OBJECTIVE
To answer, once and for all, the e-mail I keep getting. Since I mentioned my new job on
my old home page in June, about forty people have written to ask the same question: how
does a bank teller become a web designer? Here's the whole answer, as plainly as I can put
it. It's laid out like a résumé because I've written about thirty of those this year and I
can't seem to stop.
SUMMARY
Nine years behind a teller window. Two years of building home pages at night, at the
kitchen table, after work. One Saturday class. Three months, so far, as a junior web
designer at a small web shop in Lower Downtown Denver. Thirty-two years old, and the first
job I've ever had where I lose track of time.
EXPERIENCE
Teller, then Head Teller
a neighborhood branch of a savings bank, Denver
1990 to June 1999 |
I started at 23, counting out twenties, and I was head teller by 1995, which meant I
trained the new tellers, balanced the vault, and took the customers nobody else wanted to
take. I'm not going to pretend I hated it. I liked the people. But I'd been doing the same
eight hours for a long time, and I knew it.
Here's what I didn't know: almost everything from that window turned out to matter in the
new job. You balance to the penny or you don't go home. You check your own work before
anybody else sees it. You explain the same thing to the fortieth person of the day as
nicely as you did to the first. And you stay calm when somebody changes their mind halfway
through, which in banking is a deposit and in web design is a whole home page.
|
Home page builder, unpaid
my kitchen table, evenings and weekends
Spring 1997 to now |
My first page went up in April 1997. It was about my two cats and my grandmother's green
chile, it had frames, a black background with purple letters, and a MIDI that started by
itself. My friends were very kind about it. I kept at it. I rebuilt my own page three
times, and then started building pages for other people because I'd run out of things to
say about the cats. The details are on my portfolio page.
I learned tables by building them wrong and fixing them. I learned Paint Shop Pro by
making a button for my church's food pantry page, hating it, and making it again eleven
times. Nobody taught me either one. I'm not saying that to brag. I'm saying it because
everybody who writes to me thinks they need a degree first, and I'm proof you don't need
one to start.
|
Junior Web Designer
a five-person web shop, Lower Downtown Denver
June 1999 to now |
|
More about what it's really like below. Short version: I build pages from the senior
designer's layouts, cut up the graphics, test everything in every browser we can get our
hands on, and make changes. Lots of changes.
|
EDUCATION
Introduction to HTML, six Saturday mornings at the community college, spring
1998. Kathleen McLean taught it, and she taught it the right way: Notepad and a browser,
side by side, type a tag, save, click Reload, see what happened. No editors until the last
week, and then only to show us what they do to your code. I still have my notes. I still
look at them.
Plus roughly four hundred evenings at the kitchen table, which is the part that really
counts.
THE INTERVIEW
I saw the job in the Sunday classifieds in May. "Junior web designer, HTML required,
portfolio required." I almost didn't send anything. I had no degree in it, no experience
anybody had paid for, and a portfolio that was mostly my church, my uncle and my cousin.
My cousin Jennifer, whose wedding page is on the portfolio, sat on my couch until I'd
mailed the letter.
Mike, who owns the shop, called me in on a Thursday. He didn't ask much about the bank.
He turned his monitor around so I could see it, typed in the address of my home page, and
went to View, Page Source. Then he said, "Walk me through it." So I did, line by line, what
every table was doing and why, and why the navigation was where it was, and why the
pictures had width and height. I'd written every line of it myself, so I knew.
Then he handed me a sheet of paper with about thirty lines of HTML printed on it, a
three-column table that was broken, and a pencil. "Find what's wrong with this." I found a
row that had four cells in a three-column table and a COLSPAN="2" that should have been 3.
I handed it back. He said there was one more. I couldn't find it. I went home.
I was in the parking garage with the key in the car door when it came to me: there was
no </table> at the bottom. Netscape would have shown a blank page. I went back up
in the elevator and told the receptionist, who went and told Mike. He told me later that
was the moment he decided. Not because I found it, but because I came back.
I gave my two weeks' notice at the bank on June 1st.
WHAT THE JOB IS REALLY LIKE
Clients change their minds. All the time. One client wanted teal, then
burgundy, then "the first one, the green one." It was teal. I keep every version of every
page with the date in the file name, so when they ask for the first one I can hand it to
them in a minute. That habit came straight from the bank.
Everything gets tested. Every page I build gets looked at in Netscape
Navigator and in Internet Explorer, at 640 by 480 and at 800 by 600, and on the shop's one
Macintosh, because Macs show type smaller than PCs do. A lot of the customers' customers are
still on 640 by 480, so nothing important can be off to the right where they'd have to
scroll. Something always looks different somewhere. Finding out what and why is half of my
day, and I like that half best.
There are deadlines. Real ones. When a client is printing the Web address on a
brochure that goes to the printer on a Friday, the site is up by Thursday. I stayed until
nine o'clock twice in August. I didn't mind. At the bank, nothing I did at nine at night
would still be there in the morning.
You keep learning. I'd only used Paint Shop Pro. The shop uses Photoshop, so I
learned it in about three weeks of lunch hours. I'm learning style sheets now, slowly,
because they work differently in every browser, and some JavaScript, mostly for the
rollover buttons clients love.
It pays a little more than head teller did. Not a lot more. I'd have done it for
less, but don't tell Mike.
MY ADVICE
| 1 |
Learn HTML by hand. Notepad and a browser. Know what every tag on your page does,
because if you get an interview, somebody is going to open your page's source and ask you.
Editors are fine later. They're not fine instead. |
| 2 |
Build real pages for real people. A church, a club, a relative's shop, a friend's
wedding. Real people have real opinions and real deadlines and change their minds, and
that's the job. A page about your cats shows you can make a page. A page for your uncle's
shop shows you can make a page for somebody else. |
| 3 |
Keep a portfolio that says exactly what you did. On each project, say which parts
were yours: the HTML, the buttons, the layout, the words. Say who did the rest. The people
hiring can tell when you're claiming somebody else's work, and they respect it when you
don't. Mine is here, and it says what I'd do differently on
each one, too, because I'd want to know that if I were hiring me. |
| 4 |
Test everything, everywhere. Both browsers, both screen sizes, and on somebody
else's computer if you can get to one. The library is good for this. |
| 5 |
Keep your own page plain and working. It's your interview before the interview.
No broken pictures, no dead links, nothing that starts playing by itself. Mine is plain on
purpose, and it comes up in a few seconds on a 28.8. |
And one more, which isn't really advice: if you've been doing the same eight hours for
a long time and you think about this every night, send the letter. My cousin was right.
REFERENCES
Available on request, as they say. Questions about any of this are welcome. I answer on
weekends.
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