Today we’re excited to launch a beta version of a new PSL project, called Tech Jobs Demystified. Our goal of the project is to enable people who are outside the tech industry to become familiar with jobs inside the tech industry. We fundamentally believe that there are immensely more people who could work in tech if not for the industry jargon found first and foremost on job descriptions.

As a first step in this project, we have created a set of plain-language descriptions of the most common technology jobs, along with highlighting traits that tend to thrive in those roles, case studies of individuals who made the switch, and links to search for jobs of that type in the Seattle tech ecosystem.

We’re launching with three job profiles: Customer Support, Operations, and Sales. While a job in these functions can vary immensely from company to company, they have important common elements that are hard to distill from just looking at job postings.

Why are we doing this?

Over the last year, we have watched a tale of two economies in Seattle. On the one hand, COVID-19 has ravaged service sector jobs; on the other hand, tech industry hiring in Seattle has continued to grow.

It would seem that the answer is as simple as “change jobs.” It’s not that simple.

In speaking with employees and employers around Seattle, we heard a few things:

1) Interested, capable people are deterred by opaque job descriptions of technology jobs.

2) It is hard to find good information on the day-to-day of these roles.

3) Many employers do not believe that industry experience is a requirement for a job in tech, but many job seekers do.

At PSL we have a front row seat in the Seattle tech community, employing over 500 people at companies we have started or invested in. We regularly see startups hiring restaurant workers into operations roles, retail workers into customer experience roles, and people from every industry under the sun to do technology sales. Still, it isn’t happening enough, and we believe that one of the root causes is a lack of clear, approachable information.

Who is our customer?

Our customer is not the serial entrepreneur, the investor, or the big company veteran. Our customer is the individual interested in a career in tech, who doesn’t know how to start the search. If this isn't you, but you know someone who is, we'd love for you to pass it along.

Testing, testing, testing

As we always do here at PSL, we are putting out an MVP as a test. We’ve started with just three job roles. If this information is proving to be valuable and serving a need, we’re excited to build out the product further. We’ll be keeping an eye on market demand (traffic, engagement, distribution, etc.). If you want to provide feedback, drop us a line at demystify@psl.com. If you like this, please share it from your local hilltop so we can reach more people.

 We are committed to using our perspective in the Seattle startup community to smooth and improve the economic transition happening in our community.