Are We Hippies or Soldiers?
I’ve been fortunate enough to employ my software development skills in a few different environments. It’s good to see the world from different angles, but I also pay my respects to those who find their niche early on and just stick with a company they enjoy.
It should be self-evident, but one system doesn’t fit all, and some people thrive in a type of environment that others despise. Enjoyment aside, what kind of group-think, on average, actually results in the best deliverables? At the end of the day, will the company make enough money to maintain?
Joins or Joints?
I’ve partied with the hippies, the discoverers, exploring code and formulating new software religion by bumping heads along the way. It’s obviously a fairly discursive environment, with lots of debate and no shortage of opinions. Flexi-time is par for the course, with wear-what-you-want, and as for drug use, the celebration of coffee came as close to crossing the border as a daredevil East-Berliner.
Efficiency is the biggest challenge, which might seem counter-intuitive to someone working there. In such a fluid environment, whenever you encounter a technology that makes your neck hairs bristle, the prevailing mind-set is to reinvent it. I’m grossly generalising, but when you keep reinventing wheels you lose as much time as you gain.
We spent so much time exploring new tech and tack, changing formulas, abandoning dead ducks and over-debating method names that I would ultimately have recommended some of the customers to other firms. It was fun for a while, but your thirst for your productivity remains unquenched.