> On the stage, a very adept and confident speaker jokingly mentioned a web-related joke that feels decades old (which she was sarcastically referring to as being decades old) and the whole room fell about laughing; it was the first time they had heard this reference.
It's really killing me to not know what the joke being referenced is. Never before have I so desperately wanted an author to "Show, don't tell."
> We used to have to sell the benefits of being online to our clients.
I remember when it was like this. In 1999 I was trying to drum up business for a web-development startup, going business-to-business offering cheap packages to get online. I got laughed out of a lot of shops and offices before I finally couldn't take the rejection anymore.
> It didn’t seem to matter who I spoke to last year, similar stories of hiring internally rather than using external agencies/freelancers, cropped up – and thus, a significant new breed of web designer was born. Companies who would have once used small studios or freelancers to complete their projects, no longer had a need to use them and work started to dry up for people who had relied on the abundant freelance lifestyle that was once afforded to them.
I think the author is making a mistake in focusing on this one reason for freelance web development work drying up. Large companies who need dedicated constantly-updated websites moved in-house, but the reality is that it doesn't take as much skill to setup a robust website anymore. My sister is a graphics designer with zero technical skills, she makes her freelance money with one-click wordpress installs and lets the customers manage their own sites.
Then there's the next generation of kids who are simply naturals at this stuff. They don't know how to code, but there are so many WYSIWYG applications out there to build what they want, they don't need to do any coding. Even my 75-year-old mother setup and administers a wordpress blog for her students.
Our skills made us special as innovators 10-20 years ago, but many of us are no longer cutting edge. Maybe some of these freelancers should look at becoming the in-house code-monkey for one of these larger companies if they are really hard-up for work.
It's really killing me to not know what the joke being referenced is. Never before have I so desperately wanted an author to "Show, don't tell."
> We used to have to sell the benefits of being online to our clients.
I remember when it was like this. In 1999 I was trying to drum up business for a web-development startup, going business-to-business offering cheap packages to get online. I got laughed out of a lot of shops and offices before I finally couldn't take the rejection anymore.
> It didn’t seem to matter who I spoke to last year, similar stories of hiring internally rather than using external agencies/freelancers, cropped up – and thus, a significant new breed of web designer was born. Companies who would have once used small studios or freelancers to complete their projects, no longer had a need to use them and work started to dry up for people who had relied on the abundant freelance lifestyle that was once afforded to them.
I think the author is making a mistake in focusing on this one reason for freelance web development work drying up. Large companies who need dedicated constantly-updated websites moved in-house, but the reality is that it doesn't take as much skill to setup a robust website anymore. My sister is a graphics designer with zero technical skills, she makes her freelance money with one-click wordpress installs and lets the customers manage their own sites.
Then there's the next generation of kids who are simply naturals at this stuff. They don't know how to code, but there are so many WYSIWYG applications out there to build what they want, they don't need to do any coding. Even my 75-year-old mother setup and administers a wordpress blog for her students.
Our skills made us special as innovators 10-20 years ago, but many of us are no longer cutting edge. Maybe some of these freelancers should look at becoming the in-house code-monkey for one of these larger companies if they are really hard-up for work.