Technology Is As Technology Is
I have been in the job market for a few months now looking for work as a web developer. A certain percentage of companies have decided not to work with me but I have decided not to work with a larger percentage of them. Why turn down a job in this market? To put it bluntly, because most of you people are showing up for a pay check and that is the only reason you show up. If that statement shocks you then perhaps I am directing this post at you. Yes, you.
Take a seat, you need to see a guy about a thing.
Pop quiz: How do you kill a man?
The obvious aside, one sure fire way is to stick him in a situation, virtually every day, virtually all day, where he is unhappy. Some place that creeps into his head and, after waking up one day, he decides he hates. It will probably sneak up on him. Not long after this realize will feed into itself and turn into less and less productivity for your company. This is the state of the “code factories” in most IT departments. All the benefits and job stability in the world is not worth it one byte. I, personally, will take a job way below my previous pay grade at an unstable start up in order to care for my family before I come home and take all that out on them. Although I have nothing against working for larger companies I do not favor them because they tend to be less interested in the people and making good product.
I have discovered a few warning signs that a place is too far gone to be worth any amount of compensation:
- They have a sprawling HR department. Your interview goes well. Everyone loves you and wants you on their team. Now they need to go through HR. All of a sudden the best person for the job is reduced to numbers. “Sorry but we have decided to move in another direction.” What is a programmer with storage experience worth? What is the minimum a second person is willing to accept just to manage the storage when there is not enough storage-related work to go around? I honestly have little idea but I can not imagine penny wise, pound foolish is the way to go with your critical infrastructure.
- They think they just need a “frontend” or “backend” person. Maybe you learn about a subject, not because you love it, but because that knowledge will improve the thing you do love. Maybe it is a necessary evil and you can not do without the related technology. No matter the reason you do not write “real” web-based applications in a vacuum; There are other parts you need to consider for a solid product. Sure, you are no DBA but I think you may agree that knowing that MySQL almost never runs your query as you entered it has a big impact on your final decision of how to do something. Did you know that PHP arrays (pretty much the only data type they give you) are not arrays? They are hash tables with syntaxical sugar. That tight loop you are porting from your legacy CGI C executables are going to need to be rewritten from scratch if you are going to reasonably support the same user base you did before the port.
- Company is hopping on the latest thing for no good reason. I love new technology and techniques. I love to play with them. I love to build real-world products with them that you can put your hands on and get that “wow” response. One problem with the web, however: Anything new is useless for years until it is further adopted. Either that or it is not new at all and you have been taken in by clever salesmen. Obviously if you need to wait there is nothing you can do until most of your audience abandons Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 (come on, Mom, give it up already). But what about the “new” things? Take MVC, for example. I am a massive fan of MVC, even back when it was called OOP. There is nothing new there. Although I am all for OOP– and thus MVC– having a non-technical manager making a decision based on something they do not understand as well as they think they do is a problem. You hired a programmers to program, let them write the code.
- Culture can only be forced so far. When I talk about “culture” I am really referring to people getting along with each other, complementing each others skill sets, being willing to admit there are things they do not know, and working towards an end goal as a unified front. People who want to be there are there because… well, because they want to be there. People who joined the company softball team because they are afraid it will reflect badly on them were already unhappy. Happy people work harder. Money is one of those things that is very important when you do not have any of it. We all need to eat, stay out of the cold, and not have our hair turn white when we think of the basic things we can not do for our children. Getting a nice salary bump is a fantastic pick-me-up but it is no long-term solution to your employees ability to be more productive for you. I have no links to back me up on this but, in my experience, the turn around time for companies that think money is the answer to everything is much higher than people who truly enjoy their jobs. Hell, people– such as myself– will accept less money for other perks that cost a company virtually nothing in comparison. I have my own personal preferences but compensation time or surprise days off for a job well done can go a really long way for some ones mental state.
I realize some of (all of?) this comes off as a war cry against The Man™ and makes me sound like a rebel. I suppose in some respects I even am. I am not anti-big company nor am I trying to convince anyone to change anything they are already doing that works; A company is there the make a profit and my job, as a programmer, is to do with what I have and churn out code as fast as I reasonably can for said company. There is a balance there that, in a perfect world I would rally against, but in reality I see it as a necessary evil. These are just my thoughts on the subject as I have seen them over and over recently. Most of the old ways of doing things have lasted this long for good reasons, but so has evolution. Keep in touch with your people, communicate often, and remember the long-term far out weights the short-term nine times out of ten.
