Hospitality experience will benefit your career in tech

June 2016 · 4 minute read

Why hospitality experience benefits techies – or any career for that matter.

Hospitality is 100% people focussed. It’s about reading, knowing, anticipating people. And in hospitality, that’s something you either learn to do fast and succeed, or you don’t learn and fall flat. If you can handle a good stint in hospitality, not only dealing with difficult, drunk customers but also handling your narcissistic, self-centered peers (cause let’s face facts, that describes the majority of us), then you can be reassured that stepping out into any other industry you choose will be a breeze.

You see, hospitality is kind of like high school without any rules or teachers to go crying to. There are bullies, bitches, two-faced fakes, a whole lot of incestual behaviour (within the small community) and every personality you meet is big. You learn very quickly to be diplomatic and who to side with. Every job you have is kind of like an episode of survivor, you need alliances to continue, your alliance sometimes needs to over through the opposition and when you get to a management level, you see that when the strong leader leaves, the rest of the alliance will soon follow suit.

People is the hardest thing you’ll even have to deal with your life. If you can deal with people, you can deal with anything. Technology has rules, people don’t.

Technology and software is all about people. Essentially your software is only as good as the person using it so if you can’t understand how people operate, how they’re evolving and how they’re going to interact with your software then you can’t possibly anticipate the next biggest breakthrough or even an application worth writing at all.

Sad to say but facts are facts and working in hospitality, you will always have to deal with at least one person at their very worst. If you don’t anticipate them at the time, your eyes will certainly open in hindsight and you’ll be all the wiser for it. Some of the things you deal with and see and experience working in late night bars in your early twenties, others will never experience in their lifetime or even dream about. I look back and at the time my lifestyle seemed usual but man, knowing what I know now, that lifestyle was something out of a rock ’n roll movie. I often feel that humans could no longer surprise me, I guess the surprise now is how many of you are so naive to the realities of what goes on around you, while you sleep or while you’re having Sunday brunch with your mother in law or while you skip off to work at 7.30am.

I often feel as though I’ve lived an entire lifetime already, in a place that no longer exists. I’m sure the people who did it before me feel the same, as they tell their stories now about what it was like for them, twice as long ago. You can be sure of one thing, though, we all have something in common. We’ve all dealt with that one insufferable person at his worst and we’ve all come out the other end, wiser to human nature.

When I talk about hospitality, I’m not talking about big international hotel chains and fancy resorts with endless funding. I’m talking small time, privately owned, true hospitality operations. And when you get to be in management positions in small businesses like those, the exposure you get to running total operations could never be awarded to you in the form of a degree, diploma or any other certification you can think of. That sort of experience is the only way to really understanding the importance of building relationships, controlling finances and GPs, negotiating with suppliers and large clients, maintaining every single contact and staff member you have. Essentially the backbones of what keeps a business operating.

It’s a priceless experience which I’ve been privileged enough to be exposed to and wouldn’t change it for the world. Although, my passion has veered quite far from the hospitality culture, what I have learned, which so many people out there never will, is going to come with me and I can already see how it’s going to benefit my future.

No challenge is too big after some of the things I’ve had to deal with and I look forward to every new challenge that comes my way.