The Darker Side of Tech
Let’s talk about the grey areas
Getting a career in tech is one of the ways of getting very rich. However, just like many other professions, quite a lot of happy-go entrants have had to quit, some getting really hurt, while some experiencing repeated failure or frustration because of lack of hints on the downside of the industry.
Yes, tech people could be great colourful people known with tee-shirts and fancy pair of geeky glasses but most tech CEOs and developers are not saints either. Just like regular business people, we primarily want to minimize risks and maximize profits.
Here are some important points to consider as you plunge into the world of “Silicon People”.
The Unfulfilled Promise of Digital Marketing: The easiest entrance into tech is via the Digital Marketing route. However, marketing efforts need viable products. Unfortunately, viable product are very scarce. Therefore, In the alternative, modern digital marketers are left with no option but to either source for dude products, or just create them, all in a bid to practice “marketing”. Besides, all marketing efforts (including Digital Marketing) are all about results, even if the results hurts the unsuspecting or naive buyer or customer. That is why you should never base your entire career solely on Digital Marketing. Why not add “Product Development” to your marketing skills?
Incubators, Accelerators, Funds Raisers and idea funnels: Investors are always keen on very great ideas to support, and therefore, always seek to expend funds only on the perceived best. Getting the most promising investment opportunities could be a huge task thereby making the services of Incubators, Accelerators and Venture Analysts invaluable. However, the proliferation of toxic funding organisations devoid of basic ethical tenets have encouraged a new generation of ”idea scammers”. Their modus operandi is quite simple: Brand up like big tech financiers, get unsuspecting tech enthusiast to submit their ideas with a promise of direct funding, exposure to opportunities or investments. Thirdly: Harvest all the ideas turned in, hand pick a few candidates, and feed fat on the ‘idea’ spoil. After all, they are doing nothing wrong!
Everyone knows that cash, investments and opportunities are sterile without viable ideas. So they always win.
It is therefore important to “Incubate” your thoughts on who “Incubates” you or your start-up.
Cloud computing: Cloud computing saves time, money and lately, efforts in building mission-critical apps. Cloud computing hold very strong promises of security, efficiency, flexibility, quality control but unfortunately, the trade-off (which we are not often told) is that it can take away your privacy, your intellectual property and more recently, your ability to innovate (think for your self).
Suspending accumulated periods of hard work on “the cloud” is unfortunately one of the ways some unscrupulous firms rip people off their life’s work, quite effortlessly, and still getting paid for it. So the next time you are being told to “come on the cloud!”, be sure you are in safe hands.
Free Search Engines, Social Media, API’s, IDEs etc: The advent of “free” online services have emerged as affordable and convenient ways of getting things done. As a matter of fact, I belong to a generation of naive tech enthusiast that traded it all on the alter of “FREE”! Traded what? Data.
When services are free and effective, they become popular. The more popular they become, the more data they control, and the more Intelligent the systems become, and the better the services become, and of course the higher the worth of such organisations. The temptation to dive deeper into unsafe data paradigms becomes heightened, especially in the face of competition and ambition. With the tool of Intelligence, self regulation can easily be circumvented and profits maximized at the expense of users, in an increasing parasitic customer-system relationship. Also, armed with exponential social capital, prospecting competitors are easily crushed and political spaces pocketed until it becomes too late to realize that we have created monsters because of “FREE”.
So be careful about “FREE”.
Device/Internet/Service Addiction: Addiction is a powerful but sublime marketing tool and is very much frequently used by businesses to keep customers coming back. Addictions happens when we impulsively or carelessly spend limited resources (like time, money etc) in a cycle that we can no longer control.
Some commonly excused cases of such indulgences include buying an expensive phone as the expense of paying the utilities, purchasing airtime at the expense of feeding well, watching porn at the expense of finishing an important task, or staying on Social media into late nights as an excuse for insomnia.
One sure solution to fighting the addiction “pill” is to painfully remove the point of addiction until the compelling urge is completely under control. It is also great to seek expert counsel.
Product/Brand “Zombie” Effect: It is very pertinent to be aware that most tools, software and systems are created on purpose to achieve an end. While some of these purposes are obvious, the actual intentions of the creator may never be easily deciphered. And that may be one of the reasons it may be quite risky to get neck deep into tech products without having a second look at the big picture.
Also, the fate of most tech products are never determined by their creators. For instance, the once famous Adobe Flash suffered an unsuspecting death blow in 2015 creating an industrial shock that led thousands of Adobe Flash developers out of business (at least for a while) including yours truly. Being Solutions-centric has been proven to be safer than being Product-centric, in the a bid to having a fulfilling and sustainable tech career.
Remember, no empire lasts or remains strong forever, including our beloved Google, Microsoft, IBM or Cisco.
There is more to Life than writing Codes: Spending long hours within virtual systems is as tasking as it is as rewarding. Taking a toll on our health and relationships, this lifestyle choice is usually not perceived as hazardous as it actually is. Most tech people live a camp life, spending lots of man-hours solving problems and meeting deadlines. Unfortunately, the nature of the work itself avails us not only the liberty to wake up in the middle of the night with an “Eureka!”, but to actually swing into action and enter the “torture room” of ideation, iteration and implementation. We love our life!
But we don’t usually prepare for the unintended consequences of not staging a healthy balance between our work and the real life. Academic pursuits, physical wellness, and great relationships have been sacrificed because of wrong approach to a promising tech career. Even businesses have been wrecked, and organisations hurt because of the often outburst of untested and unproven tech ideas.
Therefore, every tech enthusiast must always develop a frequent habit of waking up from “the Matrix” and facing real life.
To be continued…
