Don't be a "Jack"

I am sure you've heard the expression, "he's a jack of all trades and the master of none". Fast food restaurants are "jacks," they carry everything under the sun, salads, burgers, shakes, pies, ice cream, coffees, breakfast burritos etc. And it's all crap... "Five Guys Burgers" is a franchise burger joint that has a great product, unique setting and a business model that screams less. They have burgers (cheese, bacon or plain) and they have fries (cajun or regular); I believe you can get a hot dog too. But that's it, they know they can make a killer hamburger loaded with the toppings and they can do it fast and well. Because their menu is small, the ordering is fast, the cooks have less to learn, less to prepare and less food inventory to store.

Now let's relate that to our industry. I've met a lot of freelance designers or freelance developers that try to do too much. Their skill set is one thing and they try to do it all. I've seen programmers spend days on a horrible design instead of getting a designer to do it for a couple hundred dollars. Do what you do well and don't pretend to do it all. There's no shame in asking for help or getting someone to fill in your project's gaps. Your code will look like crap to your users without a well designed UI. Designers, your designs won't fly without good code behind them. Right now if your thinking "hey I can do both" your probably not good at either.

5 Comments

Angelo said on February 25, 2008

Yeah, okay.

Things are changing, though. Especially with web frameworks and elegant languages like ruby, it’s becoming easier to accomplish much more of the process.

A small design/development shop won’t necessarily be the best fit for every design situation out there – but that’s different than trying to do more with less.

Steven Bristol said on February 25, 2008

The only thing I would add is that when hiring we don’t even try to look for someone who is good at both. If someone claims to be good at both, or shows us a nice design that they did, we make the technical interview way harder. Someone who does both well is very, very rare.

Jonathan Longnecker said on February 25, 2008

Very true; knowing your weaknesses is truly a great strength. And on a related note, Five Guys have cajun fries!? I need to go try them.

MMA Predictions said on February 25, 2008

I love Five Guys. We had them nearby when I lived in Virginia but there are none here in SoCal that I know of. I feel terrible for eating it but hey once in a while isn’t a big deal right? lol

Nathan Arnold said on March 06, 2008

But what about the age old phrase: “You can teach a designer how to program, but you can’t teach a programmer how to design.”

I think that still holds true, which is why I hire designers in my freelance development projects.

Cheers! Love me some Five Guys! YUMMY.