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Knowledge in software development: what’s your wood lot?

Gene Logsdon, who passed away in 2016, was a farmer and a wise man.  In a recent repost (originally written in 2008), he discusses why wood is more valuable than gold.  From the post:

You can’t eat gold like you can the bounty of trees in fruits, nuts, maple syrup, and various edible mushrooms and herbal treasures of the woodland. You can’t warm yourself with gold. You can’t bask in the shade of gold. You can’t make fence posts out of gold. A gold house would be mighty expensive. You can’t make a windbreak out of gold. You can’t make furniture, violins, guitars, wall paneling, picture frames, gun stocks, tomato stakes, flooring, barns, chicken coops, and hog houses out of gold. You can’t mulch a garden with gold leaf. Gold does not take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen to preserve an environment we can live in. Gold does not provide habitat for millions of wild animals and zillions of insects necessary for a sustainable environment. And in fact, you can make methane out of wood much more efficiently than ethanol out of corn. All gold can do is go up and down in price and invariably it turns out to be a poor investment, as many panic buyers learn the hard way.

This resonated with me.  Of course when things go awry, as they did in 2008 and 2001 (in the USA), having a pile of cash feels good.  But money is not wealth (this article covers that, as well as some other key points about capitalism).  Money can come and go, but wealth, whether knowledge, relationships or wood lots, remains with you.  Some forms of wealth require more care and feeding than others, but they all have the attribute of providing value in the real world.

When you are in software development, knowledge is a common form of wealth.  I always tell teams I lead that almost every problem we’re facing is a new one, because if it wasn’t new, it most likely would have been automated or turned into a service or library that we could use.  So there are plenty of chances to gain new knowledge.

There are a few categories of software development knowledge.

  • Domain knowledge is understanding the real world problem domain.  So, if you’ve worked, as I have, in a real estate brokerage, you understand how the business works.  Who pays for what, how money and effort flow, who the main players are and what they are called.  All of these are valuable should you work in that domain again because you can come up to speed more quickly, and you understand how the real world maps to the software system.  This type of knowledge may change, but on the order of years or decades.  (I haven’t worked in real estate since 2014, but if I went back, there’d still be many of the same concepts.)
  • General technology is fundamental to software development.  I’d put abstractions like algorithms and data structures, specific technologies like distributed systems, database indices and HTTP, and best practices like automated testing and requirements gathering into this bag.  Having this type of knowledge will let you understand a typical system even if you haven’t seen the nuts and bolts of it.  Of course, the type of general technology that is most useful to you depends on your domain, to some extent.  The general technology of a chipset engineer is different than that of a UX designer.   Within the same domain, this knowledge is good for years.
  • Specific technology knowledge are the keywords that recruiters put on job postings, and what some consultants chase after.  Elm or Elixir, Rails or React Native, Kubernetes or kvm.  These technologies are very specific.  I’m of two minds about this knowledge.  On the one hand, if you pick the right tech, you can be in very high demand and get rates commensurate with that.  On the other hand, new specific technologies are constantly being born, and keeping up with all of them, let alone becoming an expert in them, requires large investments of time (perhaps the reason for the premium).  However, I have sympathy for folks looking for specific technology expertise.  Yes, any competent software developer can pick up any language in a few weeks, but the idiosyncracies, libraries and community practices take time.  Depending on your budget, you may find it cheaper to pay someone who has acquired that knowledge elsewhen.  This knowledge ages quickly.
  • Leadership knowledge is orthogonal to software knowledge, just like domain knowledge.  Since software is built by human teams, knowing how to lead such teams toward business goals, whether formally or informally, is a valuable skill. This can include specific techniques like agile development and ‘one on ones’ and more general areas of knowledge like how to connect or communicate people and how to navigate politics.  This knowledge has a long half life and can pay dividends throughout your career.

In addition to knowledge a software developer can accumulate other forms of wealth like books, videos, and relationships.  These can all serve as credentials for a new position or (occasionally) generate passive income.

As we head into 2018, think about how you can build longer term wealth in your career by picking the right kind of knowledge.

Business Jobs | moore |

Founding engineer or Founder/CTO?

I’ve seen a number of great posts about the contrast between VPs of Engineering and CTOs for startups.  Here, here and here. The short version, if you don’t want to read those posts, is that a CTO is technology oriented and a VPE is process and team oriented. At a young startup there is significant overlap. If you are a software startup, you need to be aware of this split.

How quickly these roles need to be delineated depends on the size and growth of your startup. If you have one or two technical folks, no need to do this (but you do need to determine who is in charge of technology). If you have ten engineers and are planning to add five more in the next six months, you should have already split these roles up. But today I wanted to write about the difference between being a CTO, the typical title for the founding technical member, and founding engineer. This is based on some discussions I’ve had or read, most notably with Jason Cole, who runs a consultancy focusing on technical leadership (all erroneous thoughts are of course mine).

When you are early in a startup (seed or pre-seed), you want a developer who can ship product. Nothing is more important than choosing the right market and getting a solution out to that market so that customers can give you feedback (with their dollars). CTOs of bigger companies actually don’t spend any time coding. They work on strategy, partnerships, hiring and other higher leverage activities. But that won’t work for a startup–you actually need someone to build product.

That person is really a founding engineer. Such a person is a special breed. Like an engineer on a larger team, the founding engineer needs to be able to execute and build product, quickly. They need to be aware of technical debt and when assuming it makes sense. They need to write code that works, is testable and performant. They need to evaluate whether to build or buy or download from Github. They’ll be performing devops tasks as well, such as monitoring the application, troubleshooting performance issues, and making sure deployments and rollbacks happen cleanly.

In addition to all of that, the founding engineer must communicate with non technical folks, both within the organization (including the CEO) and outside of the company. The founding engineer may or may not be doing tier 1 customer support, but will be doing tier 2 support. They also have to be willing and able to drive decisions, especially around technical issues. They need to be able to understand and give feedback on the business strategy at some level, as that will determine technical decisions. The founding engineer also needs to able and willing to take market feedback. This may be filtered through others, and any response should be discussed with the other founders, but market feedback and quick iteration is a strength of a startup. The founding engineer may be doing some product management as well, depending on the other team members’ strengths. They’ll be the de-facto UX designer. They also will be interacting with vendors and contractors. They may review budgets and will hire technical team members. It’s possible they’ll interact with investors if funding is sought.

For all the additional responsibilities, the founding engineer should be compensated, well, like a founder. With not much money and gobs of equity. (Not much money is obviously relative, and depends on market value.)

But, at some point the company will either grow or fail. If the company fails, there’s obviously no worries about future roles! But if the company succeeds and grows, the founding engineer can take four paths.

1. CTO

They can grow into the CTO role, focusing on technical strategy. Until there are significant numbers of engineers (10ish) the CTO may continue to code. They may be doing code reviews for some time thereafter. But at some point they’ll be focused on technical direction of the company, competitors and partners, and large scale technical trends that may affect the company’s business.

2. VPE

They can grow into the CTO role, and then transition to a VPE. The reason they have to go through the CTO role first is that it’s unlikely the company will need the process and team building skills of a VPE until a bit later. But at that point they can focus on delivery, team building and process. They’ll likely work with product managers and the CTO on strategic direction of the company.

3. Technical lead

They can choose to remain a technical lead. This will mean that someone is hired over them into the CTO and/or VPE roles. This will be tough on the ego. However, it’s important to realize what brings them joy in life. If they want to stay close to the code, a technical lead role is best. In this role, the entire team needs to be very aware of who is in charge, especially if this transition happens after the CTO or VPE path is attempted.

4. Leave

An early stage startup is a magical thing. Everything is on fire all the time, but the ability to wear many hats, have a direct impact on customer lives and ship quickly may be what they value. If so, as the startup gets bigger, some of these opportunities will disappear. Specialization happens.

There’s nothing wrong with title inflation, but CTO (and CEO, for that matter) titles at a startup aren’t equivalent to the same titles at a company of 100 let alone 500 or 100,000. If you are joining a startup as a technical founder, realize that whatever your title, you’re really the founding engineer, and that, when success occurs, you need to choose.

Jobs The Food Corridor | moore |

Hiring: Apples and Oranges

I ran across this great article about hiring in my twitter feed.  (Incidentally, the author is seeking employment at the moment.)  Here’s the author’s take on what’s wrong with hiring in tech today:

Job postings focus on the current tooling and products rather than factor in future plans. Interviews focus on the immediate technical knowledge and abilities of candidates, rather than on the candidates’ capabilities for learning and adapting. Companies hire the wrong people for the wrong reasons, then are surprised to find they can’t scale or adapt to meet strategic goals.

It really resonated.  It crystallized what I’ve seen reading and writing job descriptions over the past 20 years, which is typically an over focus on hard skills and an underfocus on softer skills.  From a higher level, it’s a focus on immediate needs vs long term compatibility (perhaps the emphasis on ‘fit’ is a counter to that).  Job postings focus on current needs to the exclusion of adaptability because it’s a lot harder to measure adaptability.  After all, everyone is capable of change in some aspects of their lives, so how do you know if an employee can handle change in the particular manner you need?

The entire article is worth a read.  Next time you write a job requisition, think about whether you need someone to hit the ground running with a particular technology, or whether you can afford to hire someone who’ll have to either be trained up or transfer skills from a similar but not identical concepts (from rails to django or vice versa, for example).  If the former, do they need to be an employee, and if so, what will happen to them when the exact need is done?  If the latter, you’ve vastly expanded your talent pool.

Jobs Recruiting | moore | | Leave a comment

Leverage

As a software developer, and especially as a senior (expensive) software developer, you need leverage. Leverage makes you more productive.  I find it also makes the job more fun.

Some forms of leverage:

  • test suite. A suite provides leverage both by serving as a living form of documentation (allowing others to understand the code) and a regression suite so that changes to underlying code can be made with assurances that external code behavior don’t happen.
  • libraries and frameworks, like Rails. By solving common problems, libraries, open source or not, can accelerate the building of your product. Depending on the maturity of the library or framework, they may cover edge cases that you would have to discover via user feedback.
  • iaas solutions, like AWS EC2. By giving you IT infrastructure that you can manipulate via software, you can apply software engineering techniques to ensure validity of your infrastructure and make deployments replicable.
  • paas solutions, like Heroku. These may force your application to conform to certain limitations, but take a whole host of operations tasks off your plate (deployments, patching servers). When a new bug comes out affecting Nginx, you don’t have to spend time checking your servers–your provider does. When you reach a certain scale, thost limitations may come back to bite you, but in the early days of a project or company, having them off your plate allow you to focus on business logic.
  • saas solutions, like Google Apps or Delighted. You can have an entire business solution available for a monthly fee. These can be large in scope, like Google Apps, or small in scope, like Delighted, but either way they solve an entire business problem. You can trade time for money.
  • experience, aka the mistakes you’ve made on someone else’s dime. This allows you leverage by pruning the universe of possibilities for solving problems, based on what’s worked in the past. You don’t spend time doing exploration or spikes. Note that experience may guide you toward or away from any of the points of leverages mentioned above. And that experience needs to be tempered with learning, as the software world changes.
  • team. There’s only so much software you can write yourself. A team can help, both in terms of executing against a software design/architecture and improving it via their own experience.

Leverage allows you to be more productive and the more experienced you get, the more you should seek it.

Jobs Programming Testing Tips | moore | | 1 Comment

Interview with a boot camp grad

Lots of folks are moving into development and technical fields these days.  I remember that happening during the dot com book, but back then folks just read one of those “Learn Java in 24 Hours” books.

Nowadays there are a profusion of boot camps that help people gain the skills they need to be a developer. I have interacted with a few of these grads and was interested in learning more about their experience. Noel Worden, one of the organizers of Boulder.rb and a blogger, agreed to an interview.

– what was your background before you were a developer?

I got my degree in fine art photography, spent 5 years working in NYC as a Digital Technician in the photo industry, then moved to Colorado and was a cabinetmaker for 3 years.

– how did you land your first job?

I found the posting on the Denver Full Stack meetup whiteboard (https://www.meetup.com/fullstack/)

– what surprised you about the software industry?

How willing everyone is to help. It’s very different in the photo world, [which is] much more competitive, it’s hard to find guidance and mentorship.

– how did you pick your boot camp?

Bloc had one of the longest curriculums I could find in an online program. I figured when push came to shove, having more experience under my belt couldn’t hurt when competing with other junior [developers] looking for that first job. Bloc also has a part-time track, which allowed me to still work [a] full-time job while going to school.

– what is good about the job? What is challenging?

I appreciate the balance of being challenged but knowing I have the full support of any other engineer on the team if I need to reach out for assistance. Canvas United [ed: his current employer] has a lot of projects that I’ve been maintaining lately, and all are running different versions of Rails, which makes for interesting challenges. 

– what do you see current boot camp students doing that you’d advise against?

Not getting out and networking while going to school. This industry is all about networking and if you’re hoping to capitalize on the advantages of a good network you have to be building it while still in school.

– why did you want to transition into technology and development?

I wanted/needed a career path where the leaning curve wouldn’t plateau. I’m not a ‘cruise control’ kind of person, as soon as the challenge isn’t there for me anymore I lose interest.

– how can employers help boot camp grads in their first job?

Be ok with answering questions, and be transparent with the employee about the proper channels to ask those questions. Also, be upfront about the fact that it’s ok to fail (assuming that’s the case) a few time before you get to the best solution [ed: if it isn’t ok to fail, find a new job!]. Also also, a healthy balance of low hanging fruit and multi-day problems. Nothing kills my morale faster than ticket after ticket of problems that grind me into the ground.

– should employers have any different expectations of a boot camp grad vs someone who just graduated from college or high school?

I definitely think that it takes a particular type of management style to successfully level up a boot camp grad. If you’ve hired them you must have liked something about them, play to those strengths, but also sprinkle in challenges to help that developer evolve.

[This content has been edited for grammar and clarity.]

Interview Jobs Rails Recruiting | moore | | Leave a comment

Boulder Startup Week

If you are into the tech scene in Boulder, Boulder Startup Week is a great set of events–it’s coming up May 15-19 this year.  This is a totally volunteer run set of events which highlight various aspects of startup and technology in the Boulder area.  You can learn more at the website.  It’s a great place to network and to learn about new things.

I’m lucky enough to be participating in two events this startup week.  I’ll be hanging out at the Engineering Leadership dinner.  And I’ll be presenting on bootstrapping a startup as a developer with a few other bootstrappers.  Most of my short presentation will cover lessons I’ve learned from joining The Food Corridor.  I’m especially looking forward to hearing about Brian and Inversoft that day, because I’ve been friends with him for a number of years and have followed along with some of his trials and triumphs.

Hope to see you there!

Conferences Jobs Technology | moore | | 1 Comment

Using LinkedIn to Help Others Find Jobs

I like LinkedIn, I really do. If you can get past the recruiters randomly spamming you (and yes, I know they are LinkedIn’s primary source of revenue), the professional network is quite powerful.

As Gary Vaynerchuk and Liz Ryan say, you don’t have any excuses for not finding the right person to reach out to with your sales pitch or job interest.

But recently I was contacted by a former colleague who noticed that I had “liked” one of my other contacts’ job posting. He asked a few questions, applied and interviewed, and got the job. I love matching people up with jobs, but this was easy.

My plan is to search LinkedIn periodically and “like” all job listings posted by former colleagues or other trusted sources, and hope this experience happens again.

Jobs | moore | | Leave a comment

Joining The Food Corridor

After I left 8z, I contracted for about a year and a half. It was great fun, moving between projects, meeting a lot of new developers, and learned a lot of new things. I worked on evaluating software products and processes, supporting machine learning systems, large workflow engines, and, most recently, backend systems to stop distracted driving (they’re hiring, btw).

But I saw an email from Angellist early this year about a company looking to build a marketplace for kitchen space. (Aside: if you are interested in the labor market for startup professions, Angellist emails are great–they not only give you the company name and job description, but also typically include equity and salary–very useful information.) I replied, the conversation started, and I did some research on the company. They were pre-revenue, but the founder had been grinding it out for months and had an extensive background in the industry. Was clear they weren’t a fly by night, “we just had an idea for an app and need someone to build it” operation.

After discussions, interviews and reference checks, it became clear that this was a fantastic opportunity to join an early stage startup as a technical co-founder. So, I’m thrilled to announce that I have joined The Food Corridor as CTO/Co-Founder.

Why does this opportunity excite me so?

  • By increasing visibility and availability of shared kitchen space, it can grow the local food system, especially value add producers, across the country
  • There’s a real need for some innovative software and process solutions that we can solve
  • The founding team has the diverse set of skills needed to run a great company
  • I am looking forward to learning about the business side of a software company
  • It’s right at the intersection of two of my passions–food and technology

If you are interested in following along with the TFC journey, there’s a monthly newsletter that will be focused on shared kitchen topics.

As far as the blog, I expect to be heads down and building product, but will occasionally pop up and post.

Here’s to new adventures!

Business Jobs The Food Corridor | moore | | 7 Comments

How to engage with recruiters

recruiter photo
Photo by JimsFlicker

If you are a software engineer or developer right now, you are in demand.  There’s a dearth of software developers, and so you are probably getting calls from recruiters.  This is location dependent–my understanding is that the SF market is white hot, and the market for software developers in Yuma CO is softer.

When I first was approached by a recruiter, I was flattered.  Here was a stranger trying to find me a job.  Quickly I realized that recruiters were not working for me (they get paid to place a candidate, so they are working for the company) and that most recruiters didn’t have a technical background at all.  This made me feel less charitable toward recruiters, and I have found that common amongst developers, especially now that they have so many job options.

Older and wiser, now I have a more balanced approach.  Here’s my tips for dealing with tech recruiters:

  • Communicate what I want.  This means knowing what I want in a new job or contract, which can include availability (both hours and start date), minimum rate, location, work condition (remote), technology, sector.  Tell the recruiter all this up front.  I often state: “hey, at this point in time, I’m rather picky, and I don’t want to waste your time.  Here is what would interest me: …”.  This lets them self select out quickly, before the “get to know you” phone call.  I should probably put this on my Hire Me page, now that I think about it.  Just need to make sure I keep this up to date.
  • Realize I am in in their database forever.  I gave my resume to someone in 2004 who I lived with who worked at a recruiting firm.  I still get calls from that same firm.
  • Make sure I am treated like a professional, and don’t put up with non professional acts.  Do they respond when I ask them to, answer my questions, and treat me with respect.  I actually had to hang up on a recruiter recently who, after I had told her I was busy and couldn’t talk right then, in an email and earlier on the call, continued to ask “just a few questions” about my skill set.  It wasn’t fun, but she was not being respectful of my time.
  • The other side of the coin is that I need to treat them with equal respect. That means being honest with them about needs and skills and responding to emails in a timely, respectful fashion.  It also means if I hear of someone with a needed skillset, doing an intro (wearing my informal recruiter hat).
  • Make the exchange of information a two way street.  Whenever I get contacted by a recruiter, they always want “5-10 minutes to talk to see how I can help you in your career”.  When I get them on the phone, I make sure to ask them questions about the market, other skills they’ve seen in demand, what specific technologies they’ve seen needs for, what kind of companies are hiring.
  • Thank them for supporting various meetups, if they do.  The local Java Users’ Group has pizza and soda provided every month by a recruiting firm.  This actually makes me more likely to respond to recruiters from that firm, because, while it’s not caviar, it’s nice to have dinner paid for.
  • Realize the difference between being sought for who I am (that’s being headhunted, and is reserved for senior folks and niches) and being sought for my skills.  I’ve never been in the position of having a stranger seeking me for who I am (I imagine internet famous folks like Matt Raible probably have), but I have had former co-workers do so.  Incidentally, the former is by far a better way to join an organization.
  • I keep my linked in profile up to date.  This makes it very easy to send recruiters a resume, should they ask for one.
  • I realize the tables may turn.  Right now, and for the near future, development is in great demand.  But I’ve been through one ‘software recession’ and I expect there will be more.  Beyond the basic dignity I ascribe to every human being, recruiters can get me a job.  So, except in the cases where recruiters aren’t respectful, I treat them with respect.
  • I don’t take random recruiter calls or requests on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn emails are different–if a recruiter has paid for a premium account, it’s easy enough to respond with a quick ‘not interested’ if the position isn’t for me.  But if a recruiter is trying to connect on LinkedIn without having met me at all, they are not serious.  If a recruiter is serious about getting in touch with me, I can be found in about a thousand different ways online.  I think recruiters who send LinkedIn requests are lazy and not worth responding to.
  • As above, I respond to recruiter emails, even if is just ‘no thanks’.  Again, basic human dignity.
  • Finally, I’m trying to cultivate a few good recruiters.  Whether these are referrals from a friend, or recruiters that I’ve met at an event, there are a few that stand out.  One recruiter (Dave from Technical Integrity) actually introduced me to a few of his friends so I could ask some exploratory questions about a different sector.  You better believe that I’ll recommend him and think of him when I have friends who are looking for work.  That company focuses on startups and full time employees, so I haven’t had the experience of working for them, but when my needs change, I will certainly see if they are looking.  The idea is to have the relationship last longer than a single contract.

Reviewing my list, I boil it down to:

  • recruiters are human beings, treat them like it
  • they don’t work for you
  • set your expectations and boundaries
  • software development is hot now, but won’t be forever

Any tips you have on engaging with recruiters?

Jobs Programming | moore |

Be an Informal Recruiter

link photo
Photo by elcovs

As I kick start my consulting business, I’m talking to many people–everyone in my network, anyone that I am referred to, and random people from Hacker News.  Employment is far less fungible than other purchases (even housing), so it behooves anyone selling labor to cast a wide net.

These introductions and conversations have not just given me the chance to talk about my skills and knowledge, but also to learn about other needs of the company.  Even if they don’t have need for a senior developer who can talk business and learn new languages, they may have a need for someone else in my network.

I’ve been about to do a few such intros since early August.  It actually is quite fun to do this, and it is good for karma.  It’s also a great way to stand out from the pack–if I an helpful to the organization before I take a job/contract with it, imagine how helpful I will be when I am engaged day to day.

During initial contact with the interesting organization, I talk about my skills and how that might fill the organization’s needs–after all, they are interested in meeting and learning about me.  But I also note any other needs, either via postings on their websites, needs they imply or mention in the conversation, or by simply asking them: “do you have any other needs at this time?  I like to help and would be happy to ping my network”.  I take notes.

Once I know some needs, I consider who in my network might help fulfill them.  Then I reach out to the members of my network and see if they can help. Typically, I send an email with the details of the need, and ask if they know anyone who might be a fit for the company.  Network members don’t have to be looking to make a move.  They will probably know of folks who can be a good fit.  For example, a marketing will typically know far more marketers than I will.  Therefore, if an organization I am interested in helping needs a marketing assistant, reaching out to marketers in my network and asking if they know anyone looking will be helpful. This interaction is useful to my network contacts–it lets them reach out to their network, opens a conversation with me, informs them of labor market conditions with minimal work on their part, and could end up in a new job if the fit is right.

This technique also lets me have a soft touch point with the prospect in a week or so.  I say something like “I reached out to my network about the position X you posted, and haven’t heard back from anyone, just wanted to let you know.”

If I don’t have a specific person who could help fill this role (either themselves or via their contacts), there are other ways to add value.  I’ve passed on recruiting tips (or interested tech articles), helpful employment sites, or general labor market advice such as “based on what I’ve seen, you might to have a hard time finding someone expert in tech X for pay Y”, or “in my experience, rates for tech X are $Y/hour”.  All of these add value to the interaction at very little cost to me.

Connecting people with openings is great for hiring managers on the other side of the hiring/contracting process.  If I am casting a wide net looking for contracts, I have recent data as well as a network and perspective worth sharing.  Since this is low cost to me and has benefits for me, the organization I am interacting with and members of my network, it is worth the extra effort to be mindful of needs and to send that intro email.

Consulting Jobs | moore |