Siu Lun

Saw a facebook update today from Belle Liu of Beansbox that mentioned about “Rework” book from 37Signals.

I don’t usually read, what I do read is usually the PHP.net manual, AS3 language reference, API documentations etc… I did read some entrepreneurial books before I started my own company though.

The classical “The E Myth Revisited”.

But anyway, I read the excerpt at the Rework website, I’m interested since it’s from a fairly successful web-services company in the US. I wanted to know what they’ve been through.

Having a look at the excerpt, there are certainly things that I agree with, and have strengthened my believe in, such as the “Workaholic” section about how workaholics are no good because they make other feel inadequate, it reminded me of a former-colleague, where she excels in is she stays for long hours and works hard, but she complains about people who leaves on-time to their face and makes them feel inadequate. Very true.

Other points in the excerpt however I found to be mostly obvious, probably only because I’ve been through the same, there is one thing however that I don’t agree with.

“Underdo your competition”. Unfortunately, I found basecamp’s features to be lacking a little to be of ‘real’ benefits. The only reason why that would work is that you have a simpler interface that is easier to grasp, which appears more user-friendly, at the beginning.

“leaving the complex stuff to your competition” is not a good idea. I mean, let’s switch a bit on the industry, if this applied to Intel, AMD would’ve ruled the world today. CPUs are complex.

Let’s switch it more closely related to the web. Apple. If Apple’s iPhone 4 lagged behind in features, functionality, speed, lost that all important technological advancement. They would be losing market share.

However I recognise that, that is a business characteristics 37Signal approaches, and since they’re not doing badly, it must’ve been a good point; not necessarily.

Anyway, thanks to Belle . I’m actually interested in reading the rest of that book, but I don’t think from what I’ve seen so far, it’s worth paying for it.

Later.

This is a follow up to my previous post about the observations I’ve made from my position. In previous posts, I’ve documented about how small agencies struggle to survive and attract and keep talents, because of a tendency to think web development is/should be cheap.

At the top of the ladder, the story is the same, and I would like to share this point to those who’re at the top of the ladder or near.

Being at the top of the ladder means you dictate what goes down below, but from what I’ve managed to observe, even the people at the top of the ladder, they only help their clients push prices down and expectation high by usually asking a friend for a favour to do it cheap and work 24/7 for them.

This is no way to run a business at the top of the food chain. They give 0 consideration for the people below. I’ll spell out here exactly why they NEED to.

• being in such a tiny city, with no room for expansion or talents, you DEPEND on people below to supply you constantly with a stream of qualified and trained developers, if you do not provide the money and set a crap expectation on the quality of production then you’re contributing to the failure of this industry in your home city.
• by yielding to the price demands of clients and would rather push down rates of developers at the bottom by getting favours from friends, you are setting an expectation of clients to pay you less and less in the future and demanding more and more. Clients will ALWAYS tell you they don’t have budget, they need a site by tomorrow noon. You should just tell them to F-off. Really, you’re at the top of the food chain, they’re buying quality, money at this stage should not be an issue. If they choose an unknown 3rd-party developer, let them do it, you get what you pay for.

I would try and persuade those who’re in smaller agencies to not accept work like what I explained above for cheap, but it’ll only fall on deaf ears. The reality or it seems, is that most find their friends, family, relatives to do the work, hence why they get special discount AND treatment. My only advice here is for the boss to really try and micro-manage their staff so they don’t choose agencies because on the ‘surface’ they’re cheap and quick, but in fact the only reason is because they’re their relatives and also they really cut corners on development quality and end deliverables.

Later.
Ronald

It’s me again on the state of web development in Hong Kong. After over a 6 months long ‘stint’ at a traditionally established 4As in Hong Kong, having worked with a lot of talented, and a lot of less talented individual freelancers as well as production/development houses in Hong Kong, it has allowed me to gather much more concrete evidence and proofs that Hong Kong’s web development scene is heading to hell unless major changes are undertaken and ‘best practises’ be taken more seriously.

In my previous posts: here, here and here, I’ve taken some observations from when I established my own company in Hong Kong and with dealing with clients directly.

It has been an eye-opener from working from a management perspective inside the top of the ladder in HK’s agency web development scene.

Most of my observations that has led to my conclusion has been about the people. Well afterall, it’s always the people, can’t be anyone else, so let’s not escape the matter because one’s afraid to upset somebody.

While inside the top of the ladder, while I was there, it has not been a money issue, but an issue of the quality of people and the satisfaction of their existing methodologies as well as the ignorance of people in general. Vague? Let me explain in simple bullet points, this may help anybody in this business to look out for these points when hiring.

• ‘Creatives’ / ‘Designers’ who’ve / claimed to have 5 years+ experience cannot create pixel perfect layouts
• ‘Creatives’ / ‘Designers’ who’ve / claimed to have 5 years+ experience cannot understand actionscript
• ‘Creatives’ / ‘Designers’ who’ve / claimed to have 5 years+ experience cannot come up with designs with usability in mind
• ‘Creatives’ / ‘Designers’ who’ve / claimed to have 5 years+ experience cannot / would not grasp the idea of a ‘full screen’ execution and the different resolution to cater for.
• Developers thinks table is still acceptable in today’s development landscape
• Developers do not code with re-usability in mind
• Everybody do not care / understand about best practises
• Everybody who’ve / claimed to have 5 years+ experience are satisfied with how they’ve always done things and challenge all changes and simply refuses to change
• The ‘strategics’ of a digital execution is thought of by a bunch of people who does not understand how it works and simply takes examples, from rivals, from what they’ve seen, they do not think of new ideas, new ways to utilise the power of what’s given to them through APIs.

These are mostly about skillset problems and a lack of appreciation of standards compliance, best practises and even motivation to experiment. The most daunting of all the points above is the fact that they refuse to change and innovate. Whether that stems from their lack of cultural exposure to the development world outside of this tiny pea spot of a city, or what. I do not know.

From what I’ve also seen is that when compared to the likes of Singapore (Hong Kong’s main rival FYI), websites comes from Hong Kong is shit, it isn’t as bad a mainly China, but it is only 1 notch up. I do reckon it is the culture exposure to english in general. As the likelihood of Hong Kong’s developers reading a web related article or magazine is near 0, and even when they read it, some are let down by their poor understanding of english.

Aside from people, the are issues with processes. Processes of how a web development project is/should be handle. I won’t say web development is a new type of business that requires special handling of clients or processes. It shares processes and methods from other type of established business, such as software development and IT, as well as traditional media production like TV commercials and print. The problem with processes that I’ve encountered is actually, rather than processes, people lack the knowledge and the will to implement one.

One such issue is the use of a version control system. I’ve worked with many many outsourced production/development houses as well as freelancers the past half year and I’m very sad to say almost none of them use/used version control system like SVN on a regular basis.

It is unbelievable in the way development houses work in Hong Kong, you’d think most of them are still in 1995. The fact that development methodologies have advanced is a news that never reached Hong Kong seemingly, as well as facts about client handling in terms of what’s obvious and what’s not, what in web development really depend on the client and working with the client.

My advice for Hong Kong agency owners on this point is really just keep reading web articles, it’ll do you good. Agile development methods have been around since 2002 as I can remember, and more traditional software development methods back in the 80s still applies today, albeit with adaptations.

There are of course other issues with the people I’ve managed to observe all the way from accounts servicing, down to the end of the cycle. I won’t list them all but I do wish to list the following personality issues with people, be it a Hong Kong thing, 4As thing, combination of both, or what’s it, I don’t care, but these are issues.

• People like to compare, just because ‘Agency B’ can do/have done certain things before and they’re ‘not bad in digital’ in HK, means jack shit, I’ve heard people actually saying that to me even though I was trying to explain to them a best practise and the reason why we need to adapt to it. (this was about why not to use tables for websites)
• A lot of HTML template developments and standards compliance today stems from optimising HTML websites to confirm to standards that are designed to make operating across many different devices and for many different people with disabilities easy, people in HK do not care, I get told ‘Why are we making websites for blind people to see’. It is not that you’re making it specifically for them to see, but it is that if they can see it, so can machines, it is actually 2 birds in 1 stone. People do not care about the disabled and have a blatant disregard for them here. Which I find disgusting.
• People think they’re on the top of the ladder when working for a 4As, would not consider what they’re doing is actually good for the project, is poor at expressing their ideas, and refuses to admit to faults.

I would urge, all agency owners in Hong Kong, first of all, brush up their own understanding, read more articles on best practises, read about the digital production process. Then sort out the people in your own agency, look at them, see if they’re doing anything wrong. Improve them, or get rid of them. Weed out those that have done a couple of hours of Flash lessons and have been running on that ever since, keep those who might have done the same, but they continue to experiment, innovate, improve. Attend more development ‘meet ups’ in UK, US.

If you do not understand or am unable to take on the task, hire somebody to do it, hire somebody who you can delegate the entire production to. Let them organise for you, but still, in the end, you need to keep a close eye on it and see whether it is the best way, because, even if you’ve managed to find somebody who’ve worked for ’15+years’ in web development in Hong Kong, they’re not necessarily any good at all. Afterall, they have been in the backwards development scene of Hong Kong and they’ve obviously grown used to it, so that’s what they’ll implement for you.

Well, I hope this would help people to really think about what the hell they’re doing, and really the most important attribute for anybody in the field of web development. Don’t think you know anything for certain, things changes at a faster pace than you. Always be willing to take on new ideas, and work on improving, don’t be content with what you’re doing and staying in time.

Hong Kong’s web development cannot be ’60 years unchanged’. Get real.

Later.
Ronald