It has just recently come to my attention that Udi will soon be running his advanced distributed systems design course in Austin Texas with Jeffrey Palermo’s crew at Headspring. I was fortunate enough to take this very course earlier this year in Australia and I can truly say that my thinking, planning, designing and output have all been enhanced in the most profound ways since doing so, it was one of those great eye opening experiences that can move you to another plane of thinking.
Judging from the course outline on Udi’s site, it would appear that some new material has found it’s way onto the syllabus (I’m jealous), which covers Ultra High scaling possibilities by leveraging REST and after hearing Udi’s podcast on that topic I think I have a feel for what that promises and can only say that I wish I could make the trip to the US to be there.
Whilst I gained enormously from the SOA and DDD content, I also took away some wonderful stuff from the ‘Smart Client’ sections of the training. My team have been using our own home grown MVP framework for some time now and Udi certainly expanded our thinking there, particularly with regard to multi threading issues - greatly useful stuff.
When I had the privilege of sitting through this training I did so with my team and cant say enough about how it invigorated, improved and turbo charged the mind-set and output of all who attended. Udi is a very skilful presenter and a wonderful teacher and significantly has amassed some great wisdom that anyone who is serious about building Service Oriented systems should go out of their way to experience and imbibe. If your in Austin Texas or anywhere in the United States for that matter, I thoroughly recommend you take this course, it is worth far more than the advertised price. Prepare to have some of your beliefs challenged and come with a spirit of learning and you will enjoy the rewards - I know I have and so have many of my colleagues. I know that I personally often find enormous value in listening and learning from people of the quality of Udi and Randy, so imagine spending a week in the company of one such teacher!!!
What do you look for when interviewing developers. It’s a question that every manager needs to consider when hiring new staff and there are always a number of questions to ask, on both the technical and cultural aspects. I am not going to talk about the ‘culture fit’ (gratuitous HR terminology) here at all and the only technical aspect under consideration in this post is to do with how much effort I can see the candidate putting into self improvement and what level of interest they have in their profession.
How it works.
The 
idea behind ’semi invested’, revolves around only being interested enough to do the absolute (or close enough to) minimum in self development, or in harbouring a belief system that requires personal growth be the responsibility of the anyone else but yourself. I am not making excuses here for employers who do not invest in the their staff’s growth through training, but I don’t believe that it’s entirely the purview of the employer to be responsible for individual learning and growth.
So what is self development and how does it manifest? I usually start the quest in understanding how career invested developers are by asking, what was the last programming book you read? And quickly followed by when did you read the book? Here is a more complete list of questions that I ask (under interview and from time to time with staff) to get a feel for how much thought is going into self improvement.
How to find out.
- What Technology or Development newsletters do you subscribe to?
- Whose blogs do you follow?
- What magazines do you buy?
- Which Podcasts do you listen to?
- Which Webcasts do you watch?
- What user groups do attend?
When I get a positive answer to one of these questions, it can quite often lead to a good discussion as to where the perceived and or real value is in utilizing the content found on or in the method chosen and how each individual turns the exercise into a positive learning experience. If I get a negative response on all fronts and that is to say that the individual in question apparently has no interest and invests no time in the professional world around them (given that they proffer no alternatives), then it’s generally a pretty short interview.
Life wasn’t meant to be easy (who said that?)
Now if I sound as though I am being a little harsh on your average Joe or Joanne developer, well then so be it, I make no apologies. Its my goal to ensure that I have encouraged my teams to be as interested as possible in what they and their colleagues do for a living and my experience tells me that groups of ‘invested’ individuals flourish together and grow into great teams and this leads to great software.
Occasionally people ask me if I miss being in the Music Industry and sometimes the answer surprises people. Software development and music production share many things in common, therefore I don’t miss the music job too much because Software development can be such a creative business and I find that side of my personality is being fulfilled.
What I do miss about music is the musicians (sometimes) and the whole bunker warfare of recording studio. Everyone huddled inside a dark space with LED lights flashing constantly and the constant musical debate.
Unsurprisingly many musicians (not sure on the percentage per`se, but lets call it ‘many’), find themselves career swapping into IT. I tend to think that because music can be such a hard place to earn a reasonable living, that many artsy types opt for software development because it is creative and offers better remuneration prospects (comparatively speaking).
To back this assertion up, I remember being asked to attend a focus group of sorts (back when I was studying in a private institution) and answering some marketer questions about product choices with respect to training providers. I did note that one of the marketing group remarked that a high number of musicians are in the development business and that they (the marketers) target that group specifically in the advertising and marketing materials. I wonder how many of the good developers are the musos? Nah maybe not! How many good developers are now musos, maybe that would be a more interesting question?
