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DouglasAWh
April 13th, 2008, 08:43 PM
I have an interview coming up in the online usability group at a certain FOSS organization and I'm trying to do some research because I really, really, REALLY want to get my foot in the door in the corporate FOSS world. This isn't the place to argue about the role corporations can play, it's just the reality of the situation at this point.

Anyway, my biggest question is how much money can be made in usability (FOSS or not). One of my friends said you could make good money, but I haven't been able to find anything on my Google searches. I'm sure the info is out there and I'm just not using the correct terminology.

Any anecdotes about careers in usability or usability in general would also be appreciated. I do have some experience in usability, but not a lot (it is an entry level position for which I am applying).

Thanks, as always!

Tundro Walker
April 13th, 2008, 09:12 PM
You can make good money. I think Jakob Nielsen estimated that Usability experts make ~75k / yr or so. (EDIT: Actually, starting out, looks like you could see ~60k/yr (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/salaries.html))

The trick is finding a company that takes usability seriously. Because if you don't, you either won't get paid what you're worth, or you'll get frustrated at nobody listening to you.

Usability is what's termed as "matrix manager" position, like Quality Assurance & Project Manangement. People don't like you, because by hiring you, the company is basically saying the developers are too stupid, ignorant or egotistical to incorporate good usability into the products they code. So, they need you to come up with testing and ideas on how to improve it. Since the coders don't work directly for you (IE: you're not their boss), they can sometimes blow off your suggestions.

The trick with being a Usability Expert, as with being a Project Manager & Quality Assurance person, is to convert everything you do into time & money saved. If you can prove your changes will save the company time / money in development (to reduce overhead), or the customer time / money (which makes the product more competetive), then folks will have a hard time arguing with your suggestions and will be more prone to implement them. But if you just show up and start telling folks to change this and that because it's "good usability" without having some ROI figures to back your recommendations, they'll blow you off.

Usability is coming out of the "novelty" phase and is starting to get taken more seriously now. And, if you work with the right group of programmers, they will love you to death, since your pre-testing for usability will help focus their development efforts from the start, rather than having them re-vamp the product 5 times over at the back-end of the process.

But, if you're hiring onto a company that just thinks "we'll hire a Usability person, and they'll solve all our usability issues" ... you might have a huge headache. They're basically saying "we don't have a clue what's going on, but maybe by just tossing money at the problem and hiring someone to fill a position entitled 'usability' we'll miraculously have better usability."

Instead of being worried about how well you do in the interview, I'd be very picky in questioning them about their motives for hiring a usability person, where they'd like to take it, what kind of support & authority you'll have in your position, and so forth. You don't want to get hired as a mantle-piece trophy, with no authority to enact change, and then get yelled at for not "doing your job". You can't do your job if they neuter you from the start.

DouglasAWh
April 13th, 2008, 09:49 PM
Instead of being worried about how well you do in the interview, I'd be very picky in questioning them about their motives for hiring a usability person, where they'd like to take it, what kind of support & authority you'll have in your position, and so forth. You don't want to get hired as a mantle-piece trophy, with no authority to enact change, and then get yelled at for not "doing your job". You can't do your job if they neuter you from the start.

This isn't a position I'd want forever. I'm definitely interested in being a CIO or some other higher level manager in the future. Getting my foot in the door with this company is really priority number one. Since I'm just graduating, I don't really know what things are like in the real world and I just want to try something out. Maybe I'll fall in love with it, but if not, it's just a lesson learned. I'll be able to find something else and with no wife or kids there's no reason to be tied down to a particular area for looking around.

Tundro Walker
April 14th, 2008, 02:21 AM
In that case, go for it for like a year, to at least get a year's experience on your resume. And if you like it, then stick with it, otherwise do a little job hopping.

I found that the best career and skill growth in my life came from job-hopping every year. For about 5 years I basically had a different job each year. Each time I changed jobs, I got (what calculated to) another $1 increase in hourly pay, and I got to have a crash course in how the new company worked, various new solutions to new problems, etc. After a year, it started turning into the same old crap, and I felt like I was stagnating.

I've been at my current job for about 4 years now, though, because I like who I work for (which is a real bonus), and the company has been growing and going through changes, so there's opportunities for a trouble-shooter to solve problems without a lot of the usual red tape getting in the way.

If your end goal is career advancement up the ranks, I would definitely plan on keeping my eye on the help wanted ads regularly. Working for a large company may get you some "street cred", but some large companies may be so set in their org-chart that you'll never advance. Others may have rapid changes in the org-chart, but your talent may get passed over by experience (even if the person isn't as qualified as you). By using a bit of judicious job-hopping, you can gain a lot more experience than working the same old job for 10 years.

That's a matter of personal opinion and experience, though.

EDIT:

I guess what I forgot to mention was get in with a large or high-profile company that has a lot of business "street cred", like EDS, Microsoft, etc. Put in some time there, and then see if you can hop into a middle-management position at some other place (if you haven't been promoted at the current place). With about 5 years under your belt, see if you can job-hop into smaller and smaller companies, which have smaller org-chart pyramids. Reason being, your Senior Manage position at a large company may be the equivilent of a Director-level position at a larger company. By bouncing between large and small companies, you might be able to escalate your job title and managerial position so eventually you can be CIO of a smaller company, which would really be like a VP or Director of Technology at a larger company. But, once you're a CIO, regardless of how small the company is, most folks just blindly see the acronym and assume you being a CIO at one company makes you qualified to be a CIO at another company. (Recruiters are sometimes stupid that way). Ultimately, you have to make sure you don't bite off more than you can chew, because you don't want to crash and burn by getting a job you seem qualified for and then fail miserably at. So, you can play the system like that, but careful not to burn yourself.