Personal
Personal
So where has the webgypsy been?? I know, it was January 4th the last time I posted to this blog! Like any good gypsy, you might think that I had moved on looking for the next opportunity. On the contrary, shortly after the last entry, I got promoted to Software Development Manager in my company and have been very busy learning skill of management. My new position is very different from my job as a Developer, but I have learned to enjoy it very much. I like the opportunity that I have to bridge the gap between the development staff and management. On the downside, I have my share of mindless administrative tasks, but I also get the benefits setting architectural direction and doing as much R&D coding as I can fit in. All-in-all life is good right now for this webgypsy! In fact this gypsy may settle in for a while.
Anyway, to the point of this post, things are once again settling down a little now that I've been doing the job for nearly 5 months. So I have been thinking about some of my personal goals for the rest of this year. I don't know how realistic my entire list is, but here they are:
- Begin blogging more frequently (I learn so much when I write down my thoughts)
- Pick up and continue to organize CodeCampCleveland! (I have been working on this for about 9 months now, but got sidetracked for quite a while)
- Get Certified! (this is one I've wanted to do for a long time now)
- Spend more time Improving DevAuthority.com (I love this site, I guess I should try harder to show it the affection it deserves <grin/>)
So there you have it. My goals for the next 9+ months or so. I suppose writing them here doesn't mean much unless you all take the time every once in a while to hold me accountable to them. If you feel so inclined over the course of this next year, drop me a line and just ask me about one of these and maybe the shear shame of it all will drive me to see at least some of these through to completion.
[This post was originally posted at my DevAuthority.com blog.
http://www.devauthority.com/blogs/dbalzer/default.aspx Go to
http://www.devauthority.com to get your own .Net blog.]
As I mentioned earlier DevAuthority is now more than a year old. So what do you get the blogging community that has it all for it's birthday? An new look! We have been operating since our inception on CommunityServer Default skins. It's been ok, but I've always wanted more for this site. I have just begun the process of changing the look and feel. The first item of business. A new Logo. Please tell me what you think. Keep in mind I am not a designer, but I think it's a decent first step in transforming our humble community into a premier destination for technical information and content.
[This post was originally posted at my DevAuthority.com blog.
http://www.devauthority.com/blogs/dbalzer/default.aspx Go to
http://www.devauthority.com to get your own .Net blog.]
I am considering organizing a Code Camp for NorthEast Ohio in the spring. I will be trying to find a venue in the Downtown Cleveland area. What I'm looking for at this point is anyone who is within a reasonable distance of Cleveland who would be willing to do a session. If you have any interest in participating in this, please send me an email at dave@devauthority.com so that I can start to guage the interest and feasibility of having such an event.
[This post was originally posted at my DevAuthority.com blog.
http://www.devauthority.com/blogs/dbalzer/default.aspx Go to
http://www.devauthority.com to get your own .Net blog.]
OK, I have been so busy at work lately (working nearly 80 hours a week) that I totally missed the opportunity to take time out and celebrate a full year of DevAuthority. That's right, DevAuthority has been in existence for more than a year now. We officially started on June 27th 2005. From humble beginnings great things are formed and I think that we will have a lot of new opportunities in the upcoming years. I have lots of ideas to make this a premier community for Microsoft .Net Developers, but mainlyI want to thank all of you who are contributors to this site for making it what it has become so far!
[This post was originally posted at my DevAuthority.com blog. http://www.devauthority.com/blogs/dbalzer/default.aspx Go to http://www.devauthority.com to get your own .Net blog.]
I was told once by a good friend of mine that a senior developer is one who has a firm grasp on the basics and the ability to find any answer they are faced with. I have always agreed with this assessment, but I would also like to propose a list of characteristics any senior developer should exhibit.
- A Senior Developer needs to be a leader.
Anyone assuming the role of senior developer must usually wear the hat of team lead. If you aren’t a natural leader you may not be suited to the job. Team environments have a tenancy to be dynamic and full of varying opinions. If you are easily mistaken for a door-mat then more often than not your team will fail in their efforts. Don’t dispare though, this is an area where you can overcome. Next time you are browsing on-line for the upcoming conferences, find a leadership seminar and give it a try. It may not be as interesting as learning about Yukon’s new XML Data Type, but I guarantee your career will flourish.
- A Senior Developer needs to be a teacher.
So how did you get to be a senior developer in the first place? Most likely you studied hard, got that first job, had someone take you under their wing and show you the ropes, and faced lots of challenging problems in the school of hard knocks. Now that you’ve reached the level of Senior Developer, you must take someone under you wing and mentor them passing on the vast knowledge you’ve accumulated. Mentoring/teaching does several things, first it helps the Jr Developers to grow in their profession. This is beneficial to you because when the Jr Developers under your charge grow and exhibit professionalism then your projects will succeed more often. This will make you look good. Finally, mentoring also helps you by reinforcing the skills you already know. I’ve found that nothing you can do will give you a deeper understanding of something than when you have to put it into words to share with someone else.
- A Senior Developer needs to be compassionate.
Do you remember what it was like to start your first job and have a total paralyzing fear of being good enough? OK, so maybe you aren’t obsessed with your inadequacies the way I am, but being a Jr Developer is hard. You want to look like you know what you are doing while trying to figure out what you are doing. Senior Developers need to be understanding and help to guide them through this difficult time in their career. Be supportive, be helpful, and be forgiving. I’m not suggesting that we carry their load or hide incompetency, just that we look for strengths and build upon them.
- A Senior Developer needs to understands customer service.
Customer Service is king. And who is your client? Well, it’s the company you work for as well as the company(s) they work for. It is anyone who is involved in the flow of finances that eventually find their way into your account. Nothing is more damaging to a company or an individual’s career than poor customer service. We need to treat the client with respect. We need to understand the clients needs. We need be responsive to the clients requests. We must be polite and must never criticize their ideas. Remember that by your actions you are are as much a salesman as you are a developer.
- A Senior Developer needs to understand the technology.
Never stop learning. Yes, we need to understand the technology that we’re working with, but as you’ll noticed this is the last item on my list. Why is it last you may ask. There are two reasons. The first goes back to my opening statement that a senior developer must have a firm grasp on the basics and the ability to find the answer to any problem they are facing. The second is that as almost no-one becomes a developer unless they already have a love for the technology. Most of us spend great deals of time reading, studying, and playing with the newest beta releases of all the tools and components. It’s who we are. However, with that said, if you have become stagnant in your growth nothing is more important for you than to updating your knowledge.
There you have it. My list of must have characteristics for a senior developer. So do you feel up to the task?
[ Originally posted at http://www.devauthority.com/blogs/dbalzer/default.aspx Get your own blog at http://www.devauthority.com ]
To all bloggers and aspiring bloggers. I posted friday evening that I starting a new blogging community with the domain http://devauthority.com
I posted an invitation for anyone intrested in joining me there to send me an email through the contact link on the blog. Well I have been made aware of some email problems I've had over the weekend and several people emailed me about this and I haven't received their requests. Therefore, if you would like to join a blogging comunity that is offering the upgraded Community Server 1.1 blog engine, then send me an email at dave@DevAuthority.com
I am also offering a DevAuthority.com email address to all bloggers if they would like one. Please include this in your request.
Thanks,
Dave
Well, I guess it's time to move on from DotNetJunkies. I really appreciate the opportunity that Donny and crew have given me to host my blog here over the past year+. Unfortunately, the time has come to part ways. I simply have not enjoyed the blogging experience lately with the content spam issues, and more recently the inability to receive comments. I have registered my own domain name (www.devauthority.com) to start a new blogging community. Mine is the first blog there http://devauthority.com/blogs/dbalzer/ the rss feed is http://devauthority.com/blogs/dbalzer/rss.aspx
Please drop by and check it out. The site has not been customized yet, but I have a fully functioning version of community server 1.1 driving the site. I would like to invite anyone who would like to blog over there to contact me and I will be happy to set you up.
I usually don't do or post these little quizzes, but I thought this one looked fun.
 I am Kong.
Strong and passionate, I tend to be misunderstood, sometimes even feared. I don't want to fight, I don't want to cause trouble, all I ask is a little love, and a little peace. If I don't get what I want, I get angry, and throw barrels and flaming oil at whatever's stopping me. What Video Game Character Are You? |
I completely agree with the spirit of what Jay is saying here (please read his post first). I think I suffer from a rare ailment among developers. It's a disorder that affects very few in the development community (at least above the newbie/jr level). It's humility. I rarely find that my insight or knowlege is earth shattering enough to pontificate about it. I don't mean to offend anyone out there, but it's just the way I feel. I think blogs are a wonderful way of disseminating information. I also feel they are a very useful tool in growing as developers by sharing our insights and questions and getting the "opinions" of our peers. The problem is the overly inflated egos in our annonymous online world leave us wondering who's advice we should heed. It's easy to sound like an expert when we read a few articles and whitepapers then come to the blogosphere and spout off the techno-babble they've indoctonated us with just to give ourselves a feeling of importance. Maybe it's becasue we feel so under-appreciated at work that we need to fill that need by “being an expert“ and sharing our vast wisdom with the world. I'm not saying that the information that we give/get in blogs is without merit. It's just that it's hard to judge the validity of the information or the level of expertise with which it's given.
Don't get me wrong, there are true experts out there and having this type of personal contact and the ability to share ideas with the best of the best is truly amazing. When a lowly developer in the midwest is facing a problem and can go to their blog and recieve ideas from some of the elite in the field, that's when we know this experiment has succeeded. I just feel that Jay is right though. I feel there is a lot of noise out there and at times it can be daunting to sift through it all for the nuggets of wisdom that we are looking for. Taking the advice we get with a grain of salt is imperitive. We must use this as a starting point from which we can gain new insights, but those insights can not go unchecked. We absolutely must invest ourselves in testing the validity of the opinions we recieve.
So what am I doing about it you may ask? Well at the moment I'm just adding to the noise and will probably continue to do so for the forseeable future, but at times I wonder when all this information is going to cause a memory leak and I'll just have to reboot <grin/>.
Eric Wise and I have been talking recently about business practices and employee relations. Read his latest post regarding compensation and working hours. The main point he makes is that many experienced developers would be willing to take a pay cut to work less hours. The benefit to the employee being more time with family or for the pursuit of other interests. The benefit to the employer being that they could hire quality developers for a lower cost. One thing I would like to add to this discussion is that although the employer would be getting less hours from the developer, I believe in most cases they would achieve the same level of productivity from them. Developers who are happy and well rested have the ability to aproach a problem from a fresh perspective.
Employers, I hope you will consider the advantages and possibly even give this approach a try if you find qualified developers willing participate.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
I've spent the last 1 1/2 years as an independent contractor. There have been a lot of benefits to my situation. I got the opportunity to work from home and spend lots of quality time with my wife and son. There have also been lots of challenges as well. I have spent a lot of time doing administrative tasks and managing projects. As a result, I've lost the joy of doing what I do.
I just took a full-time position. I've only been with the new company for about a week now but already I'm finding that I'm excited about developing again. I missed the interaction with other developers. I also missed having the time to research, study, and improve my skills. One of the things I'm most looking forward to is brushing up on my Patterns & Practices and expanding my knowledge of Object Oriented architectures. I also look foward to blogging more again.
I have of late been burdened with a tremendous workload that keeps me in my office from early in the morning until early in the morning. I am a self-employed, consultant, contractor, freelancer, call me what you will. What it boils down to is I am now doing four times the amount of work for about two-thirds the amount of pay. Seems like a great scenario wouldn't you say?
I realized this morning (about 3 am) that I have reached a burn-out point. I think it happened when I had been coding for nearly 2 hours on some inane form/database transaction and I had to stop and try to remember what the project was. I honestly couldn't remember. I went to bed disturbed by the fact that I still couldn't recall who I was working for. It's then I realized I NEED A BREAK. Isn't being a contractor great?
The .NET Q&A Blog is now live. It started with an idea that Jay Kimble had to start a blog dedicated to answering questions anyone may have regarding any issue in .NET. The idea is simple, you can go to the blog and use the Contact link on the side to email your issue. The issue then gets stripped of any project specific information (for the protection of the inocent) and posted to the blog for all the other bloggers out there to respond to. The advantage of doing this in a blog is that google seems to index blogs better than forums, so it will be easier for others to find these answers in the future.
I have been thinking a lot lately about both the joys and pains of being an independent contractor. I have opted to take on this role to allow me to fulfill some personal goals. As a contractor I am able to continue to work for the same company that I have for the past four years but live halfway across the country. As a contractor I can sleep until 8:55 in the morning and still be in the office by 9:00 for that conference call. As a contractor I can walk upstairs and talk to my wife when I need to or take a break to enjoy some playtime with my son. As a contractor there are many things that are beneficial to me, but there is one thing that I lack.
I have found the thing that distresses me most in my position is the lack of opportunity for professional growth. Sure I could go to more conferences, take some courses at the local college or on line, spend hours and hours reading volume upon volume about best practices and architecture, but then I would be giving up all the benefits of family time that I have bought myself with this position. Besides, I never learned much this way. I have always benefited from close personal interaction in the workplace. From mentoring relationships where I have not only been mentored by developers who were better than myself, but where I was able to pass that knowledge on to someone else. I think that is where I have learned the most. When I'm teaching a concept to someone else, my understanding of the issue generally grows exponentially.
So here I am trying to figure out how to keep myself from slipping back to the level of code monkey and continue to grow when my best friend and mentor Jay has begun to realize my predicament. He is going to help me by mentoring me once again. That just leaves the issue of me being able to teach these concepts to others to help cement them in my own understanding. I am going to begin to use this blog to express my understanding of these issues and hopefully it will be useful to someone else as well. I also welcome any comments to help steer and correct me when my conclusions are in error or do not reflect “best practices.” I believe that as a contractor this is the only way I will move from the level I'm at to the level I want to be.
I don't know how many of you may have already seen this but it doesn't hurt to get the news out there. I am not looking to take advantage of the offer myself since I already have a XDN Professional membership, but I thought I should get the word out anyway. As a current XDN Memeber, I would highly recomend this to anyone. I mean hey, it's free components and goodies each month for a year! Who can beat that? Anyway, details below:
FREE XDN Professional for .NET Bloggers during May 2004
Mike Schinkel, president of Xtras.Net, made an offer on his personal blog of a free XDN Professional membership (http://www.xtras.net/xdn) during the month of May 2004 for anyone that blogs about .NET frequently. If you are a .NET blogger, see Mike's post for how to get your free XDN membership.
I had an interesting experience today. I recently left my position as a full-time employee with a company that I have been with for quite a few years so that I could move across the country to be near my family. I now am an independent consultant and work almost exclusively for the company I just left.
Yesterday I had a conference call with a client to kick-off a new project. This morning I received a call from the CEO of my former company thanking me for the professional manner with which I conducted the meeting. It seems the client has had this project under development with two other firms, but the way the developers treated the client made them rethink undertaking the development process. This is not a difficult project, but they were treated like fools for wanting things done a certain way.
This got me thinking. I have seen this in the past in our industry. Somehow developers allow themselves to let their over-inflated egos to get in the way of customer service. They start to believe that because the client doesn't understand the underlying technology that they need us and therefore their opinions are value-less. I have even been in meetings where developers directly ridicule the clients.
I have heard a lot of discussion about Offshoring lately. I am starting to believe that one of the main reasons that offshoring is occurring is that there is such a lack of customer service in our industry. We as developers are a bunch of over-paid whiners that let our egos get in the way of listening to the needs of our clients and solving their problems in a timely, painless manner.
Do we want to keep our high-paying jobs right here in the US? Then I think it's time we learn a little about customer service and begin to practice it.
OK, So I'm one of the few developers who have been living under a rock for who knows how long now and have just discoved the joys of blogging. Oh yes, I've heard alot about blogging but it always seemed to be a story about some 12 year old girl writing to her very public, electronic diary so that all her friends could giggle and respond. The very thought just made me recoil in fear. I didn't have any idea how much good was being done in the blogging community. I had no idea how many developers were out there sharing their nuggets of wisdom and helping their fellow coders hone their craft.
I guess I could blame lack of insight into the blogging world on the fact that I have been working for a company for the past several years where we've been stuck mostly in the world of ASP and integrating products that we've already built. The challange has not been there to get out and research new technologies. I could blame it on the fact that I've since left that company and set out on my own taking on all the joys of business ownership and starting my own consulting firm, thus eliminating every free minute of time I used to enjoy. I will, however, admit that I must have been walking around with blinders on. Now that I've discovered blogging, I'm finding it everywhere.
I owe it to my mentor and freind Jay Kimble for introducing me to this brave new world.
So what now? I think it's time that I crawl out from under my rock and begin to take advantage of my newly found source of wisdom. Right now I'm just squinting at the sunlight trying to let my eyes adjust and take in the world around me, but hopefully soon I will be able to see a little bit of the landscape surrounding me.