Saturday, August 18, 2012

I want a tech consultant!

I see a gap in the job market. I see a role that needs to be filled. I see a way people can find work, good work, good paying work, and be providing a valuable service to those around them. It is this:

Technological consultant

As a middle-aged homeowner, parent, businessman, I keep being confronted with technological issues, but I'm not a computer science major, and I do not work in any tech field. When my car breaks, I take it to a mechanic. I do not have the time or inclination to learn how to fix cars. Nor do I have the time or inclination to learn all about technology. I just want to be able to live my life without getting my time eaten away by little technological challenges. While I admit they are "little," they cumulatively rob me of minutes every day, hours every week, days every year and add up to a monumental waste of time.

Time I value. Because my time has value, I would pay some one to do this. If I can pay $100 for some one to do in 20 minutes what it would take me 3 hours to figure out, then that is a no-brainer, if I value my time as worth more than $33 (which I do, because I make somewhat more than that at my job--I could spend that 3 hours doing my job, making more than $100 in the process.)

This is how the economy is supposed to work:  People spend time on what they can do most efficiently. So I see a brand new need, a job that needs to be created, a new type of career for our new society:  Technological consultant. You come to my home, you advise me how to set up computers, televisions, video game consoles, how to interface it, connect it, stream it. You listen to how my family wants to watch tv, how we want to use our computers, how we want to listen to music, and then you tell us what hardware, software and services we need to accomplish that.

This person I am hiring should be truly independent. I do not want to talk to the Best Buy "geek squad" or the Apple gurus at their shops because they have a vested interested in promoting their own products. To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I want some one who can deal with the notion that my wife has a Mac and I have a PC and sometimes we may want to use each other's computers, and there ought to be (must be?) some way to make it so I can sit down at any computer in my house -- wife's, mine, mother-in-law's -- and easily check my e-mail or facebook or whatever.

It is about knowing all the technological options and configurations, and being able to advise people what is best, because I am drowning in options that waste my time and without time, I cannot even breathe. Because breathing requires movement and movement requires time.

This new career could be akin to an independent contractor, a general contractor, a self-employed individual. Eventually, the government may be involved with licensing or certifying that people have enough know-how to call themselves this type of profesional, whatever it may be. Maybe this should even be a degree program in colleges. Learning to advise people on how to readily adapt to changing technological landscapes.

Well, maybe I'm just an eccentric suffering under my own glut of technological crap I feel I need to learn to keep up in today's world, and feeling I am falling ever more behind... Or maybe I'm the "everyman" voicing what a lot of people may be feeling. Some one please step up to the plate, ring my door, and give me your business card. Mr. Technological Consultant. I would gladly pay a high hourly rate to spend some time talking to you. And I know about high hourly rates (being that I am a lawyer).

This is today's 2 cents. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
Ciao & Namaste & Amen

1 comment:

  1. It did occur to me while writing that maybe this job even already exist and I'm just not tech-savvy enough to know where to find this person. Hmmm... sounds like a job for Googleman!

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