C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

I have now worked for one month at the best job I have ever had. I have never seen a software development environment so supportive of learning, and so well-disciplined in following responsible practices.

Almost all day, every day, we sit with a colleague and code as a team.

We write a test for a piece of functionality before we write the code to implement it.

We use a continuous integration server which turns a screen very visibly red and alerts our chat channels whenever someone commits code that breaks the build. We call a stop to all work until it's fixed, so the project is always functional.

We review new code with a pull request, then merge it directly into master-- and we delete every branch within two or three days of creating it.

We take seriously the feedback generated at retrospective meetings, with specific action items and deadlines which we all follow up on.

Instead of just adding more features, we keep a list of tasks to restructure the whole codebase, to make it easier and faster to add features-- and we are allocated official time to work on that.

And best of all, we only work forty hours a week, which prevents the errors that would result from exhaustion.

Does all this put us behind schedule? No. All of it makes our process faster in the long run.

Perhaps I should learn something that makes developers cringe, such as Visual Basic or .NET. This will take multiple steps of reasoning to explain, so bear with me.

I have been interviewing for various startups. That has been a very educational experience about the "expectation fit" between types of companies and types of employees. When discussing my recent job interviews with a friend who worked for one of the startups, he made a comment that he and his colleagues all worked long hours for very high salaries, and given my life goals, I should try to work someplace large and corporate. I then had the following hypothesis.

1. I have focused on programming languages, version control systems, and other technologies with one common denominator: developers like using them. Also, I have been favoring seeking out workplaces with processes and management styles that support job satisfaction among developers. What if this disadvantages my specific life goals?


2. According to this hypothesis, this affects who my colleagues are.
   
   A. They compete to get into companies that allow them to use these satisfying technologies.
   
   B. The project they work on for employment is so interesting to them that they consider it to be the main thing they are doing with their lives right now. As a result, they work long hours, and have very little free time after studying and practicing.
   
   C. Being a software developer is a major part of their identity, not just a way to pay the bills.
   
   D. They hold strong leadership opinions, rather than saying "I'm sure however you want to do it will be fine". They often seek out companies with fewer developers, each of whom is crucial.
   
   E. They are playing a game in which the victory condition is measured in dollars. The income necessary to sustain my frugal lifestyle is roughly 2/3 of the lowest end that motivates them -- or 1/2 if I don't mind living hand-to-mouth with a lot of risk.


3. Reportedly, in some huge companies maintaining ugly legacy codebases in Visual Basic or .NET, software developers are only working when they are at work. They provide financial value for forty hours a week. Then they go home at the end of the day, forget about their jobs completely, and pursue their own projects.

My challenge will be to find a source of about $30,000 to $40,000 per year, which does not completely take over my ability to work on my own projects after hours. I have been given to understand that such jobs are scarce in the post-middle-class economy. My education and experience now disqualifies me from low-skill minimum-wage jobs, since employers would be concerned that I would quit to go back into software development. Income inequality is a game of thrones.

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." -Cersei Lannister

The most appealing idea (although possibly not feasible) is to select one of my projects, focus 100% of my time on it, and generate an income through Patreon, rather than just fit my ambitions around a day job. That's a subject for another essay.

I spent fifteen years of my adult life performing unskilled labor for my day job, and the past two years experimenting with performing skilled labor for my day job. Each of us have a "personal business model", whether intentionally or accidentally. I'll continue to refine my personal business model as an ongoing experiment.

Well, it happened again. Someone sent me a job ad working as a graphic designer for a company that I really like, and I had a full-blown attack of something. A panic attack? A freak-out? I don't know what to call it. I would really like to get to the bottom of this weird phenomenon that happens to me when I read job ads.

I have a co-worker who keeps asking me why on earth, with all my talents, I'm doing unskilled labor for barely more than minimum wage. This is why.

The irony is that the job ad is for a website about intimate relationships. You know "That Guy" on dating sites? The one who messages every woman asking for sex right off the bat? That's what most job ads are like. This invites a comparison I have often made, between professions and intimate relationships, which I would like to go into in more detail.

A job ad feels exactly like being asked to have sex for money. I am not trying to be insulting and hyperbolic. I am quite serious about this, and have been for years, not just the heat of the moment. Professional job ads ask me to start a very serious capital-R Relationship with total strangers, instantaneously accelerating from a dead stop to full speed. This job ad even uses the word "passion". I am expected to feel passion in exchange for money. They want you to join their "family" (their word). I'm supposed to care deeply about crafting the identity of complete strangers!

It's like that scene in "Joe Vs. The Volcano" in which the limo driver pulls the car over, and says, "You say to me you want to go shopping. You want to buy clothes, but you don't know what kind. You leave that hanging in the air, like I'm going to fill in the blanks. Now that to me is like asking me who you are, and I don't know who you are. I don't want to know. It's taken me all my life to find out who I am and I am tired, now, you hear what I'm saying?"

This is why I don't date. Everybody hates dating, and for good reason. Dates are universally creepy and desperate, because it's an interview with a stranger, for the position of Most Important Person In Your Life. I find that insane. Instead of dating, I make friends, and after I've gotten to know someone, I see if she would like to gradually increase the involvement. That's why my love life is so successful. I don't think that translates to the workplace. In the job world, I'm not sure how I would develop a passionate vision for how someone else's website should look, then go and ask for a job.

Given how socially proficient I am, many of you express surprise when you discover areas in which I am out of place. But those areas exist.

Tonight I went to a networking event for IT recruiters and job seekers. I emailed the event organizers months ago with my resume, and told them I'd be there. So, even though I got a job yesterday, I went because I RSVP'ed that I would.

One of the organizers saw me writing "web design/dev" on my name tag. He immediately introduced me to a recruiter. She is with a venture capital firm, which is funding a startup. The startup has a variety of work at different levels, possibly including the entry-level work I was looking for (at least, until I got a job in an unrelated field). We exchanged contact info.

I bought a soft drink, looked around, and tried to figure out what to do. The setting was in a bar, resulting in a weird hybrid of work and fraternization that left me without a clear set of rules. I approached the nearest person. She was a recruiter looking for a different branch of IT, but pointed to someone else who was looking for web developers.

I had a brief conversation with that recruiter-- she expressed no interest whatsoever. Soon it became clear that we had nothing to offer each other. In order to not embarrass me, she asked me to email her my resume. Then she quickly disengaged from me with a friendly smile.

I spent some time wondering why I didn't want to talk to anyone there. I don't just mean I lacked the desire to talk to them; I mean I actively wished to avoid them. All of their visible signals exuded a set of goals and values typically associated with a "career person": money, influence, and status. There was an implicit dynamic of desiring and seeking those things, rather than seeking to spend time with people one enjoys.

I value enjoying the company of other people. This was not about that. Therefore all forms of engagement at such a gathering have to be a pretense. I don't know how to be insincere. So, it was difficult for me to figure out how to engage or disengage from anyone.

I stood at the bar and thought for a while. In order to get a career, one must network. There is simply no way around it. Networking means getting to know people who can make a difference for you. Presumably, people with money, influence, and status. But to paraphrase xkcd, the problem with convincing the rat race to let me join them is... that they might let me.

What career is worth that cost? Standing there, it struck me that I can make anything I want to make on the web. I don't need an employer to fulfill my dreams. I need an employer so that I know where my next meal is coming from while I pursue my dreams. As of yesterday, I have that.

The longer I stood there examining the career people, thinking about their second homes, their third cars, their fourth spouses, the better I felt about filing papers and making phone calls for a living. It is a straightforward exchange of time for money. It has no connection to me, so it makes no unseemly demands that I should be driven by a passion for it. Do I really want to receive money in exchange for my love? Isn't it better if my aspirations and my survival do not get entangled in a conflict of interest?

I left my soft drink on the bar and walked out. Maybe I'll have fewer opportunities, but it doesn't mean I'll have none.

I almost certainly have a job, as an office clerk and phone liaison. I'll know by the end of the week. I'll have money for fuel, so you'll see more of me. After I've worked there a few months, my hours will go up from 40 to 54 hours a week. Then you'll see somewhat less of me.

(It's in Warren, so I'll have to move. Again. For the time being, I'm living out of a suitcase in Warren and only going home to Whitmore Lake on weekends. Whitmore Lake is an hour away, so that doesn't work. I have been browsing Ferndale/Royal Oak room-for-rent listings on Craigslist. I feel encouraged by the price ranges.)

This job is managing a huge number of outside contractors; i.e., people who have a tenuous relationship to us and do not necessarily have to do what we tell them to do. All we can do is replace them. Sound familiar? So, during the job interview, I described my experience with Penguicon. Keeping in touch with remote strangers who are never seen. Tracking when work is due, what is late, and when to replace someone. Motivating rather than nagging. Documenting processes. They were impressed, and said this is similar work.

You might be wondering now, "why did you spend a few years and a few thousand dollars to get a web development certificate with a 4.0 GPA?" That is only the first step of a journey. It was a good start, but job interviewers have made it clear to me that I'm still not qualified. I need to do a lot more personal learning, including:

1) Server administration from my laptop, so that I can install whichever additional technologies I want to learn.
2) Javascript libraries such as JQuery and YUI.
3) Python frameworks such as Django, and Ruby frameworks such as Ruby On Rails.
4) More about databases.
5) SASS. I would love to learn SASS.
6) How to inflict bloated, swiss-army-knife Content Management Systems. Hissssss. Actually, never mind this one.

A qualified portfolio should include a large number of web applications with polished interfaces and finished-looking designs. I would like at least one to have rich, responsive interaction, such as a game. I would like at least one to be a multi-user database-driven site. The thing is, each such project would take months of spare time. Frankly, I'm not the type who can become a hermit and emerge from my cave with a finished project in a short timespan. I like other humans too much. Other humans are the whole point of a project. Will I some day get a job as a creative or technical professional? In this economy, who knows. Perhaps in a few years. Or perhaps not-- perhaps it's only for hermits. Either way, I'm determined to learn. While I learn, I have to pay the bills, and it looks like my current job prospect is a perfectly pleasant and agreeable way to do that. I'm satisfied.

Steve Blank talks about startup culture in Ann Arbor.

Steve Blank is an experienced expert on entrepreneurship, whose excellent blog I have been reading for a long while. He summarizes each post with a set of points under "Lessons Learned". He concludes his Ann Arbor article the same way:

1. U of M has a College of Engineering dean who “gets it”
2. He’s turned the school into an outward facing school, fostering an entrepreneurial and innovation culture
3. The Center for Entrepreneurship is on board with passionate faculty, innovative curriculum and excited students
4. The area has almost no experienced angel, super-angel or venture capital (as we know it in Silicon Valley) for Web/mobile apps, hardware and software
5. The lack of experienced risk capital means a lack of experienced mentors, coaches, and infrastructure.

One of the major premises of his blog is that a startup is not a company. A company is what follows a startup. It executes a known business model. But a startup is an organization whose purpose is to search for a business model. This means it keeps changing until it gets consistently stable profit growth, then disbands, hands the reigns over to managers, and becomes a company. Until then, the startup keeps abandoning their business hypothesis and forming a new, altered one. Scientifically, you are expected to start off with a hypothesis that is wrong.

Silicon Valley calls this a pivot. Elsewhere it is called a failure, and you are embarrassed to have been wrong.

One difference in cultures is respect for failure. In Silicon Valley, you're proud to have made many attempts. It's "What did you learn from your first three startups?" In Michigan, it's "Why don't you get a job?"

In order to attract more art business I intend to put up a portfolio site. I am considering acquiring the domain scalyanteater.com. I would make Scaly Anteater a company name, for illustration, design, and websites. Alternately, I could just make it mattarnoldworks.com. Less catchy and memorable, and the business card would not be much fun, but it's more straightforward.

I realized a moment too late that I should have pointed out a checked box means "good enough" and unchecked means "unacceptable".
[Poll #1440679]

I can no longer find the reference, but I recently read of a study that showed that the brain-chemical rewards of satisfaction from talking about our intention to do a project are the same as the feelings of satisfaction that we receive from completing a project. The lesson was to finish first and then unveil it afterward, so as not to sabotage your drive.

This was consistent with my life experience. When I was a boy, I would get the neighborhood kids involved in projects of vast ambition, such as an RC car racing track, or a circus, or a backyard theme park made of cardboard. A week later I would forget the plan ever existed because I was busy drawing up detailed schematics of my latest life's work, and assigning a role in it to everyone who would listen. I don't think very many of them ever stopped going along with it, because on balance dreaming and planning is fun. However, I eventually remembered some of my abandoned plans with embarrassment, and could no longer muster the sincere belief that is a crucial component of my glowing enthusiasms. I didn't get back in the saddle until my late twenties, when I figured out how to subdue my attention span. I now cajole, distract, and bribe my brain into avoiding shiny distractions. Well, mostly.

The study on announcements is the latest trick I've learned. That is why I have not already blogged about the paying assignment I have been working on for a week. In another week it's scheduled to be done, and I hope I'll be allowed to show it to you. Until then please regard it with skepticism for the sake of my clever mind-trick. In fact, I might be violating the new lesson just by saying this much.

I would just like to say it's satisfying, and I wish I knew how to get more work with projects of this nature. It feels refreshing to get paid to do a project that I like and approve of; to get paid to do something that is easier to start than to stop. I think the last time this happened was six or seven years ago, and I don't remember it ever happening before that.

Out of all the job hunting sites or tools online, what are your favorites?

Here's an update for those of you who want to know where this stands. Last week I submitted my resume and cover letter to the Free Software Foundation. I followed up today by phone and was told that the position had been filled. Nonetheless, I have been inspired to think in very promising directions throughout this experience.