Here’s the question: how do you teach that skill? On one hand, there are great resources for learning the fundamentals of programming,  what Steve McConnell called “programming into a language instead of programming in a language”. And that’s wonderful, if you have to transition from PHP to Python or C++ or Javascript. What about stepping back from that? What about the times you have to go from PHP to MySQL or troubleshooting server configurations or implementing a message queue or  building a deployment process? Or take it a step further, from PHP to architecture design,

At one point I was convinced that once an agency was large enough, it would begin to divide the developers into areas of specialty. At this point, however, it seems that the industry (and technology) moves so fast that such an attempt would result in having specialists corralled into specialities of dwindling relevance and either unable or unwilling to rearrange responsibilities. Development knowledge has to be fluid and adaptable, and it’s going to be this way for a long time.

So…. what? Organizational integrity is just as important as the ability to adjust (for fuck’s sake, I refuse to use the word pivot. That’s for basketball players, son). Too much change, data and differing responsibilities can drive employees mad and descend the company into chaos.

My current theory is that keeping integrity  in a highly fluid organization is more about intangibles than being able to position people on a flow chart. Intangibles meaning the things that make your workers feel human – benefits, good people and good environment. Since humans are, by their own nature, highly adaptable, you encourage that adaptability by removing man-made blockage and restraints. Because you’re going to take care of them, right? Especially if they’re going to give you the elasticity that is required to succeed.

Most of the time I spent reading previous to the past two weeks was dedicated to non-fiction, and had been for a handful of years. Previous to that, I had made a conscious decision to read next to nothing. Well, maybe not conscious – I was basically working and going to school for the visual arts, so I didn’t have much time for any diversions than video games, DVDs of Scrubs, and the three day reading of Kitchen Confidential. Non fiction is pretty fascinating, learning how the world works or about programming is sometimes dry, but it is, at the very least, educational.

In the ten to fifteen minutes after putting down a work of fiction, I often find myself recounting and analyzing real-world events in the work’s narrative voice . I don’t know why this happens, and I wonder if it has to do with the qualities of the written word versus other, more established mass media art forms. Neither movies nor music really present this phenomenon onto me, maybe because they are capable of demonstrating events in ways other than telling.

That’s what makes me wary about reading unknown authors. Sometimes their work is disturbing, or I find their particular worldview distasteful or uncomfortable. And my dedication to finishing what I started means I will be sharing that particular view of the world with my own thoughts until the book is completed. Now I think, maybe I should keep myself from reading American Psycho next, lest I decide to forgo web development, start commuting to the financial district and beginning questioning my own perception of reality.

So, I will continue to dip my toe back into the universe of literary fiction until I either get more comfortable, or decide that watching re-runs of Turk, JD and Dr. Cox is a more appropriate use of my free time.

I mean, that’s the reason we get all those “Seize the Day” and “I Hope you Dance” email forwards from our families, right? Because we all know, on some subconscious level, that it takes a little external prodding for each of us to get a tad bit more perspective. If you remember that there was something which Google search managed to supercede, (it’s called an encyclopedia, kids) then you certainly have enough world experience to appreciate how much better technology has made our lives in the past ten years.

When I was a kid, my dad was working 75 hour weeks to provide for us while my Mom held it down at home – this wasn’t a sexist thing, it was what they agreed to as a couple. My Mom would bring us to his pharmacy so we could spend time with him. I bring this up because of I want to raise two points:

1) I didn’t feel gypped as a kid, even though this wasn’t exactly an ideal working situation – we had a great childhood, and I still have a good relationship with my Dad.

2) It’s an example of my parents making the situation work for the family.

Somehow, I entered the working world with this model in my head about what I expected from the workplace, and no place on earth could possibly live up to it. Some places failed by a wide margin. Some places failed by the standards of my ideals, but succeeded in areas and categories that I couldn’t have imagined. I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who give a shit, and sometimes giving a shit leads to some cynicism and bitterness. I accept that as part of the “giving a shit” package. Hopefully we can all make peace with the world failing our ideals on a routine basis and not let it extinguish our passion for making a difference.

Meluski out.

This is something that people struggle with all the time.  I have to remind myself: feeling overwhelmed is temporary.

As seasoned programmers, we are blessed with tools that help us manage large tasks. Experience tells us to take a large problem and break it down into smaller, doable pieces. It also tells us what to use, because we’ve seen someone else do it, or had a conversation with a peer or boss that knows a thing or two about project management.

As young programmers, we are often at the behest of the whims of those above us in the organizational hierarchy.

In the agency world, you’re often handed large tasks, and sometimes you’re not given a rudder. Sometimes you’re surrounded by account people, designers, company owners, even programmers that are possibly on your level or slightly higher, but you’re not given the additional blessing of someone that knows how to manage a project from a technical level. Maybe the people who handed you the project don’t even care about managing it properly. And when I say care, I don’t mean caring enough to pay the idea of technical project management some lip service, then turn their concerns to something else.  Maybe their philosophy is : “Hey you’re the tech person. Just get it done. Do the thing with the keyboards and characters and the servers”.

My heart goes out to young programmers everywhere, especially those that are currently living in that situation. I was in there before. I worked at a small agency for a number of years that focused primarily on print design, but kinda recognized that the whole internet was kinda blowing up into a big deal. So, by necessity, they had people on staff to make web sites. When I left that company, they were mired in developing a website for a company that was already about two months behind delivery. About six months later, they were still working on it, and one of the people inside the company estimated it would be another year before final delivery. The ambitions of the site were beyond the scope of the managerial competence.

Here’s what I can offer to you, if that sounds like it could happen to you: A spreadsheet. Really?

Yes. I’m lucky to work somewhere that embraces a more involved development tracking process, but for smaller projects, or organizations with no semblance of tech process? Take a spreadsheet, break the tasks down into small, manageable parts, give them conditional formatting based upon Status (Ready, Open, Done) and estimates. Sometimes I’ll make two time-related columns, Estimated vs Actual so I review the wild inaccuracies of my initial estimates.

But that’s really it. And then mow through the list. Watch out for entropy as well, you’d probably do well to review it at the start of each week to add / remove items and cleanup. If the project exceeds more than a few weeks in timeline, you actually need to push for better system than this, and that means you also need the support of the other people in the organization to get that system implemented and upheld. But that’s another post entirely.

Second, and I think that we’re almost at a point where this is universally acknowledged – theft is fundamentally different than file sharing. The inability to recognize this by traditional media providers has led to such ham-handed approaches as suing prospective customers for file sharing and, well, SOPA. Traditional theft means there is one object, and that object can only remain in one person’s possession. If another person takes that object, it leaves the other person without it. Not true of file sharing. The people that get this have been able to successfully harness the digital era, leaving people who are traditionally in charge of music, movies and games scrambling for some way to get back control.

Third, and most importantly, I borrow from Gabe Newell, founder of Valve: “Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.” EXACTLY. Traditional media companies suck at servicing the needs of the consumer. For a long time, they didn’t care, and didn’t have to care. They controlled a very linear distribution method, and anyone down the pike that didn’t like it could fuck off without getting a taste. Now channels of distribution and communication have multiplied. Sure, they’re uncomfortable with losing that control, but why are they seeking to legislate against the people that make their living? Why do they hate us? We love them. We give them tons of our money, all the time. This relationship is turning poisonous. Put some money into customer service. Put some money into bypassing theaters in a way that consumers will ENJOY. Do something creative, because coming after our quality of life is not doing anything constructive. Please stop legislating / suing us, and put that money into making awesome shit that makes us loyal customers. That’s right – we, as humans, are generally still loyal to products that we feel make our lives better. Imagine that, we’re not all assholes.

Of course piracy could just be a red herring in all of this – some people just have a compulsion to dictate the flow of other people’s lives.

A lot of major tech players (Google, Facebook, even Microsoft -
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57330078-281/surprise-microsoft-quietly-opposes-sopa-copyright-bill/)
are opposed to this bill. The amazing technologies that have
integrated into our lives over the past decade (iPhones, streaming
movies, digital albums) has a lot to do with the openness of the
Internet, the exchange of information that it engenders, and the
resulting technological innovation and competition.

This bill is a bad idea, and an especially bad idea given the current
economic climate. My representative in the House is already opposing
the bill, and I’m grateful. If yours is not, use one of the many
resources (i.e. http://engineadvocacy.org/voice/) to call your
representative and let them know you want to enable us all to have
more great stuff from the tech sector in the coming years. Oh yeah -
and more jobs.

Thanks, soapbox over

————-

*This was a letter I sent to my immediate family, I thought it was worthy of publishing online.

As you shake your head in disgust, stop yourself for a second to hear me out – you know that you’re either going back to look at pictures of cats or pornography if you close the tab. So that can wait. The internet will always have cats and pornography. They are the death and taxes of the telecommunications age.

Different musical aesthetics tend to occur in cycles – things that are very light, poppy and corporate are followed by the raw, energetic and angry, and then back again. I’m thinking of how punk followed disco, how grunge followed glam rock. So we’ve had our American Idols, Katy Perrys, Justin Biebers and the like just DOMINATING the news and airwaves. Sure the Arcade Fire won a Grammy but… you know. COME ON. Where is the takeover?  Where is the moment that music critics will look back to and say “That… there. That’s where it all changed.” The moment where Simon Cowell says ‘oh shit’ and realizes that his empire has seen its peak? (Not that it matters to him, the man has made him self a fortune doing what he does. Also, I just don’t think he would ever say ‘oh shit’ at anything.)

It hasn’t happened yet. But the ground forces are amassing. The first cries of “rock and roll are dead” have been heard in the media. Maybe rock and roll is on the decline, but the roots from which rock sprang are far from dead. Do the blues ever die? DO THEY? Or does the blues take on a new get up every ten to twenty years, steaming through the glass wall of musical bullshit that we’ve allowed to build around us to deliver some honesty, sincerity and some fucking feeling? The desire to hear someone play with their heart, as Bill Hicks would attest, will never die, never wane. Not as long as someone out there is dealing with the difficulties that come a long with being a human being.

It’s happening though. People are picking up guitars, learning to sing, because what they hear on the radio no longer represents what they feel in their hearts. And if someone else is incapable of saying what they feel, of making them feel like they are not alone in the everyday struggle, then they will take it upon themselves to make that emotion public. Don’t worry Gaga. We’ll always have Pokerface.

Here’s my pitch: There is no right or wrong in this entire situation, but there’s definitely something that can be taken away regardless of your political perspective. Look, a group of people are mad, and they’re exercising their right to assembly. If anything, people who oppose them should tip their hats in respect, not because they agree with the point being made, simply because they are exercising a right that you may see fit to use in the future. Because we afford justice to others, we have justice for ourselves. Get it?

As a culture, we should be compelled to understand that we should be raising the level of political discourse. What does that mean? It is entirely possible to listen to another person’s opinion, someone you don’t agree with, and walk away with a new insight or perspective. Also, if you’re getting your information from TV, you should open up the internet and search for opposing viewpoints. Because you can. You absolutely fucking can. It’s amazing. For the first time in history, we have access to so many sources of information that we can actually weight different sides of an issue FOR OURSELVES. IT IS REALLY FUCKING AMAZING. If you actually do it.

Here’s my parting thought: Why does this strike such a nerve with people who are anti-OWS? If these people really are unemployed, scumbag “woe-is-me” types, how much of a threat can they be? Wouldn’t they just fade away if you let them have their time to speak, and be heard? I mean, why do they have to have an ‘agenda’? If anything, over the past decade we’ve seen the emergence of more malleable, hierarchy-less systems and organizations (think of the internet, for God’s sake) that work due to the factors behind their emergence. Maybe it’s the threat to the more conventional concept of organizational structure that some people find so scary.

But maybe not.