A friend who’s never worked in the software industry
offered to help me explore the job market in his area, and he asked for a copy
of my résumé. Well, the level of what he calls jargon about broke his brain, so
I sent him a second copy, this time annotated with some definitions.
You know—marketing-type stuff like value propositions,
sales enablement tools, messaging, and go-to-market planning. Also, in the
software product management line, such terms as product roadmaps and
feature-benefit presentations.
(And let me say that I understand perfectly how opaque a
résumé for someone in a different field can be. I’ve helped friends in tech
support and user experience design—both of them areas my work has occasionally
touched—rewrite theirs, and at a certain point in each discussion I had to say,
“Okay, I assume that when you say [blah-blah-blah] your target reader is going
to know what you’re talking about, right?”)
There’s a whole language specific to this industry that
users are not privy to. In fact—if you’re doing it right, there’s no reason on
earth why they should know that that language exists. All that should be
visible to them is when they fire up their device, does the application do what
they were told it would do in the manner they were led to expect that it would,
without making them tear their hair out in the process? Yes?—fine. No?—#fail.
So, understanding that there’s a whole world of humanity
out there that does not have the vocabulary to get this visual joke, I’m still
putting it out there. On account of it makes me laugh every time I look at it.
Hint: you may think you’re seeing one thing, but the
product manager will tell you it's a…
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