Archive for the ‘General’ Category

So on July 23rd, 2005 at 12:42am (my typical inspiration time), I posted my thoughts on Following and Forging. It is now almost two and a half years later and if you have talked to me at any length during that period or stumbled upon railstips.org, you’ll know which path I chose. I’ll give you a hint if you don’t want to read the old article, I chose to follow. I wouldn’t say that I’m a follower, but the little voice in side me, that pushes me to be more efficient, reminded me that rarely are you more efficient doing everything by yourself.

In the last paragraph of that post I said, “I mainly write this post for myself. I think it will be interesting to look back on in a year when I know what path I have chosen.” Funny thing is, it was interesting to look back on. Not sure what made me cruise into my archives for that post but it came to mind tonight, so I thought I would reflect on it for a sec.

I use to hate decision-making. I remember when I was younger, I would wait until the last possible second to make a decision, and even then, I would often look to my mom for help. Over the past few years I’ve had to make so many that I’ve learned decisions are temporary. Worst case scenario, you make the wrong one and if you are lucky, you figure it out and course correct. Anyway…just thought the old post was kind of funny.

So I had this really long post written to support my title. The only problem was that I feared my overall point was lost in dripping sarcasm and multiple paragraphs, so I erased it and I’m going to now summarize in hopes that it sinks in with you, the reader.

Do not measure work experience in 2008 - 1996 = 12 years of experience, which is better than 2008 - 2004 = 4 years of experience. Experience is a good term. No one should be judged on age. They should be judged on what they have been through and accomplished. Experience encompasses those things and age does not. Unfortunately, the human resource definition of experience is “number of years”. Heck, they even use phrases like “years of experience,” which instantly materializes experience to only a number of years including no other factors.

True experience is really fricken hard to measure, especially in an industry as young as the web. Others try to measure it with certifications and tests. I can’t say I agree as those methods approve of those who can remember black and white answers. I don’t think I can say this next line without sounding like I think I am a philosopher but here it goes. True experience is found in grey areas. If experience was black and white, wrong or right, then one could safely assume that more years equals more time to memorize those absolutes and thus, ultimately, equals more true experience.

So how do you measure the grey areas of someone’s experience? I don’t have any correct answer. I have a few ideas which I’ll mention but who knows if they are good. One thought, is to measure each year of experience separately. A year of experience as a junior developer is nothing compared to that of a senior developer. I know first hand as I’ve been both. You gain a lot more experience as a leader than a follower. As someone who sets the standards rather than someone who follows them. As someone who is burdened with greater accountability when things go wrong than someone with less. What I’m trying to say is more responsibility equals more experience.

In addition to the experience that you gain at work everyday, you can grow immensely in your free time at home. When judging someone’s experience, you have to include extracurricular activities. Experience is not solely gained at work. If I only gained experience at work, I would be a quarter of the developer that I am today. Some of the biggest breakthroughs I have had in learning have come sitting on the couch next to my wife (thanks for listening to the boring breakthroughs Steph). I have dedicated countless free hours, with which I could do anything, to furthering my knowledge in my field of choice. When determining someone’s experience, you have to somehow figure in the years gained outside of work.

What do those two suggestions above have in common? Well, if you want to find someone with more experience or you want to compare two or more people’s experience, you have to do some work. Experience cannot be accurately determined from a two hour interview. To find someone with experience, you will have to make some effort.

Believe me that was shorter than the monster I had written and deleted. What are your thoughts? Am I crazy? Do you have other ideas of how experience can be rated?

Updates

A few others have followed my lead (ha, yeah right) and posted on the topic.

• Years of Irrelevance by DHH
• Cheaper Talent Hypothesis by Martin Fowler

Everyone that is not a geek who sees me brandish my iPhone while checking text messages and such, is first mystified by the device and then they instantly hop on the “it’s just too expensive for a PHONE” train. I try to explain on the spot why it is worth it but that usually ends in failure as most on the spot thinking does.

Last weekend I was on the other side of the country in a town/area I had never been. I took no map, printed nothing from Google and didn’t plan anything. I had to fly there and back with connections in between but I didn’t print my e-receipt. I didn’t scribe into my moleskin the flight numbers or departure and arrival times. “No way,” you say. “That’s impossible.” I’ve got news for you Walter Cronkite, it’s not.

I had my flight plans emailed to me along with all the numbers I needed so when I approached the counter to checkin, I just turned on my iPhone, opened my email and punched in the number. The tickets spewed from the machine and I was off to security.

I arrived in Orange County, where a rental car was waiting for me. “Ha,” you say. “But you didn’t have directions so you got lost on the way to your hotel, right?” Well, of course I got lost. But not for long, as I just opened up Google Maps on my iPhone and typed in the address of my hotel. “Which you wrote down in your moleskin, I knew it!” Nope, I just got it from my email again. Are you catching my drift tokyo style yet?

I arrived at the hotel, checked in, once again using my email on my iPhone for the confirmation number and headed up to my room. As you can imagine, at this point I was itching to call my wife. I wanted her to know I was safe for the night and to hear her voice before I settled in to bed. I used (yes, you are correct) my iPhone and with one tap (ok, it was two), I was waiting for her to pick up on the other end. Oh, and my phone was sitting over on my desk as I was using my new Jawbone bluetooth headset which, obviously, just works.

Now you might think “that is a lot of iPhone usage for one day”. No way he is going to spring anything else on me, the reader of this magnificent article. I mean, he is just heading to bed now, right? Wrong. I need to wake up in the morning, don’t I? I softly tapped into the clock area, set an alarm for 9AM and picked Dropkick Murphy’s “Heading Up To Boston” as the ringer to wake me from my slumber. Then, I went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up to Dropkick and got ready. Yes, I even brushed my teeth with my iPhone. The one downside is that it only has mint toothpaste. Ok, that was a lie but I did unplug it from the charger, jump back under the covers, check my email and read the tweets that I missed during my night of beauty sleep.

I used the iPhone’s text messaging to update twitter and let the world know that I was alive and ready for the day. I punched in the address I needed to be at, again using Google Maps on my iPhone and the email, and headed out. Vroooom, vrooom. That was my car starting. I promise I won’t do that again.

I think by now you get the point but I really like to hammer it home. “What about life in an airport with an iPhone?” Well, I can’t answer that. Watch “The Terminal” or something. I can tell you that waiting for connecting flights, walking from terminal to terminal and sitting on the runway is far less stressful with iPhone in tow. Both to and from my destination, everyone in the airport seemed frantic or furious. I believe it’s because they didn’t have Dwight Yoakam’s “Honkey Tonk Man” ringing in their ears.

This is where the story gets interesting. It does, I promise. I got stuck in Chi-town because it was too foggy in South Bend to land. I was left with three options: rent a car and drive home, attempt to sleep in the airport or get a hotel for the night. I quickly grabbed a sheet from one of the United workers and within a few minutes I had called every rental car company at O’Hare. Unfortunately, they were all out of cars (or they didn’t like me) so I decided to take the flight home the next day. I called Steph and she talked me into staying in a hotel, so I called the number given to me and a few minutes later I was in the hotel.

The next morning, I received a text message from my buddy Oak, who saw my tweet the night prior that I was stuck in Chicago, saying that my buddy Matt was also in Chicago. I text Matt and a phone call later, he was on his way to pick me up and take me back home. But why, if I had a flight lined up would I take a car ride home? Because I checked the weather and knew that no flight was headed into South Bend for quite some time as it was still extremely foggy. Oh, and of course I did that from my iPhone.

So there. That is my iPhone story. Names were changed to protect the innocent. Oh, guess not. Well, at any rate, you can see how handy my PHONE was last weekend. So next time you see some egotistical web developer rockin’ out on his iPhone, don’t tell him it’s too expensive. Tell him that he is wise for purchasing such a helpful life device.

P.S. This is also a post about how much I love Twitter.

P.P.S. This is probably the longest article with no pictures that I have ever written.

I hate grocery shopping but I love Starbucks and my computer so while Steph goes shopping at Meijer, I sit in the cafe and enjoy a non-fat latte while hacking away. One point of interest is that the Starbucks has no wifi. What this has made me aware of is how much I use the internet while coding. What is the name of that function? What was that bookmark on Ma.gnolia? What was that feed I just read on Google Reader? I am constantly installing gems, searching for code snippets and looking up documentation while I code.

Whenever I run into a small problem, I Google it and I take the internet for granted. I continue in this pattern until I find myself without a beloved internet connection. It is then that I realize I don’t really know that much. I mean, what do I really know? I guess the answer to that question would be, Google.

Not a problem has arose that I have been unable to find a solution for, using the right keywords on Google. Noticing this tonight, as I sipped on my latte, it got me thinking. How ineffecient would I be if I had to code without the internet? Granted, I am a web developer, so at some point I would need the internet to deploy my work, but what would happen if each time I buried my nose in TextMate, I disconnected from the net.

Would I struggle for weeks until desperation forced me to turn it back on? Would I start to challenge my own brain for solutions instead of quickly finding and implementing a solution someone has blogged about? Would I begin to think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions to problems? Or, would I repeat everyone else’s mistakes when a simple search could have enlightened me? I don’t know. Got me thinking though.

Today I was flying back from Charlotte, NC to South Bend, IN. I had one stop at Cincinnati, OH but due to a late start in Charlotte, I missed my connecting flight home. I had a feeling it was going to be close so I trucked it from Concourse C to A, to no avail. When I arrived at the desk, there was a lady berating the gentleman at the counter. She walked away so I approached. I asked him what I should do and he pointed me in the direction of the crazy lady and some Delta direct phones.

When I arrived at the phones, the crazy lady was yelling desperately at the person on the other side of the line explaining her woeful story of missing a connecting flight and how it wasn’t her fault. I calmly picked up the phone, told the person what happened in one sentence and didn’t even mention that it was Delta’s fault. I just said I’d like to make it home tonight.

The person helping me could hear the other lady and commented that someone didn’t sound to happy near me. I laughed and told her nope and that is was hard to hear so if she could speak up that would be helpful. She said, “Oh, there is only one seat left…got it for you.” She told me to head over to the desk where my ticket would be printing and to have a nice flight. I thanked her and that was that.

The lady didn’t show up at the gate for quite a while and I thought justice had been served. Unfortunately, she did get a seat on the flight, probably with some even nastier vinegar but my experience was stress free and easy.

I just want to remind people not only is honey easier on the service people in this world who are just doing their jobs but it is also less stressful for you.