Feeling old

eddypeck

Member
When I got my first job there were as many drawing boards in the studio as there were beige square Apple Macs, a few years later I remember the studio bosses saying, we should jump on this website bandwagon, it looks like it might take off.... and so the story began.

Now with JQuery, media queries, mobile and responsive design and Apps and the like I find myself feeling very old and wishing I could go back to designing something, printing it on paper and letting everyone see it how I intended it to be seen.

And seeing the kids coming out of college, finishing fancy courses that have focused on technology and software and overlooking some of the core fundamentals of layout and typography, we're currently interviewing and the lack of design skills is depressing.

Just wondered how other people are dealing with the fast paced technology led world we live in. What keeps you motivated and enthusiastic?

At 40 I've got at least another 20 years of working and it's only going to get faster. Is it time to re-train as a bricklayer?
 
It's always going to be this way with tech, especially with the way things are heading towards make it so easy that the less tech savvy think they can do it. If you can buy software that lets you 'layout your site on screen' and then codes it then anybody with a computer will think they can do what we can do.

A couple of years back I was thinking similar to you about retraining (my dad was a builder), not due to lack of work etc but due to 'looking to the future' and seeing where stuff is heading and I'm younger than you lol. Even thought about it again recently when trying to get plumbers to do some 'simple' work, they just are not interested in the smaller jobs, just the 'big money' ones and I was like... I could make a killing on doing the little jobs at a plumbers going rates of £25-30 an hour and you're pretty much always going to need a plumber lol.

On the other hand builders where some of the worst hit tradies when the recession hit because no one was building houses etc so it's swings and roundabouts there too.

In the end though I enjoy design more than 'getting my hands dirty' so I'm here until I get enough money to do property development (which I like the idea of), property renting or something similar, all of which are a long way off still lol
 
haha, a good friend of mine - life time mechanic retrained as a plumber a few years back. He's an amazing mechanic and can diagnose most faults by ear but as all you can do with modern cars is plug them into a computer to get a fault code and most problems are fixed with a new sensor he kind of lost the love.

This is why I have a 1986 Golf GTI ;-)

He's actually doing really well, and spotted your same point with most plumbers not interested unless it's a £6k bathroom. He's exploited that and got a reputation for being honest, friendly, helpful and reliable - not many plumbers I've come across you could say that about.

Now employs a couple of guys bought them all vans and is building up his business so he does less of the manual work (just as well he's not so fit as he once was) so one day he can either sell the business or just sit back and have others run it for him.

He's worked bloomin' hard so far play to him.

I'm finding I spend more of my time crossing over into front end development, trying to keep up with new technologies and less time actually designing. One of our key guys is leaving and interviews have not been very promising so far so I'm fearing it'll get worse before it gets better.
 
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