Postcards From My Life

[UPDATE: New Slides posted, the link is below.]

Dear Reader,

Pop Quiz: How many of your developers wake up in the morning excited to work on your project? If the answer is not “all of them”, you probably need to look at how open source projects attract developers and motivate them to write code for free.

Put yourself in your developer’s shoes for a moment.
You are a professional developer, you work on a project all day at work but you live to get home and start working on your passion, an open source project. Suddenly, instead of slogging through the day, you are actively engaged in a project that may be much more complex than the one you are working on at work. Worse yet, you may actually have more responsibility, more input, more voice on your open source team than you do at work. You wish your day job excited you as much as your open source project. You wish you could be as engaged in it.

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Dear Reader,

CodeWorks 09 Vital Stats

CodeWorks 09 day #: -2
Days till I see the Lovely and Talented Kathy:09
Cities left: 7
Miles Traveled: 0
Cups of Coffee: 0
Current Current City: Utrecht

Random Statistic of the day

Number of sessions I will actually deliver on the CodeWorks 09 tour: 27

Prep Work

Hey, it was Friday night. Of course I didn’t do any prep work. :) I did watch “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” though. It was a big old ball of Meh. Even Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis couldn’t save this one.
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Dear Reader,

CodeWorks 09 Vital Stats

CodeWorks 09 day #: -3
Days till I see the Lovely and Talented Kathy:10
Cities left: 7
Miles Traveled: 0
Cups of Coffee: 0
Current Current City: London

Random Statistic of the day

Number of “Random Statistics” that I have waiting to be published: 0

Prep Work

I did no prep work directly last night as I spent the evening with Yair Spitzer and Paul Wander, the heads of Ibuildings UK. On top of a great meal, we had one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in a long time. I am however, starting to “get my head in the game” so to speak. My downtime these days is spent refining my presentations and practicing them in snippets instead of all at once.
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Dear Reader,

Thanks to my friend Alison for pointing out this article,The unspoken truth about managing geeks. This is a must read for everyone who manages IT professionals. From Manager, to Director, to the VP and C-Level, if you have IT professionals below you on your company’s org chart you owe it to yourself and your developers to read this article.

Respect

One of the first points the author makes is that developers want respect.

for IT groups respect is the currency of the realm.

This is one of my favorite quotes in the article because it is so true. It’s also true that many in management don’t understand this and that’s sad. I wrote about respect back in 2006 in the blog post “It’s all about respect” and the fact that management can’t seem to understand this fact led me to write “Leadership in Software Development“, which encourages developers to step up into management so that the next generation of developers can have managers that understand this.

Jeff Ello, the author of “The unspoken truth about managing geeks” touches on several points that strike so close to home that I wonder if he’s not been watching the same things I have lately.

Just because you don’t like what is being said, doesn’t mean the other person is whining

Other than respect, I think the next most important take away from this article is made on the second page in the section about “victim mentality”.

IT pros are sensitive to logic — that’s what you pay them for. When things don’t add up, they are prone to express their opinions on the matter, and the level of response will be proportional to the absurdity of the event.

I’ve personally seen several scenarios play out recently that can be directly attributed to this behavior. In all cases, the “management” attributed disagreement from a developer as whining and ego when in fact things were going on that were not logical and therefore someone said something. What was said, was said in a “manner of fact” way and taken wrong because the person it was said to failed to realize the point of view of the speaker. (I’m being vague here on purpose)

I love Jeff’s call to action to help resolve some of the communication issues:

“Periodically, bring a few key IT brains to the boardroom to observe the problems of the organization at large, even about things outside of the IT world, if only to make use of their exquisitely refined BS detectors.”

To paraphrase, when your developers are complaining, don’t call them whiners or write it off to ego, look past the surface complaint and find out what the problem is. Chances are, there’s a real problem there and managers ignore it at their own risk. This is closely related to one of the points I bring out in “Open Teams“, transparency. Talking to your developers, listening to them and sharing both the good news and bad news will let you tap the brain trust you have built in your IT department to solve the problems that are facing your company.

I’m encouraged that others are saying these things now but still a bit depressed because even though others are saying these things, the people that need to read them, aren’t.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

In late September and early October, I will be part of the CodeWorks 09 tour. During CodeWorks I will be giving two new talks, “Design Patterns” and “5 Things”. I won’t, however, have the opportunity to give one of my favorite talks, “Open Teams:What Corporate IT Can Learn from Open Source Projects“. (If you’ve not read the blog post or reviewed the slides from the presentation, feel free to follow the link and see what it’s all about.)
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Dear Reader,
[Note: This blog post should in no way reflect poorly on my current employer. I love my job and am not talking about any one company in particular but about IT companies in general.]

The Problem

Something has been bugging me for a while now. I’ve been a member of more IT companies than I care to remember. Outside of cube farms, one thing seems to remain constant throughout, a contract that was written in the 1800s. Most (not all) of the employment contracts I have been handed to sign have contained a clause that states something to the effect:

While you are working for us, if you invent something we like, we can claim ownership of it.

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Dear Reader,

“You are responsible for how others perceive you.”
– Jim Turner

Jim Turner was an accountant for my parents right after I got married and was working for them. I’d like to say that Jim was one of the wise old ones but honestly, he was a working guy like you and me. However, the wisdom quoted above is the one thing that he taught me that has stuck with me. How others perceive me is my problem, not theirs.
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Dear Reader,

This conversation takes place via email at least once a week for me

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Dear Reader,

Today I want to play a little game I call Good Boss…Bad Boss.

I’m going to list four personal experiences I’ve had with bosses and explain to you why I feel they are either a Good Boss or a Bad Boss. I will not say who the boss was at the time and I can confirm that none of these have anything to do with my current employer.

Bad Boss

I had a boss at a job one time who’s favorite saying was “I could teach a German Shepard to do your job.” He would pull this motivational bludgeon out once or twice a day. I can still hear him standing in my cubical saying:

“Jesus, Cal” he would say, “I could teach a German Shepard to do your job.”

Now, I will not argue the accuracy of the point because I realize it’s subjective. His ability to train a dog could have been far greater than mine and he may have been telling the truth. But this is a Bad Boss situation because he was trying to motivate me to work faster, better, more. The point I will argue is that he had mixed up the whole ‘Carrot and the Stick’ metaphor of motivation. Instead of holding the carrot out before me and occasionally smacking me with the stick. He was beating me over the head with the stick because he had already eaten the carrot.

He was a bad boss because he did not understand how to motivate his team. He didn’t take the time to understand each of us as individuals so he could not communicate with us his needs.

Good Boss

I had one boss pass me over for a promotion that we both knew I deserved. He only had one open billet at the higher level and it was a tight race between me and another guy. I didn’t get it. I acted like a spoiled child. I pouted, I grumped, I even went home early that day because I was mad. My boss didn’t say a word. He knew that even though I was wrong, it was best to let me blow off my steam. By letting me go home, he moved the problem off-site. The next day, I came in an apologized for my behavior. He smiled, thanked me and then we moved on to my project. He never mentioned it again, even on my quarterly review. He was a good boss because he knew that I was human, with faults but that he if just let me get it out of my system, that I would get back to normal. Had I come in the next day and continued to grouse, I have no doubt that he could have come down on me like a brick.

He was a good boss because he took the time to understand his team members beyond their obvious skill set.

Bad Boss

I had a boss at a company where I was in charge of 2 development teams. This boss, while a pillar of the business community, kept changing our company’s focus. As the head of all software development, every time we changed directions, I had to explain to the development teams why we were ‘re-focusing’ our efforts again today. There were times when it was a nightmare. Development teams (as most of you who are reading this know) do not turn on a dime and start off in a different direction. Almost monthly, we would have a new vision for the company. That usually meant the software we were developing was now no longer wanted and we were off to the races with the new software.

He was a bad boss because he didn’t understand software development even though he advertised it as one of the core competencies of the company. Software development, done right takes time and planning.

Good Boss

I was hired at one company to build and manage the development team. This team was pushed hard, we had some demanding clients and difficult projects, most of which involved processing money so they absolutely had to be correct, every time.

In November, my boss came to me and said, “It’s getting close to the time for the Christmas party, I want to do a LAN party again.” The gist of it was that every developer received a copy of the game we were going to play and we made sure all machines could handle the game. (Most of the development staff already had dual 20″ Dell monitors)

We took a Saturday, all gathered at the office including, some of our friends and played all day. The day of the party, my boss gave me his credit card and told me to go up to the local Toys R Us and buy enough Nerf guns so that everyone can have one. it was the only time I have every checked out with $150 worth of Nerf firepower and I’m pretty sure the cashier had never processed an order like that.

Aside from the obvious “cool factor” this boss was a good boss because he took the time to understand his team.

Led by Example

All of the bosses I’ve worked under have helped shape the type of manager I am but none have affected me more than these two, Paul Mueller and Ray Taft. Paul, because he taught me how to lead. He taught by example and he taught with humility. Ray, because Ray showed me how to treat people. I thought I knew how to treat employees but it turns out I really only knew how to pamper them. Ray showed me how to treat them right but be firm when necessary. Whenever I am faced with hard management decisions, I always look at the examples that these men provided for me and usually, the answer, even if it’s not the one I want, becomes clear.

So let me ask you, if you are a boss, are you a good boss or a bad boss? In 20 years, is someone going to look back at their time under you and thank you for the lessons you taught them? If you are a boss, be a good boss and lead by your example.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=

Dear Reader,

[Editor's Note: This is an editorial that was originally published on Freshmeat back in 2000. As I'm cleaning up my content, it stuck me that I had never published this here.]

Me to the everybody: “Hi, my name is Cal… and I’m… I’m a manager.”
Everybody: Hi, Cal!

I am a developer who made the conscious decision to move into management. My training, my experience, and my love has always been developing software. I’ve worked under sales managers, business managers, and (shudder) a CTO who believed that all the good software had already been written so we didn’t need to write anything; we could just buy everything we needed. I made the leap into management for one reason: I had a manager who “got it” and showed me by example that developers can make great bosses for other developers. (Thanks, Paul M.!)

During my career as a developer, I learned many different things but the one thing that has stuck with me is this axiom:

“If you have never been a software developer, you have no business managing software developers.”

There, I’ve done it again. At least one third of you are now mad at me. But regardless of your feelings towards me, I stand by my statement because, time and again, whether through personal experience of 24 years or war stories from others, it has survived.

Before you fire up mutt and flame me, let me be quick to point out that I do not believe that this maxim is universally applicable to all situations or walks of life. I am not belittling any person or occupation, but I believe that, in most cases, we as humans, co-workers, and professional colleagues have enough shared experience to be able to relate to each other. I do not believe that this maxim applies to the sexes or to races. However, there are a few areas where it does apply, and the one I know most about is software development. Here are three different thoughts on why I believe this is true, what I believe has caused the current crisis, and what I think we can do about it:

The Balancing Act — Why we are here.

There are very few professions that combine the creativity involved in good software development and the rigorous deadlines, often imposed from the outside. Hurry up and create! The ideas have to keep flowing, they have to be scheduled, and they have to be completed on time. If you have to go figure something out, go. But make sure you are back after lunch and make sure your schedule doesn’t slip. Developers, especially now as we work in Web years, are under increasing pressure to “Get it out the door fast!”.

The rigorous detail work of quality software development, however, has not changed. It still takes time to develop quality software. (You can have it good, fast, or cheap; please pick two.) To those on the outside, it may sometimes seem that what we do is easy. (Heck, we may feel that what we do is easy!) The ease with which developers manipulate the tools of the trade is often misconstrued as ease with which the task can be completed. Only a developer understands the countless hours it takes to master new tools, new languages, and new concepts. In this age of rapid development, new concepts come at us like a fire hose of knowledge. We are supposed to know how to soak it all up and be able to use it in our next project. This is almost a bearable burden if management understands what we are faced with. The problem is that, having never been there, most managers cannot empathize. (And most don’t even bother to sympathize.)

The Boss From Beyond — What has caused the current crisis.

It’s generally accepted folklore in the IT community that managers are managers because they can’t do anything else. What has led us to this state, a climate in which developers don’t respect their managers and managers try to manage a software development team like an accounting department? Volumes have been written on when and why people are promoted into positions they are not qualified to hold. I won’t rehash that here. I have a different take on it.

The question we ask should not be “Why don’t managers understand software development?”; the question should be “Why don’t those of us who do understand the process step up to management?” The obvious answer is that there are very few developers who want to be managers.

In the past, developers would have to turn away from promotions to management (and sometimes raises) so they could remain in development. These days, they find other companies to work for that will pay them more and allow them to continue to develop (but that’s a story for another day). The problem exacerbates itself. The more developers steer clear of management positions, the unhappier software development teams will be with the candidates that become their managers.

We, the IT community, have the bosses we have because we refuse to step up to the plate and take the job. I am not advocating that all developers climb the management ladder; far from it. In most cases, a developer pressed into service as a manager will do no better a job than an accountant forced to code. But until the development community learns to train its own management structure, we are doomed to be managed by PHBs.

Managing In Chaos — What can we do about it?

So now we are all on the same Merry-Go-Round from hell. What can we do to get off? At least part of the answer is obvious. We, as a community, have to train our own managers. For me as a manager, that means that as I interview candidates for development positions, I have to keep my eyes open for potential managers. I have to make sure that I mentor as I was mentored. I have to realize that if I don’t train new development managers, I’m as big a part of the problem as non-development managers.

For me as a developer, and all other developers reading this, we have to make sure that we educate our managers.

We have to teach them concepts like:

• Deadlines cannot be set from the outside without input from the development team they are being imposed on.
• Sometimes, it just doesn’t come to you and you can’t force it.
• You can’t run most modern IDEs on crap hardware!

I’ve found that, in many cases, they can learn. They want to learn. They are PHBs because they’ve never been taught not to be. There are some that won’t learn or, worse yet, think you have a lot to learn about business. If you are under one of these and you work in America, change jobs! Life’s too short and the job market is too tight to deal with goobers like that.
Closing

To fix the present situation, we, as developers, have to make one of two choices. We can take a stand at our present jobs and educate upper management so that we don’t work for PHBs, or we can find other jobs. But make no mistake about it; it is ultimately up to us to fix the problem.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=

Cal Evans
Nashville, TN 37013
cal@calevans.com

My goal, my love, my passion in life, is to assist companies in deploying technologies that make a difference. These differences can affect their bottom line as well as their community.

Team Management

Professional Nerd Herder, experienced in building world-class software development teams.

Community Development

Experienced in building and managing developer communities.

Web based design and development

10 years experience in building dynamic, data-driven, interactive web sites based on the LAMP stack.

System Architecture

Experienced in building web based applications from small, open source projects to multi-million dollar mission critical applications.

Writing

Published author, podcaster and journalist.

Member of the 2010 php|architect advisory board.
Spoke at International PHP Conference 2009
Spoke at ZendCon 2009
Spoke at Codeworks Tour 2009 (all 7 cities)
Spoke at php|tek 2009
Program Chairperson/Hosted 2009 Dutch PHP Conference (DPC)
Program Chairperson/Hosted 2008 Zend PHP Conference and Expo (ZendCon)
Program Chairperson/Hosted 2007 Zend PHP Conference and Expo (ZendCon)
Spoke at 2007 Dutch PHP Conference, Amsterdam
Spoke at 2007 PHPUK Conference, London
Hosted 2006 Zend PHP Conference and Expo (ZendCon)
Spoke at 2006 php|works/db|works conference
Spoke at 2006 Apple File Maker Conference, closing keynote

• PHP
  PHP is my language of choice for building web based applications. I also use PHP for command line scripts as opposed to batch files or bash.
• Zend Framework
  Many projects are small enough so that a framework is not needed. However, when a framework is called for, I use the Zend Framework. I wrote the very first book on Zend Framework, I have been working with it on different projects since 0.2 and it is my tool of choice.
• MySQL
  After using everything from Sybase to MSSQL to Oracle, I find that I like the freedom that MySQL gives me.
• Linux
  I use Linux, specifically CentOS, for deploying systems in a production environment. I have been doing so for many years now and am comfortable with what it takes to properly configure and secure the environment.
• Windows
  I use Windows exclusively for my development environment and have even used it for internal production systems. I like where Microsoft is taking Windows server.

Independent Computer Consultant
01/89 – Present

Consulted for many customers over the past 20+ years building systems and web sites to enhance their bottom line.

Ibuildings
Utrecht, The Netherlands, 11/2008 – 12/2009

Director of the PCE
As the Director of the PHP center of Expertise, I have wide latitude to take on projects where I feel I can make a difference. Some of the highlights have been:

• Hosted the Dutch PHP Conference 2009
• Grew the Dutch PHP Conference while maintaining profitability
• Created, techPortal, the first PHP training blog targeting advanced PHP developers.

Zend Technologies, Inc.
Cupertino, CA, 06/2006 – 10/2008

Editor-in-Chief
At Zend, my duties were to write articles and tutorials about PHP for Zend’s DevZone. I was tasked to promote PHP to the technology community at large and Zend to the PHP community. Additionally I was responsible for managing the relationship between Zend and the PHP community. I moved quickly from Editor to Editor-in-Chief. In 2006, I was the Master of Ceremonies at the annual Zend PHP Conference and Expo and in 2007 and 2008 I was the Program Chairperson.

In my role at Zend, I have more than doubled the incoming traffic to DevZone in a year. Additionally, I started a PHP centric podcast called PHP Abstract. It has garnered wide acceptance in the community judging by the feed statistics.

As the program chair for ZendCon in 2007 and 2008, I was instrumental in shaping the course and content of the conference. I organized the first ever ZendCon Unconference.

RouTek, Nashville, TN
01/2006 – 03/2006

Senior Programmer
My duties at Routek include converting an existing VB application to VFP as well as extending existing web applications as needed.

Jupiter Hosting Inc., Santa Clara, CA
07/2005 – 12/2005

Director of Information Technology
My responsibilities as Director of Information Technology included hiring and firing responsibility for all IT personnel. I had budgetary responsibility for both the development team as well as the operations team. I managed the data center and was responsible for oversight as well as day to day operations. In addition to my management responsibilities, I also handled pre-sales technical questions and post-sales support for major clients.

Software Development Manager
My charter at Jupiter Hosting, Inc. was to build and manage the growing development team for both in-house and client-facing projects. I was responsible for locating, hiring and managing the development team.

SimpliHosting Inc., San Jose, CA
01/2005 – 06/2005

Chief Operating Officer
My focus at Simpli was to bring my 22 years of IT experience to bear. I initiated several infrastructure changes while working to streamline the ordering and billing operations.

• Led effort to audit billing system and locate customers who were not properly in the system.
• Managed a cage in Above.net data center with 200+ servers. Includes shared hosting servers, firewalls, dedicated servers, co-location servers, routers and power equipment.
• Responsible for all technical operations of the company.
• Managed a 24×7 support team.
• Improved efficiency in services offered that reduced number of support incidents and increased customer satisfaction.
• Wrote automated nightly backup system for shared servers.
• Implemented Nagios monitoring system for all corporate servers.

J & J Music, Chickasaw, AL
01/2002 – 01/2005

Director of Information Technology
As Director of Information Technology at J & J Music, my first priority was to stabilize the software that had been neglected for several years. Once stable, I was able to turn my attention to infrastructure details.

• Replaced Novell server with Linux/Samba
• Replaced 2 co-existing email systems with a single system
• Brought the email server in house,
• Spread their services across 3 Linux based servers to reduce risk,
• Built a backup system that allowed for automated, off-site backups and a hot-backup server
• Built a custom firewall and web caching system.
• Implemented Nagios monitoring system for all servers.

All of these infrastructure changes were built using whenever possible open source solutions and existing hardware.

The resulting system stabilized the infrastructure and reduced system wide downtime from approximately one day per week to less than 1 hour per month.

Martin Progressive – WebMD Nashville, TN (Contract)
06/2001 -01/2002

Principal Engineer
At WebMD, my primary function as Principal Engineer was to maintain and extend their web based claims processing system. My team managed the processes that handled both their batch and real-time processing. I gained experience in EDI, medical insurance claims processing, and integrating MS-SQL Server/VFP-COM/VB/IIS.

RHIC – Asurion, Nashville, TN/Houston, TX (Contract)
04/2001 – 06/2001

Project Manager/Senior Developer
At Asurion I oversaw the conversion of a major application from FoxPro 2.6 to VFP 6. Additionally, the database was moved from native FoxPro tables to SQL server. I was the lead developer as well as the project manager while working on this project.

InPHact, Nashville, TN
03/2000 – 04/2001

Nerd Herder
At InPHact I was hired to replace an existing application with one developed in house. I selected the core technologies that would be used. I built the development team necessary to create the application using the technologies selected. Finally, I filled the role of Senior Architect until I could hire one. The application was web based, we used Apache running on Solaris, Java with Tomcat and Oracle as the back end database.

Education Networks of America, Nashville, TN
02/99 – 02/2000

Director of Applications Development
While Director of Applications Development at ENA, I staffed two separate development teams. One building web based applications using Microsoft technologies. The other building back-end services, filters and network routing software based on Linux.

Each team had 3-5 members and was responsible for building pieces to assist in managing the network for all Tennessee School systems.

SCB Consulting Nashville, TN
04/98 – 02/99

Senior Analyst
As a Senior Analyst for SCB, I was assigned to the Tennessee Department of Mental Health/Mental Retardation. While there I worked on a variety of FoxPro and Visual FoxPro projects.

Express Media, Nashville, TN
09/97 – 04/98

Director of Management Information Systems (MIS)
While at Express Media, I was responsible for day-to-day operations, computer support and designing new systems to support the various needs of the company.

Christian Broadcasting Network, Virginia Beach, VA
2/95 – 09/97

Lead Developer and Analyst
I started at CBN as a Systems Analyst/Programmer working on FoxPro based systems. In 2.5 years, I was promoted 3 times to the eventual position of Team Lead. While a Team Lead, I managed teams who maintained and extended the mission critical “Partner Information” system. My teams also implemented the first handwriting recognition system at CBN and replaced the aging check processing system with new state-of-the-art hardware and software.

J & J Music, Chickasaw, AL
2/85 – 2/95

MIS Manager
At J & J I was tasked with maintaining and extending a Xenix based accounting system. For 6 years, I managed that system until it became apparent that PCs and networks would be a more cost-effective system. I selected the new platform and accounting system, oversaw the transition from the Xenix system to the new PC based accounting system, wrote all the data migration code and trained all the employees on the new system.

References Provided Upon Request