Notes from the field
Feb. 1st, 2004 01:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dwenius V worked with me on the launch of a large online retailer during the dying throes of the Internet Bubble in 2000, him coding with the internal development team, me doing system architecture and operations with my cow orkers. I remember him as a java hotshot with mad skillz and a particular maverick immaturity that fit the culture of this particular company perfectly. He kept me busy...well, his boss was the busy one, I guess, pushing for emergency change after emergency change, but V was the one doing all the code behind each change. V was getting direction of the "do vague but required large feature by noon tomorrow" kind, but despite that, he made my life easier. I didn't have to revert much of what he did. I also made his life easier, by feeding him stack dumps and other production forensic data to help him debug; there was no way to mimic the actual traffic in a lab or QA environment, so we were usually chasing some performance issue that only showed up on the live site.
This went on for literally months. During this time, I discovered a few things about V: he was on his third internet startup, and his first two had sold; he owned three houses in the Bay Area; he hadn't finished school; he was vague about his age, but I'm guessing no more than 25. Eventually, said retailer mismanaged its online presence into the ground, filed chapter 11, and fired everyone, including both V and their managed services firm. We parted ways.
Last Tuesday, I get an instant message from V; he just got out of school, after finally finishing his BS in CS. He was, curiously enough, at U.T. Austin. While he was there, he did some WebSphere operations work internally at IBM, and took 3 or 4 contract programming jobs with local businesses. Now at the ripe old age of 27, he's looking to enter the workforce for real, and well, you know what the current job market is like. While I'm running a dev group these days, I don't have any open reqs for coders; still, knowing where we need help, and hearing him mention IBM, I ask him straight up: 1) Would he be willing to do operations support instead of code, and 2) does he want to move to NY? He's down with all of that. Thursday he's in for an interview; he leaves with the offer letter, Friday he's filling out our HR forms. Next Monday he's in NYC for a client meeting. We don't mess around :)
More than a few people on my friends list have been openly pondering their life's direction lately. This is for you: If there is something you are good at, and you want to go do it while you're still young and invincible, GO DO IT. You can always go back to school (another thing people on my FL are doing at great speed). Make sure you can feed and house yourself with this thing you do, obviously. Second of all, network your ass off; the maxim "it's who you know not what you know" certainly applies here.
This went on for literally months. During this time, I discovered a few things about V: he was on his third internet startup, and his first two had sold; he owned three houses in the Bay Area; he hadn't finished school; he was vague about his age, but I'm guessing no more than 25. Eventually, said retailer mismanaged its online presence into the ground, filed chapter 11, and fired everyone, including both V and their managed services firm. We parted ways.
Last Tuesday, I get an instant message from V; he just got out of school, after finally finishing his BS in CS. He was, curiously enough, at U.T. Austin. While he was there, he did some WebSphere operations work internally at IBM, and took 3 or 4 contract programming jobs with local businesses. Now at the ripe old age of 27, he's looking to enter the workforce for real, and well, you know what the current job market is like. While I'm running a dev group these days, I don't have any open reqs for coders; still, knowing where we need help, and hearing him mention IBM, I ask him straight up: 1) Would he be willing to do operations support instead of code, and 2) does he want to move to NY? He's down with all of that. Thursday he's in for an interview; he leaves with the offer letter, Friday he's filling out our HR forms. Next Monday he's in NYC for a client meeting. We don't mess around :)
More than a few people on my friends list have been openly pondering their life's direction lately. This is for you: If there is something you are good at, and you want to go do it while you're still young and invincible, GO DO IT. You can always go back to school (another thing people on my FL are doing at great speed). Make sure you can feed and house yourself with this thing you do, obviously. Second of all, network your ass off; the maxim "it's who you know not what you know" certainly applies here.
