On (hopefully not) becoming that guy
by Matt May
Happy Monday. A quick introduction: my name is Matt May, and I run a consulting company called Practical Equity and Inclusion. I’m going to try something different this week, so please bear with me.
Last week, I wrote a thing about a guy and his magical thinking. It’s safe to say it struck a nerve. The archived version received over 6000 views, and Practical Tips got an almost 40% boost in subscribers.
Well, that blew up. Anyway, here’s my SoundCloud…
I don’t want to write any more about that guy. It’s not that I don’t have more to say; I just look back at the last week, realize what an obvious trolling attempt that original post was, and feel a little gross for falling for it. I didn’t create this list to beat up on people for clicks, no matter how beat-up-able they may be.
I came up during the early days of blogging, where most of the big names from that generation—especially that guy—were creating content to attract consulting business. I started on the tech speaking circuit in earnest in 2002, while I was an accessibility specialist at the W3C. After a couple years, I had met a lot of the people I was reading. I feel new gray hairs growing as I write this, but: this was before YouTube and podcasts, so it was exceedingly difficult to actually hear people give talks unless you were attending a conference. Blogs really were how we shared information about web design, UX and accessibility.
When I co-founded a consulting company in 2005, we copied the same pattern, and I’ve been writing and speaking and podcasting in some form or another ever since. It was a largely supportive community, though it was also frequently combative. The blogosphere was, for a time, the arena for web design, UX and accessibility knowledge sharing and debate, but the sunlight did not reach every flower. In the end, a lot of power ended up concentrating in the hands of bloggers who were mostly white and male, and particularly those who were brash, abrasive, and controversial… but readable. Especially when they knew how to turn it into dollars.
Longtime subscribers will agree that I suck at self-promotion. Practical has been doing billable work for four months now, and I don’t even have a website. There are several reasons for this, but a big one is that I don’t want to be that guy. It’s not my goal to be the main character of Design LinkedIn. I don’t want my bio to say I’m an “expert,” or trade on who I used to work for. And I don’t believe in hustle culture. I’d like enough paying work to pay the bills (so far so good), but becoming a big agency with a lot of employees and clients doesn’t meet my definition of success.
One problem that can eventually happen to people in tech is that they hang on too long. This isn’t solely about getting old in tech, though the nature of time assures it is a component. It’s about having knowledge and opinions that are outdated, but insisting beyond all modern evidence that they’re still correct. And worse, it’s about using the status you’ve accrued to hold back the next generation of leaders, to your benefit. AI is a major proving ground for older tech workers in this respect. I’ve seen a lot who show a healthy skepticism, sometimes more deeply-held than my own. But when I see someone with forty-one years of experience making happy noises about AI, with lots of hand-waving and no citations… well, you saw the rest.
A few weeks ago I mentioned how I hang out with ministers. One thing I’ve learned is how one retires from that life well—and how one does it poorly. One of my Christian minister friends took over a big Seattle church whose longtime pastor was retiring. Out of respect for their successors, it’s a best practice for retiring ministers to, in more modern terms, ghost their old churches. A minister emerita/us may leave for a year or more, not even attending regular services. Ministers have sway over nearly every aspect of their institution, and when one spends much of their career in one place, they tend to take their authority for granted, which can serve to undermine their replacements.
The church my minister friend, a woman in her 30s at the time, was recruited to lead had once been home to over a thousand parishioners, but was only drawing a dozen or two by the time of her installation. She soon found that her predecessor, a much older man, had decided he’d rather stick around to “help.” He remained on the board of the church. He criticized decisions she had taken in order to rebuild a following, or even to keep the lights on. He argued with her in front of the congregation, particularly over the more progressive policies of the modern church. He often spoke of how things were in my day—steadfastly refusing to recognize the day was no longer his.
Today, there’s a shiny new apartment complex where that church once stood.
This year I’m turning a nice, round number, the kind that is normally celebrated with lots of novelty gifts to tease me about hills and how over them I am. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how not to become that guy. I think I have a few useful years left in me before it is time to take up fishing or whittling or whatever us olds do now, and I want to make sure they count.
What I do know is that I’d rather make less as a solo consultant and help others in the field come up, than start some big consultancy where publicists score me keynote gigs, soft-focus interviews and lifetime achievement awards. One where a marketing team lines up roomfuls of execs for me to wow with my stump speech, and where I dine out on a healthy cut of the bill rate on the early-career folks I hire to do the heavy lifting. It seems like a bad move for a company with “Equity” in the name, to build up a diverse workforce that serves to make a white guy rich and famous.
When I started working in big tech, I was told my goal should be to become an executive. Though I made good money, the executive ranks were where I could really cash in, if I could hold onto that seat until retirement. I hope there’s another way, where I can do work that I care about, in reasonable amounts, bringing others along with me, but without exploiting others’ labor or taking up a seat that someone else is ready to step into. We’re taught how to grow into corporate structures, but never how to grow out of them.
This is where I struggle. I’ve determined I can’t ethically expand unless and until I have enough of a pipeline to keep employees working, and enough transparency about the business that I can ensure I’m not extracting an unfair share of the profits. Maybe I’ll figure that out, but I’m going to look before I leap.
At this point in my career, my commitment is to support and amplify those who came after me. That’s something we all can do. What I’ve taken from all this is that I also need to filter out the voices who I feel should already have given their parting sermon and taken their leave.
Practical Trips (and a programming note)
It’s almost time for Practical’s first business trip! I’ll be at the CSUN Conference next week.
For those of you who are new subscribers, usually I post a link to my office hours down here, but due to my traveling schedule, they’re canceled for this week and next. If you’ll be in Anaheim (whether you’re going to the conference or not) and want to meet up, send me an email and we’ll work out a time to meet.
I’m also giving you all a week off from the newsletter. Practical Tips will be back on the 25th, and office hours return on the 28th. See you soon.