More New Beginnings

A while back I spoke disdainfully about certain job-style choices that many among us have or haven't made, and in re-reading it, my lament seems harsh.  Especially now that I find myself back in "cubeland", wardrobe and all.  That's right, I have accepted a contract to work at a major downtown corporation - after a decade in the side-streets of business and working for myself.

Sell-out! they exclaimed, from their sofas, in their robes, with their cats.  Perhaps...  But I must explain some important motivating factors before allowing this judgement to stand.

Firstly, when I embarked, years ago on my solo career mission, I underestimated the importance of working with peers.  As a software artisan, one must never stop learning, as there is such an incredibly vast galaxy of things to know.  Learning from the inter web gets you only so far.  You need live minds around you, working together, to get the best solution out of a problem.  This is why code builders often assemble into teams.

I've written and shipped a lot of code as a one-person company.  I'm proud of all the work I did and the people I helped.  (There's nothing like the smile you get when you show someone how the days of tedious data shuffling she had to do each month will now take 5 minutes.)  Yet, as the projects piled up, I started to notice a pattern in my solutions - all Excel apps, of course - and began to wonder if some problems might actually be solved better by, say, a web app? Or some technique I just didn't know existed.

Having worked on software teams before, I sometimes longed for a session where I could white-board my ideas with some other "dudes", and stride out of the room absolutely confident that the design was right.  As I crafted my clever report engines and whatnot, I saw the internet evolving and getting more powerful as a software platform.  I began to hear about things like Sharepoint, jQuery and MVC.Net.  I glimpsed the world outside my home-office window beginning to slide past.

Then one day, at a luncheon with an old friend and former work associate, I mentioned my feelings of unease, and also that my billable hours were down significantly.  My friend indicated that his place of work, where he is a manager, was in need of a .Net programmer.  Even though that platform is not my forte, I used to work in it, and my broader experience and problem-solving skills would, my friend said, "more than make up for" any lack of specific syntactical knowledge, which I could learn.

This friend had tried to tempt me before, but this time I wavered.  Thinking deeply, I had to admit that the lifestyle I once described as optimal: working from home, answering to no boss, etc. - had actually started to lose its lustre.  Then I calculated the potential wage increase that regular hours would represent, and that lustre faded down to a dull, carpet-like finish.

Then, for balance, I considered the down-sides of working for "the man" again: a somewhat scary deep dive into new languages and paradigms, (and I'm no toddler.)  Then there's all the office crap, which I think I summed up pretty well in my March 1, 2010 post.  But it has been 10 years since I worked at a corporation - maybe things aren't so bad now.

Well, I'm two months in, and so far not suffering.  In fact, I've been able to make some really solid contributions, especially in applying my Excel skills and experience.  The first project I got into, a data import & cleanup tool, I ran with.  Using my artistic approach and applying my mantra of letting the user design it as they use it, I produced a solution far and beyond anything else they had ever seen.  (Feel the power of my Golden Hammer!)

The client (a working group among thousands of groups world-wide in this massive company) is really, really pleased, and we are now scoping out the next iteration; where I make Excel read data from PDF questionnaires.  There's a massive need, and this little Excel tool has the potential to save thousands of person-hours of data re-keying, for users across the country.  Rumour is that the CEO is even taking an interest in the project!

But that's just 20% of my time.  I'm also working on a "major" project using the new (to me) MVC.Net platform.  My C# and Javascript chops are slowly coming along, thanks to my patient and helpful associates, (and PluralSight.)  But I'm still able to pull my weight, since I'm well-versed in the concepts of relational data storage and retrieval, and SQL programming is a big chunk of the project logic.

Another way I am making this transition more palatable is by riding my bicycle to work.  It's getting cold now, here in Toronto, and the 8km journey is fraught with traffic hassles, but I'm sure the exercise is doing me good.  My building has a secure indoor bike room, and a change room with lockers and shower, so I can still look sharp in my new slacks and smooth shirts when I arrive at the elevator.

If you must, call me a sell-out... if by selling out you mean tripling my income, making strides to improve my knowledge and skills, and getting back to work in the engine room of the economy.  But I feel no shame in my reversal.  Now I am armed with some solid Excel skills that I can bring to a place that is sorely in need.  I will gain experience using the latest developing tools and techniques, and certainly discover new and better ways to help more people.