The best people in technology don’t always start in technology.
Look around the teams delivering digital services today, and you’ll find plenty of people who didn’t take the traditional route into tech.
In our User-Centred Design team at Triad, we see people bring experience from design, psychology, research, engineering and many other disciplines.
The Next Tech Generation
I was reminded of this at Next Tech Fest, which Triad was proud to sponsor for the third consecutive year. During the event, I ran a workshop that gave attendees a taste of different roles within technology. I also spoke with many of the 300+ attendees, including the speakers.
One thing that came across from the speakers was that you don’t need to start in technology to succeed in it.
Technology changes quickly
The roles we see today didn’t necessarily exist in their current form when many of us were choosing what to study at school or university. Education can struggle to keep pace with a constantly evolving sector.
So, it’s hardly surprising that many people don’t enter technology directly.
Instead, they come from analogous roles, jobs with different titles or focuses but many of the same skills.
That’s certainly been true for me. I moved from product design into service design. They are different disciplines, but there is a lot of common ground. Both involve design thinking, understanding users, considering usability and ergonomics, working within wider processes and, ultimately, turning needs and requirements into something useful.
I didn’t leave all my previous experience behind when I moved into service design. I took it with me. And that’s one of the great advantages of a career detour.
What does psychology have to do with technology?
Several of my colleagues on the UCD team studied psychology at university but arrived in UX/UR in very different ways. For example, one went from university to clinical research and UX. Another went from university to software engineering and Quality Assurance.
On paper, these might look like very different careers. But if you analyse the skills that their roles require, then the connections become much clearer.
Understanding people. Analysing information. Spotting patterns. Solving problems. Asking questions. Thinking about how something might work – or fail. Those aren’t “technology skills”. They’re human skills that happen to be incredibly useful in technology.
The transferable skills we sometimes overlook
It’s easy to associate a career in technology with technical expertise. And technical expertise is, of course, important. But successful digital delivery needs much more than technical knowledge.
It requires a raft of skills, such as empathy, communication, curiosity, creativity, problem-solving and systems thinking.
You can develop those skills in almost any profession:
- A researcher learns to investigate and analyse.
- A designer learns to understand people and turn ideas into solutions.
- A project manager develops communication and brings people, priorities and processes together.
Those experiences don’t become irrelevant when someone moves into technology. They become another perspective to bring into the room.
Different routes can mean different perspectives
And that’s valuable. When you’re working on complex digital services, there is rarely a single obvious answer. You need people who can understand the technology, but also the people using it, the organisations delivering it and the wider system around it.
Someone with a different professional background might ask a question the rest of the team hadn’t considered. They might spot a usability issue, challenge an assumption, see a connection between two seemingly unrelated problems, or simply approach a familiar challenge from a different angle.
That’s one reason I think we should care less about whether someone’s career looks “traditional” and more about what they’ve learned along the way.
The detour can be the advantage
If you’re considering a move into tech, don’t automatically assume you need to start again. Remember that a career doesn’t have to be a straight line from A to B. Your previous experience could be your advantage.
The future of technology needs technical expertise, of course. But it also needs people who can bring different experiences, perspectives, and ways of thinking to the problems we’re trying to solve.
Sometimes the most interesting route into technology isn’t the direct one. It’s the detour.
If you have a question for Francesca or the Triad team, please get in touch.
