How and Why Tech makes us Think Big

in 1929

on a december evening a sketch of a

building was drawn

the sketch was stunning but more

importantly

it was big so big that the man drawing

it was so anxious

because he will be the one presenting it

the next day

that sketch was to become the empire

state building

and that would challenge the development

of those time

it was not only the tallest building but

it

pushed to the limits all the companies

working with them just think

it had the longest telephone line it had

the fastest

elevators it had the most workers per

day

it had the fastest floor rate it was

built in one and a half years

and all of this happened because one man

drew that sketch

and another one motivated him to do it

i was so inspired by the story that upon

visiting new york

i actually went up to the 86th floor to

see the view i have

a deep fear of heights you have to

understand that and i even took a selfie

on the top of the empire state and if

you look closely you will see horror in

my eyes yes

that man we can surely say was a big

thinker

and that inspired me to actually go

deeper i haven’t been that way

back like seven eight years i had a more

modest vision

also back then i thought it was the best

i used to do sales for car insurance

that’s the lowest form of sales you

could ever do unless you were selling

tickets to classical concerts in armenia

which i also did and after that i got an

upgrade i went to work for the

government

and i used to attract investments to

armenia

so both of this made me really good at

presentations and i started wondering

where i could put my skill to actually

make more money

today i help companies with those

presentations

raise money those also help them in

different

ways they help them hire they help them

sell they help the market

and one way they attract resources to

accomplish their ideas

and those ideas are crazy and part of

them are

even crazier and tech has this

big really fast dynamics you can imagine

i’ve seen a guy who was working

from his bedroom uh grow to someone who

couldn’t decide where to put his logo on

this

new building that they have just bought

and that’s a pleasant problem to have

i mean let’s agree uh and all of that

happened uh during

five years i’ve seen this growth in

front of my ass for five years

the street on the building where i live

got renovated during the same five years

and i saw i realized that i started to

think differently

in this environment then came kovit

and up everything we know about

life and work

but uh my vision stayed so my mind had

already changed itself

and uh i was able to travel even though

being geographically paralyzed my mind

was kind of traveling

i’m not talking about psychedelics

so let me try to explain this in a

different way

imagine you get a coupon

for a lamborghini for three days

you drive that lamborghini to the

fullest you enjoy the alcantara

seats the fancy dashboard and then you

return

to your everyday toyota which might feel

slightly underwhelming

but the thing is you know that somewhere

there

a better thing to drive exists it may

not be necessarily yours

yet but it’s there and you can get it

that is the way i envision the word

vision

right seeing something that you can get

and then if you

develop a little more you may envision

things that don’t even exist

it’s like your brain lost its virginity

you know and your mind opens up

feeling this influence that the

technology industry had on me

i had the first thought okay i have to

get more and more friends

into this sphere because i felt a good

thing

now i want my close friends and then the

other people to actually feel this

i started talking to people i started

telling them this is good but it was

like brick wall

i i can’t talk to people they’re afraid

because they don’t understand

and i’m like okay i went a little deeper

i tried to understand what was it that i

attained during this time

that these people do not have so that i

can teach this

so not long after i realized that there

is a

two ways of thinking about this topic

not surprisingly

one is called the tech approach one is

the non-tech approach

so those are two different world views

i happen to be in the middle which makes

it fun to watch

but if you’re trying to kind of convert

people from one to the other you

have to do a lot of talking so the first

thing about tech

that you have to remember is technology

exists to solve

problems so since day one mankind has

created different technologies to solve

different problems it

from starting from simple household

problems to

complex business needs tech is about

solving problems

it’s a business just like other

businesses

with some slight difference that the

roles are different

and those roles are being accomplished

by

professionals those professionals are

known to you

and you most of you call them nerds

but from the inside i can surely say

that there are different types of nerds

so these are the people you would meet

in your future

and if you start working into text let

me tell you a little bit about

what these people are right so software

developers this is the most

commonly misinterpreted job right these

are not just

coders these are the people uh

who solve real business needs and they

have different levels of responsibility

and here you go with this junior senior

stuff

and whenever you hear a programmer is

making a lot of money that’s the seniors

okay and how do you become a senior you

work your ass off as a junior

uh you solve mathematical problems day

after day

until someday your paycheck gets bigger

and then another time

guys come and solve the other problems

and then you go to the serious problems

so there are the security guys in tech

security guys are the people you don’t

wanna mess with first of all they have

your browsing history

and these are the guys who examine and

analyze everything

every single thing these are the people

who actually read license agreements

you know this long text after which you

put the take and then you click the

accept button which is way more

appealing than

you know reading that long text

if your house has one door your tech

infrastructure has

hundreds of them and this the security

guys have all the keys

and uh imagine

reading this whole license agreement

sounds scary right

so imagine writing one so

the license agreement writers are the

tech lawyers

these people again they remember

everything i’ve seen a lawyer actually

recall a license agreement

so these two people are incompatible so

if you want to have fun just put a

security guy and a lawyer in one room

to give them some food but take out all

the knives just in case

so if the security guys are the good

guys then the bad guys are the hackers

hackers are one of the most interesting

types of people you can meet on this

globe

they’re romantic they’re

passionate they’re childish but they’re

dangerous

you know this typical criminal romance

mixed with nerdy jokes

and the thing about this guys is that

i’ve noticed all of them like expensive

things

not because uh they have tons of

money which they do by the way

no because it’s fun and they do a lot of

stuff for fun

but you don’t worry about the hackers

unless your email password is like one

two three four

you can change it anytime i mean that’s

but do it as fast as you can okay

yeah so there’s a thing in tech called

the ux design

you know it’s when people make sure that

your experience

with the product is actually good enough

right so when you have

something that is not very you know

comfortable to use their tech

the ux designer at some point up

and these are the people who are

actually interested

uh in people the tech people who are

actually interested in people because

they have to

examine people they have to analyze

people to see what is comfortable for

them

and uh like if earth had a ux designer

she would get fired for creating winter

you know

yes yes tech marketers are

are a totally different race so the the

main difference and the only difference

i think

between a tech marketer and a regular

remarketer would be

that tech marketers make two times more

money and another distinctive feature is

you cannot tell half of what these

people saying

because what they say can you know

like lower the cac extend the ltv

and boost the roi you know you know what

i mean right

and finally last but not least talking

about the tech guys you cannot ignore

the startup people

you know the proud and the privileged

the game changers and the disruption

drivers

yet ninety percent of startups fail most

of the time

is a team of amateurs the founder a

typical startup founder has to

build a product talk to customers uh

rent an

office uh motivate the team

post about all of this on facebook to

engage their audience honestly

doing the startup is a freaking misery

this will be confirmed by any startup

founder

and yet they do the startups you know

why because they have the vision

there is this famous apple commercial

that said

the ones that are crazy enough to think

that they can change the world

eventually end up changing it

because they have a vision and a

business plan

there is a thing uh called professional

deformation

you know when people due to their

professional skills and capacity see the

world

in in their own perspective and not from

a broad human perspective right

so the french called this deformation

which sounds really sexy and then the

americans came up with a more friendly

name

which is called nerd view nerd view

so this nerd view is applicable actually

to a whole industry so coming from this

this helped me understand it

because tech people by default have a

nerd view

and non-tech people have a nerd view

towards the nerd view

it may be complex to you know understand

so one day well one month to be precise

i got

nine different job offers to be head of

marketing at nine different tech

companies

the funny thing is i’m not a marketer

so i i try to go deep in to see why this

happened and it turns out

that if i talk a lot i act like

i could be a marketer the nerdview

shows marketer so you can send offers to

this guy

i sincerely hope someday i will get that

offer that i won’t be able to refuse

and the thing is the offer will be the

offers will be coming

not because i’m a genius

but because there is a drastic deficit

of people

in tech the whole world right now has a

deficit

of around several several million people

that’s huge armenia only had 6 000

people

six thousand open vacancies for

technology professions

in 2020 that’s 60 times this audience

it will take a mid-sized village to

actually accommodate all these people

it would take two thousand taxis to

drive them around as if we don’t have

enough taxes in yerevan

but seriously if these vacancies were

filled

we would be living in a much better

country now higher paying jobs would

mean

higher salaries would be more money in

cafes shops more money for the economy

high salaries would bring salaries

higher in other industries there would

be more schools better schools more

universities

more creative diverse working culture

would

bring to diverse culture in society

diversity

would bring to creativity and create

creativity would boost the art

we could be living the bright future now

empire state building wasn’t built until

someone had the vision

right clubhouse didn’t raise a billion

until someone had a vision a disabled

man didn’t become

a web developer until he had the vision

all it takes

is challenging the limits and taking the

first step

because in the worst case you’ll have a

great story to tell

thank you