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