who a few month’s earlier had no knowledge of the topic. I was helping such a person out, a year before they wrote a book.
I have had a few offers to write books, ranging various topics, however just because you have the opportunity doesn’t mean you should and I realised that. I felt the topics that was offered were already talked about too much and I didn’t want to take anyone else’s money thinking they were getting something new or taking an already published author’s money from them when they had the brains to get there first. People should write competing books, it causes the quality to go up but Amazon has a catalog of over 26,000 books through the search ‘CSS’. Granted a lot of these books are not related to the subject, but definitely a large amount.
One subject that always gets raised when talking about this industry is how we need to evolve and what we should do to do that. But when you get the basic facts, how far have we come in the last 2 years? Honestly, we have seen a thousands pro-CSS workgroups formed, thousands of conferences with large amounts of panels talking about CSS or how we should embrace it, thousands posts saying saying the same as the conferences, thousands of books and of course, a couple of hundred ego’s have been stroked. In reality, we haven’t come that far at all, we are just repeating the same things we did years ago. If anything, it’s time to take action and stop focusing on ourselves. If you believe in the web, prove it. Don’t write a book, don’t tell us we should embrace web standards and uninstall Internet Explorer. We know we should, we say the same things too. Reach out to your local businesses, write a newspaper article, tell someone who wouldn’t hear about this at a conference.
I have had a hand in organising a conference for representatives of companies, offering them a free conference on WHY their site should follow our suggested standards, we got people speaking there and we made a difference. You could also help students at schools and colleges learn what they should be doing and why. That is what we need in the web.
We are literally peeing in our own pool. I know many people who do not want to attend web conferences because of the whole social ladder scene. These people are sometimes the ones that we want to change too. It is not doing the industry any good whatsoever.
I will not be quitting as I first thought I would when I wrote this post, I think I could still make a difference if I carried on. I think the web industry as a whole, needs to shape up and start focusing on the real goals rather than personal goals. Our industry is one of the few that focus on the evolution in the unique way we do. Participating in boosting your name is fine, but there are more than a few people in this industry now that are doing it in an egocentric manner, and that number of people is growing.
I agree for the most part. There’s a lot of CSS books out there that didn’t have to be written, especially in the past 4 years. But I see it as a sign that the industry is doing well. There’s always going to be a much smaller group pushing ahead with new ideas and a much larger group cashing in on complacency — nothing is going to change that, for any industry.
Sorry Zach, but I disagree with many of the general statements you have made. Maybe I come from a different walk of life as I am not a CSS guru. But I see people being very self-less with there time. Take for instance, Gary, from Winelibrary.tv, he does a daily episode of his video content, gives out free wristbands, interacts with his viewers, and never asks for anything (maybe a few comments). He is a big person in the “Web industry as a whole” and I don’t feel that he is self-serving.
It’s often easy to mistake passion for selfishness.
Specifically, in the case of the CSS guru writing a book, I think that could be more impactful to millions of readers to build with proper CSS conventions. Don’t you think that would be more powerful then writing a letter to your local newspaper? I don’t think the local newspaper gives two cents about web standards IMHO.
Don’t you think Microsoft get’s millions of emails from people that are educated from these CSS books to abide by these rules?
Nothing to be sorry for, I totally understand where you are coming from.
You are right, you do see people being very self-less with their time. There are tons of people who are self-less in this industry, but there are more than a large handful who are not, whether it is obvious or secret motives (Bugger, now it’s starting to sound like a conspiracy theory ;-)). Just because Gary or such are not self-serving, does not mean others are not. And that is something that I tried to make crystal clear.
And I assure you, when I see selfishness I truly know it.
How is it more impactful when there are thousands of other books saying the same thing? I know a few people who wrote books because they felt they brought something new to the table, but also I know a few people who did it completely for the internet fame.
You missed my point about the local newspaper. They will usually publish an article if they think it’s worthy. Say 100 people read it as it is hidden away, then a small portion decide that this is a good thing. Or someone in the town is trying their hand at web design and rather than going with a nasty WYSIWYG or table based design, they decide to go for the Standards way.
Microsoft know what they are doing wrong, and while I agree with you somewhat. Writing the same email to the same company non-stop is no more effective than sharing it with people who do not know of the accessible web.
Zach, thanks for making a bold move and saying this out loud. I have also experienced the “high school / middle school” garbage and thought, dear lord, I’m 40+, I don’t want to relive this shit.
Then I step back, detach emotionally and realize, some of my deepest dearest friends are from my REAL middle school/high school days. So, when the garbage is flying is actually a wonderful time to figure out who is real and who is faking it. For me, it helps me realize who is a true friend vs. a fair weather one.
I think the point I like most in your post is
And I must admit…I’ve seen more real change in the last 3 months on issues I deeply care about (accessibility, blogs/wikis for students at my uni). So…hang in there, pick your friends wisely, and keep spreading the word in the places it most needs to be heard