Do you know Photoshop?
A recent article written by Mahesh Murthy has become one of my favorite articles because following lines struck me and they struck me hard.
This was brought home to me some time ago when one of the managers at a company I’d invested in—a bloke who studied at an IIT and worked at one of these IT giants—hired some graphic designers for his team whose work turned out to be ugly crap. After repeated client rejections of work we dived into the matter and I happened to ask the question “So what criteria did you use to hire these people?” And the answer came back “proficiency in Photoshop”. To clarify further, I asked “And if you need to hire writers, would you use the criteria of ‘proficiency in Microsoft Word’”? He hesitated for a moment and then it struck me—the truth was probably yes, he would.
He is talking about why we don't have great products coming out of Indian IT companies. He is talking about the society and cultural aspect overall.
It got me thinking on what do I do while hiring?
Yes, the truth is, I will also ask "Do you know Photoshop?" while hiring a designer.
I have become a narrow minded person like that IIT guy in hiring. Because I am running an IT service company, I have very few options. I have to get people start earning as soon as they are hired. I can't train them in tools. But it is hurting me and the people I hire one way or the other.
I agree with Mahesh that things are slowly changing but it still might take a while.
Please do yourself a favor and read the full article.
If you are a designer or a programmer, the question to ask yourself is:
"Do you understand design?" or "You know Photoshop?"
"Do you know programming?" or "You know Visual Studio / Eclipse / .NET / PHP / Java?"
