(Contribution from Catherine Elder) Your boss, usually in passing, tells you “by the way, I thought you could be our
Still you take the added role to heart. You look up information on coding and designing web pages on the Internet. You take courses in html, FrontPage and/or Dreamweaver, maybe even Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Flash. You discover JavaScript and active server pages, and the list goes on. Soon you’re inundated. Everyone walks around saying “Just put it on the web” not having an inkling of the processes or the work involved. Processes that you had to develop because everything was a priority and they wanted it to be accessible from everywhere. But they say please, maybe throw you a compliment or two, or even pull rank. They also ask you to do a “quick spell check, maybe edit it if it doesn’t sound right and hey, can you add a cool graphic?” Then they add the backhanded compliment “it shouldn’t take you long.”
You mention to your boss that your job has really changed; all this web stuff should be added to your job description and hopefully to your compensation, as it has become a major part of your job. Your boss, or someone in HR, tells you that you’ll have to write your own job description – after all, you’re the only one that knows what you do. So you rewrite your job description to include editor, designer, project manager, tactician, negotiator, communications, technical advisor and other relevant descriptors. Your boss looks at you in surprise after reading it – you do all this? You raise your eyebrows and wonder if it’s still too late to ask for a whip.
This story isn’t just mine; I’ve heard it repeated several times by new and not so new webmasters. It’s not surprising that with the advent of websites in the 90’s the role of managing and designing them should grow organically rather than as a structured career. I recently heard someone say that with a content management system (