Embracing Uncertainty
February 21, 2012 in Business, Community, Tech
They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. In this case, I’d say the first step is more about admitting that the entire industry has a problem.
Now, I’m sure there are plenty of you out there who would respond “there’s no problems, everything’s copacetic.” And, if that’s the case, congratulations! Of course, for most, that’s not actually the case.
In the process of trying to find some good articles for this site, I’m in touch with many of my colleagues in the industry, explaining to them the mission and purpose. And, as a result, I find myself having pretty open discussions about these sensitive matters with some very well informed and experienced people — people who have been building careers and making money with digital tools for interactive production (coders, animators, designers and video engineers) for well over a decade.
In a typical exchange I had just this week, one colleague replied with a series of questions that he would wish to ask the world, in light of the shifts in the industry (and these weren’t questions on small or minor points; these are fundamental questions of tools and workflows). Then he concluded that it’s “just a matter of if I ask it in public.”
Of course, this is entirely understandable.
We all trade on our skills and expertise. Admitting that we don’t know where things are going, or what the right solutions are for right now, can feel as though we are admitting that we are no longer experts, we are not worth the money we charge, and we are not worthy of admiration or respect from our peers.
While this is all understandable, it is not accurate.
Your uncertainty does not stem from your own short-comings. It is not reflective of your skills. It does not mean that you are behind the rest of the industry. It does not mean that you missed the conference where ‘The Answers’ were distributed to your peers.
Instead, your uncertainty is the result of the actions of, and battles between, large, multi-national firms (each of whom is acting in its own profit-seeking interests), as well as the actions and decisions of international standards bodies that reflect a mix of Ivory Tower abstraction from real world commercial contexts, and the specific, narrowly-defined interests of their corporate stakeholders (who, of course, fund the activities of these organizations).
The unfortunate outcome of these battles (at least in the near-term) is a massive degree of uncertainty — more uncertainty that I have ever seen in this industry (I’ve been building websites since 1993, when the public web was just 2 years old).
As many observers already know, one of the main sources of this confusion and uncertainty is HTML5. Now, HTML version 5, as the newest generation of the HTML specification, is a massive (and, in my opinion, long-overdue) upgrade to the standard language of the web.
But HTML5 is simply not what it is commonly represented as — what some very large, powerful and well-resourced firms are spending a lot of money to convince you of. To Apple, HTML5 is ready-for-primetime — as long as you only cater to users of iOS. To Adobe, HTML5 is ready-for-primetime — despite that they do not have one releasable version of any of the HTML5 tooling that they’ve been showing off. To W3C, HTML5 is ready-for-primetime (despite that it is not a complete or final spec) – as long as you don’t need to stream a video file, or play two audio files simultaneously in that experience. To the browser makers, HTML5 is ready-for-primetime, despite that each browser treats HTML5 more as a suggestion than a specification.
Heck, even the term ‘HTML5’ itself is frequently referenced so misleadingly, as to be inaccurate. In business contexts, it’s frequently synonymous with ‘no Flash’ or ‘mobile solution’. In tech circles, HTML5 is often used to mean ‘HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and the browser video renderers’ or simply, ‘in the browser’.
So we have an incompletely defined and supported technology, misleadingly labeled in common usage as short-hand for a set of related technologies — all without a mature set of tooling or professional-grade workflows.
But, none of the firms who are now so heavily invested in the HTML5 future will tell you this. Instead, their (very well-funded, if not particularly well-crafted) message is, simply “use HTML5”.
So, as I say, the first step is to admit that the entire industry has a problem. Once you do that, you will realize that almost all of the questions that you have are shared by a large number of your colleagues. The “experts” do not have magical answers that you do not.
Asking questions — even simple ones — is the entirely natural response to situations such as these. And I would actively encourage you to become more comfortable asking questions in public forums — even (nay, especially) if you are seen as an ‘expert’. Once the community feels comfortable asking these questions in the open, we can finally begin to have an honest discussion about what is actually transpiring in the industry. Otherwise, we’ll be ceding the discussion to the same firms who created this situation, leading to an unnecessarily extended period of uncertainty.
Don’t deny the uncertainty. Embrace it.
Thank you for the great in depth analyses of the current confusion. I’m not a Flash expert in any way, but our team is constantly faced with the question from average users whether Flash will be ‘gone’ and replaced HTML5 imminently? The answer is no in many ways. Good to see some thoughts shared publicly.
Hello Judy, thank you for the comment. I’m glad you found the post useful. As I say in our mission statement, there are no clear answers, but you can still make informed decisions.
I think the digital world is no different to the real world or universe as a whole, it is just moving to a higher state of entropy. New ideas, fads, tools and so on grown, divide and create even more uncertainty.
I really enjoyed this post, thought provoking and honest in my opinion.
Thank you, Neil. I actually see analogs to this situation, all around me. But it has to do more with the lack of corporate responsibility, and the short-sighted profit evaluation which has come to dominate large business. The lack of any real leadership in this sector, is also increasingly typical of the corporate and political worlds.
That’s where I see the similarities between the points covered in this post, and many, many other sectors (automotive, entertainment, finance and government).
Definitely thought provoking.
But as a developer it’s hard to do more than just advise as appropriate. Most of my clients seem to be making the right choices and if it’s to use Flash then it’s ALWAYS based on a specific reason why we’ve determined it’s the best value. If someone has a budget for something else, why would I care what technology it is? Sure, I’ll advise against what I think might be extra cost or under problem-solving… but you’ll also never achieve savings using a technology until you really push it. The drive of developers and browsers behind JS is undeniable and you’ll see great acceleration there. Someone does need to slap some folks side ways and tell them they’re making the SAME mistakes Flash did.
But… where is the cost exactly? It’s a positive number to the developers… maybe “corporate america” pays for it? I don’t know that it’s a forgone conclusion that “things cost more”… or necessarily “do less”. Customers may soon demand things that are particularly easy in JS and “hard” in Flash.
I keep coming back to this idea that if someone says they need a programmer to use punch cards or something I might consider it.
One thing’s for sure: I’m not going to get bogged trying to educate clients. Luckily I’m a bit insulated from that usually–but still, just the consulting on this topic is an opportunity.
A lot in your comment to digest. I guess the main response I have is that this post isn’t about cost, or about how to represent information to clients (though, I have addressed those topics in other posts and tweets). Neither is this post about HTML vs. Flash — or about picking sides in that debate.
This post is about informing yourself. It’s about realizing that everyone is as confused as (generic) you are, precisely because of the misinformation (I mean, marketing) disseminated by these large corporations. More than anything, I suppose, this post is a call for accuracy in terminology, which I believe has to come from the bottom-up (the devs and designers, the ‘below-the-line’ interactive talent).
PK:
While my post wasn’t intended to be about this, you raise a good point.
Cost.
In other words, who cares if it costs more or does less? That’s just the way it is. It’s just what you get for your investment.
That’s true — insofar as firms (aka, our clients) are aware of the shifting cost/benefit curve. That is, this is fine, as long as the person signing the checks is a sophisticated consumer, aware of the details that we are talking about here.
I believe that the opposite is more true; that clients are making decisions based on this misinformation. I’m hearing about more and more projects that are going over budget — not because HTML5 is new or hard, but because, for example, decision makers just assumed that the HTML5 version would work on iPad. When it didn’t, everyone got furious, more money had to be spent (draining other budgets, of course), and it was seen as a failure.
The natural response of a client in a case such as this is to start delaying additional spends on interactive (or, at least those experiences that represent discretionary purchases), to sit and wait to see what happens as the landscape settles, and the direction of technology becomes clearer. If situations like this become more common, budgets will start to freeze up, which (if it happens) would lead to an industry-wide contraction.
This is why it is generally considered true that uncertainty stalls or diminishes economic progress (just as it has done, with far more devastating and wide-reaching effect in the housing sector).
This is why developers, designers and all below-the-line talent, who earn their trade practicing these technologies for money from client firms, should care about the market dynamic that is in play. And why we all have a direct stake in the impacts of the type of misleading information that is the subject of this post.
Unfortunately, the natural response of many of industry resources is, as you say, to just roll with the punches, and do what your client asks (this is also address in Yakov Fain’s recent post, ‘Will HTML force you to lie?‘). And, as a short-term solution, the roll-with-the-punches, do-what-is-asked strategy is likely the right one. But it unfortunately reinforces the trend I cite above, and increases the odds of contraction in the medium-term.
Sorry to railroad the discussion. As to cost… sure, I don’t want to be part of something that’s a bad value. In consideration of everything, that’s not sustainable. But I guess my premise is that programmers are going to be needed for a long time.
PK:
No railroading going on here. It’s taking this in interesting directions.
So, on your point, totally agreed. One of the best pieces of advice that I ever received was from Mr. Piersa, my high school comp sci teacher: “learn to program and you’ll always be able to make money.”
At the same time, I think many of us who endured the dot-com bust (who were not authors or other types of rockstars at the time), experienced first-hand what it can be like when there is something notably less than full-employment. I remember many painful months in 2001-2002, as I had difficulty scraping enough work together to pay rent each month. Did others have work at that time? Yes. But many didn’t.
And that’s what a contraction looks like. People still have work, but not everyone. It’s not a permanent state of affairs (as we saw our industry more than recover towards the middle of the decade), but that makes it no less painful when it occurs to those unable to find sufficient income.
And the more I think about it (and the more we discuss it), the more I think that this is increasingly likely. One of the surest signs that your industry is at risk, is when many of your peers exclaim that the industry is immune to recession (this isn’t what I think you are saying, but I have heard precisely this from many freelancers and firms).
I’d like to be wrong. But this is where my interpretation of the landscape takes me.
I’m very careful to never say we’re immune from anything. I totally see changes happening. But, like the bubble in 2000 I think it’s very possible to never see the impact directly. First–if I had employees I can see how it’d be way different. But as an individual it doesn’t take a whole lot of work to get fully booked. Also, the new opportunities opening make it even easier. The BIG thing about the whole HTML5 fad (if that’s what it is) is it has INCREASED the demand for Flash.
PK:
First, I’m incredibly pleased with where this conversation is going. It’s the purpose of the site to hold these discussions in an open environment. (Though, don’t think all these comments get you out of contributing the post you promised me.)
A few thoughts in response.
I think that we’re talking about different aspects; that is, I do not see our points as mutually exclusive.
As you point out, part of the difference in our aspects, is that I have a team, and you are solo. This impacts not only how much work I have to secure, but also the nature of the work. Without getting into details, I think it’s clear that an average deal size at Almer/Blank is significantly larger than an average deal for you (it has to be, for a larger operation to work).
That doesn’t just mean that it’s more work, it means that it is different work (mostly enterprise-level), with different budgets, coming from different areas of the organization, with different goals and mandates. The different budgets also mean different scope, which in turn means that we never work with a single technology for a project — it’s always a cocktail, requiring multiple resources skilled in different areas.
I’m interested in your comment that there has been MORE Flash work as a result of HTML5. What do you suppose that means? To what would you attribute that trend?
I’m guessing that you are reporting anecdotal data. I would LOVE to see actual data on this sort of stuff, but it just doesn’t seem to exist. So all we have are anecdotes. I see many (like you) on Twitter and such explaining how the flow of Flash/AS/Flex work has not dried up. The thing is: most of the people like this that I know tend not only to be individuals (as opposed to firms), but also to be known-quantities. “Celebrities” for lack of a better word. At least, the type of person who speaks at conferences or writes books. It seems to me that these people would be precisely the last ones who would feel any of these changes — whether it’s a diminishment of Flash work, or a contraction in general. People with better brands take longer to feel pain.
I will say that the anecdotes that I would relay, tell quite a different story. The amount of Flash work that I’m seeing in the industry has dropped off considerably. (I should add that many of my clients and colleagues are in Los Angeles and Hollywood, which represents a regional bias, driven in large part by Entertainment and Automotive — there was already a significant anti-Flash trend brewing out here, where Jobs had a lot of direct interaction and impact, since early 2010.) I’ve seen almost all of the larger agencies decimate their Flash teams (and, in many cases, I mean that literally; the Flash talent is gone from within their walls). We were at one large ad agency last year that explained how their only interactive job for the next 18 months was replacing all of the Flash on all digital properties of their client, a car company.
At Almer/Blank, the vast majority of our budgets these days are non-Flash (and we are a shop that still has some of the best Flash talent in California). Indeed, on quick review of the deals that have closed in the past six months, only two have Flash, and in both cases the Flash was limited to handling video playback.
So there are two conversations going on here:
1- How much Flash work is there?
2- What might a contraction feel like?
On the first question, I think the jury’s still out. You tell a different story than I do. I’d love to see some real, objective, 3rd party data, but I think that’s unlikely. In the absence of that, all we have to go on are anecdotes, and it would be great to see some more of those. But again, this question of ‘how much Flash work will there be?’ is separate from ‘how much work will there be?’
On the second question, I still think you underestimate what a contraction can feel like. By definition, there’s less work to go around, regardless of technology. The better your brand, on average, the better you will weather a contraction. But if one occurs, many people will feel pain. It’s part of the definition.
I’m working on an outline for my submission. But, as to your question. I guess it might not be terribly accurate to say it’s INCREASED Flash work. In my world it has caused many of my clients from the last few years to re-contact me. So, in that regard it’s helped. Plus, most public facing applications (which are to work on a wide variety of browsers) are all including Flash as a fallback. Not that the fallback technology is “important” or “popular” but it’s holding steady. Plus, on all such wide-delivery projects I’ve used Flash for the prototyping/signoff.
Ultimately, most of the same folks who’ve done Flash are into whatever the demands of clients turn out to be. That is, it doesn’t increase or decrease demand in a wide sense. It’s not like the skills learned doing Flash are all-of-a-sudden not applicable to JS. Yes, some of the HTML nerds are commanding larger fees than Flash timeline weenies.
It’s funny to think of Flash programmers as the old timers but we are (and for what it’s worth, I haven’t called myself a “Flash” anything in years!).
As far as “less work to go around”. What’s the basis of that? The economy has made people a lot less willing to drop cash… but just because “html5″ is more expensive (assuming that’s true) it doesn’t mean there’s less work–just less productivity. Yes, there IS less money to go around–but that’s been the case for a while now.
Hey PK:
I didn’t say there was less work going around. I did, however, highlight a trend that could *lead* to less work in a contraction (with bubble-esque spending activity occurring around HTML5). And, in my previous comment, I just wanted to note that the amount of Flash work, and the amount of work overall, are separate issues.
-r
About Flash work:
If you’re a Flash game engineer there is still a lot of “Flash” work, mostly programming kids and casual games in AS3. Still you seem to hanker after working in HTML5, Unity or even C++ for games.
If you were a Flex engineer, you still had steady work until Adobe’s Flex announcement in November last year. Then after you still had work, although you are likely rapidly transitioning to HTML5 maybe using Sencha. New projects aren’t done in Flex anymore it seems.
If you worked at an agency, you almost certainly don’t use Flash anymore and transitioned to JavaScript sometime in late 2010 early 2011.
If you were a decent programmer, then you probably had a pretty good time learning new technologies and enjoyed making things differently than you did. You wondered if this was such a big deal after all.
Overall no one is really enthusiastic about Flash anymore and the community remains distrustful of Adobe.