Move Over Software Engineers It's The Era Of Media Engineers
By Tom Foremski - July 28, 2009
Software coding is becoming a much more common skill and it is a skill that is losing value. You can find coders in developing countries and contract the work for a fraction of what it used to cost.
But there is going to be a need for a new type of software engineer, or better described as a media engineer. Let me explain.
This next phase of the Internet, Internet 2.0, (rather than Web 2.0) is a media Internet. It is all about publishing data and content to any computer screen -- and with any computer screen -- desk or pocket -- having the ability to publish back.
A media Internet requires media engineers rather than plain software engineers because there has to be an understanding of the value of the content and its presentation and distribution.
I define a media engineer as part journalist/editor and part software engineer. A media engineer would look at the media publishing activities of an organization and perform tasks such as setting up feeds and the the feed infrastructure to enable those activities. Also, because we now live in a two-way media world, there is a need to be aware of the collection of conversations and comments and their integration into an overall media architecture.
A single journalist can write a single story but a media engineer can leverage that work across the Internet, enabling distribution of content across large numbers of communities, combined with real-time commercialization through multiple revenue channels. That's what media engineers can do. But it requires a knowledge of journalism and software engineering skills. It requires a knowledge about quality of content and who is likely to read that content. And it requires a knowledge of the culture of their society and that of individual communities. (Ultimately, it's about hacking the brainstem.)
Currently there aren't that many media engineers around. That's because there aren't that many journalists with software engineering skills. Or software engineers with journalism skills. But we will get them and they will be paid much better than software engineers.
In today's world where every company is a media company there will be plenty of work for media engineers of all types.
- - -Please see: The programmer as journalist: a Q&A with Adrian Holovaty
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Comments (8)
An appreciation of content so journalistic/ editing even publishing skills but what on the software side? Just what are these software skills?
Will it be writing code?
And how long before tools exists to simplify the process so that a company's media relations staff will perform the role of a media engineer?
Posted: July 28, 2009 10:18 PM
Interesting.
Having grown up a SW Engineer and now in management, I've seen similar shifts throughout my 24 year career. I think there will always be a need for pure SW Engineering and a smart CompSci major will major in something else - Business, Journalism, Economic, etc. Having some context to the environment around you will allow you to specialize or add value.
Roy: True about tools but the normal curve in human nature is that there will always be folks on the business/end user side who just don't want to be bothered.
Posted: July 29, 2009 4:48 AM
Roy: Some basic skills to start off with would be HTML, XTML and CSS. Then knowing how to mashup feeds, how to use various APIs to integrate with your sites/services, how to customize RSS feeds, know some Javascript. And yes, there are tools to help you with all these things but it helps if you know something about what these technologies do, and by the way, these are all media technologies.
Posted: July 29, 2009 5:01 PM
I agree more with Mark's comment than with the gist of the article. I work in the technology industry and the complexity of developing and selling a cutting edge product is so great today that there is value of every type of talent, be it software engineering, computer science, or the marketing of it. True that number of people that call themselves software engineers will multiply and work at a fraction of the cost, but companies will continue to pay hefty premiums for that rockstar engineer or scientist.
Posted: July 30, 2009 6:46 PM
BTW, referring to the technologies that you refer are being used by the "Media Engineer" such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, RSS, Ajax, these are primarily web 2.0 content publishing technologies, and it wouldnt take too much to come up with a tool which makes the syntactical and usage knowledge of these technologies and media streams irrelevant, so that any journalist can have his content published with the same visibility as that by someone who knows how the internet media works.
Posted: July 30, 2009 6:54 PM
Vaibhav: Yes, you are right, there are tools that will mask the underlying technology. But I believe online journalists should know something about those underlying publishing technologies, they should know how they work. Because then you can start creating new types of media services and formats. Also, if something breaks, you can go in and see the source HTML or CSS and quickly fix the problem without having to call up IT and wait for them. Understanding how all these technologies interact and what can be done, is important, imho.
Posted: July 31, 2009 10:26 AM
Sounds like the decline of journalism to me not software engineering. You may be right that Software Engineers won't get paid a lot in the future. That will not be because they've suddenly had an epiphany but because they choose to be called something different: not finding the Engineering analogy apt.
Who gets paid the most now and in the future are talented engineers. As far as I can see to date, these engineers have not worked for media companies. But some of their products have revolutionized the media industry. Why would this stop?
A few engineers put together youtube and sold it to google less then two years later: this was not media engineering. No knowledge of journalism was needed at all. The "engineering" however was fundamental. The same goes for Twitter and Facebook. Many people know about these because of it's prominence but this goes on a lot in the software industry still.
I can give you plenty of examples of software making plenty of money without adverts. Even "free" software makes money.
Posted: August 3, 2009 5:35 AM
hi to all... i agree on that there is a huge rush of software engineers, but at this time they are unable to find a job in own software field.. so how can they switch towards the media field.. because they dont have any knowledge about the software that are used in media technology... and if they have knowldge of media technology.. so in what way do they find a job in media field as a FRESHER's.. i told u this thing because i also fresher in software field and want to switch to media field..if anybody has the answer then please email me...
Posted: September 16, 2009 11:28 PM