The resolution of a paradox

If we take the results of Kruger and Dunning's tests and observations at face value, they might go some way towards explaining some of the attitudes and behaviours in the present day world of e-business. We do find experienced, middle aged executives standing aside, or, being pushed out of the way to make room for technical wizards who are novices in terms of business acumen. We do find the technical experts and specialists seeing themselves as street wise as experienced business people.

Examples of over estimations of commercial prowess abound in most technical email discussion forums, where young technicians, fresh out of college, dispense with fundamental principles of sound business practice to propound great ideas that while having great appeal to their peers are commercially ludicrous. How many Web sites have been created with lavish graphical interfaces that are a real inconvenience to use? How many Web sites drive visitors to distraction with a confusing array of flickering, animated banners that have no relevance to the purpose of the site's core business? How many Web sites have a vast complexity of unnecessary JavaScript programming that totally confuses and irritates the user?

It doesn't take much surfing around the Web to see how much incompetence is in control. Yet, if you look at the successful sites, the ones that are actually performing well commercially, they are usually devoid of all gimmickry and artistic design. They seem to be thriving on technical naivety.

After reading this chapter, one of the reviewers at a table in the virtual cafe, developer and designer Btyan Rieger wrote:

I found this chapter really had a lot of relevance in my own ebusiness/web experience over the past 5 years. This chapter is a MUST read for any business man who is thinking of getting into eBusiness. Especially if they are not technically inclined themselves.

"In their hectic scramble to get into e-business as fast as possible, companies have been seizing the "bright young things" with knowledge of servers and networks and building businesses around them." I couldn't agree more. Before going off on my own I worked for several companies who were lead by individuals who had no knowledge of the industry they were getting involved in - they heard that it was where things were happening and they were looking to get rich quick.

They hired based on 'buzzwords' rather than credentials and would trust these 'bright young things' to build their digital empire - while they watched. Business decisions were also made with other business people - without ever consulting the technical staff. 'Sure we can build you a hyper-ghadzoontit-warble-blaster, we've built three already.' Then they go back to the staff that either say 'sure - we can do it...' (and have no idea what they just agreed to) or say 'What the hell are you doing?'. The last comment usually results in mass-migration as the business owner decides to find 'skilled' people who know what they are doing. ;-)

'Young web professionals' aren't interested in hearing 'functional, simple and intuitive'. In my experience these individuals are only interested in making the 'phattest, most rad, mind blowing experience - one could ever have...' I always try to explain that we're selling electrical equipment for our client, not LSD. What's cool and what's required are two very different things - and getting young developers to realize this is a major undertaking.

The other problem with running an ebusiness is trying to run it like any other company. With the demand for Internet 'professionals' growing by the day - employees have 'the world at their fingerstips'. As soon as an employee feels that they are not being listened to, appreciated or advancing fast enough they'll start surfing the 'monsterboard' on their lunch break. And chances are they'll have an interview by end of day.

This entire 'employment frenzy' is only made worse by educational institutions and the media hyping the growth in the industry and telling recent graduates that they should come out of a six month program and be making 60K per year doing HTML and data entry.

This problem is compounded by the 'quick and dirty schools', the media and bosses putting inexperienced employees in an ivory tower. On one occasion, I came to work for a company that had been around 6 months - where the owner of the company made young man of 21 responsible for the strategy, developement and design of several blue chip clients. I might add, he just recently graduated as a graphic designer and this was his first job. You can imagine what happened at client meetings when after six weeks of development time all he had to show them (and he thought this was good) was three screen shots mounted on illustration board.

John Farrell