What motivates you to excel?
Is it something intrinsic, or an external influence? To answer my own question, it simply takes interesting projects to motivate me to do good work. The trouble comes when there is no real work available.
Things have been very quiet in the Angus world. In consequence, things have been very quiet on this blog. With 2 genetic defects recently discovered in the Angus breed, the breeders have postponed their usual sales as they scramble to test their animals. Add a recession as the cherry on top and you have one very quiet company.
June and July are typically quiet months for this business anyhow. What makes it unbearable is the side projects drying up. Every summer and every quiet period between breeders’ sales, I have made a mad dash to work on or finish up a side project. They have varied from posting the sale books online efficiently to improving our web sites en masse to solving the Photo department’s cataloging issues to building prototype web apps to campaigning for improved Angus Journal and Angus e-Classifieds sites.
With no side projects to focus my energy on, the boredom is driving me up the wall. I like identifying high-level problems and solving them. There are plenty of problems left to solve, I just keep running into a wall of red tape and No! answers. My nose hurts and the last wall nearly broke my glasses. 
Since there aren’t any interesting projects going on, I’ll share a few good links instead:
- For recent graduates and anyone looking for an unconventional road to changing careers, try Recession Proof Your Career, by Charlie Hoehn [via I Will Teach You To Be Rich].
- If you’re looking for deep, thoughtful writing, try any of Paul Graham’s essays. Pick one at random. You won’t be disappointed.
- Inspiration and instructions on how to live simple.
Working with Flex 3
Predictable as ever, requests for updates to our clients’ sites are picking up as everyone gears up for the Spring Sale season. It’s comforting to see that demand hasn’t slowed, despite the media’s constant attention on lost jobs and drooping sales.
From 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I do updates. It’s dull work, but I’m grateful nonetheless. It’s become dull because there are only 15 sites left that need migrated from GoLive to Dreamweaver and 5 of them won’t count, since I plan on rebuilding them anyway. I stick to the daily grind because of an agreement with Rich: if I want to work on projects during busy season, I have to do updates during regular hours and the fun projects during overtime hours. I have to admit, it’s a nice managerial trick to keeping me focused and motivated to do what I have to do.
So why do I look forward to after hours work? Because we just bought Flex Builder 3
and four
Moving on, I’m another step closer to creating a web-based Flash Media Encoder. Currently it’s a free app available from Adobe for Windows XP/Vista only – with no Mac support, which is why I am building my own. I have built a small receiver, so users can watch a live stream that we broadcast out. It’s for learning and testing purposes only, so there aren’t any regular live streams happening. Next I’ll be working on building the broadcaster. Just getting the broadcaster to RUN is my first goal. Beyond that, I’ll work on auto-detecting bandwidth levels, error/exception handling, and handling multiple requests for the live stream.
The main goal is to have a functional prototype ready to use during the National Junior Angus Show. So my first big project due date is Sunday, July 19. I hope I can meet the deadline!
An Ideal Employer
I fell down a rabbit hole and found an interesting article that reminds me of the intangibles that led me to working here. Sam at CodeOdor.com writes about the Top 6 Non-Monetary Features I Want In An Employer.
Truly food for thought if you are looking for a new job or currently interviewing with a new employer.
The list that really strikes a chord with me is the comment left by Rob Wilkerson. A reprint below, since I can’t link directly to his comment:
Wow. Something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, so here comes a bit of stream-of-consciousness:
1. Interesting work. Yeah, I know it looks like a blatant rip-off, but I want – and frankly expect – to enjoy my work more often than not. I’ve _often_ taken pay cuts (albeit relatively minor ones) to do interesting work. This one’s non-negotiable.
2. Trust. Again, another rip-off, but another must. Trust me to administer my own machine. Trust that he company will get (usually far) more than the required 40 hours from me when I’m not chained to my desk. Trust my management to spot abuse. Trust me to spot abuse by those who report to me.
3. Flexibility. This dovetails nicely with trust, but allow me to come and go – within reason – as I please. Understand that when I’m working from home, I’m _really_ working from home; I’m not “working from home”. Understand that when you see me reading feeds rather than writing code, it’s not whimsical. I’m reading stuff that will, hopefully, make me better at what I do because I enjoy what I do and because I’m a professional.
4. Casual Atmosphere. I’m a developer. I spend most of my day at my desk engineering and coding solutions. I’m not in board meetings. Don’t make me dress to impress. There’s no one to impress. Don’t tell me that dressing professionally makes me act more professionally. The fact that I’m a professional makes me act professionally. That I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt doesn’t confuse me into thinking I’m hanging with buddies at a bar. I recognize the office scenery. Seriously.
5. Productivity Focus. You tell me what you need done. As long as I’m getting it done satisfactorily, don’t jerk me around about the fact that I left a little early last Thursday. Put down the abacus and the time sheets.
6. Competent Management. I can live with incompetent co-workers because I can avoid them for the most part. I can’t live with incompetent management. My rules for managers follow: know what you don’t know, be okay with what you don’t know, understand that I don’t expect you to know everything, recognize that 90% of your job is to know who to ask when a question arises about one of those things you don’t know and then trust my input when I’m asked about the things that I know. Simple.
A lot of these things boil down to this: treat me like an adult and like a professional unless I do something to indicate that I’m not one or the other.
Posted by Rob Wilkerson
I think these are reasonable demands, but sadly it exists in too few work places. When I interviewed for my job here, my immediate supervisor seemed to embody all of these ideas. The real disappointment came later, when I realized that the higher ups did not.
Have anything to add to the discussion? Stop by and leave a comment.
Participating in the My Success Event
I know things have been pretty quiet on this site. I have been training a new person and attempting to keep up with busy season. My co-worker and I were invited to participate in the My Success Event this year, so I’m pulling together materials that will help me demonstrate my job and responsibilities.
A description of the My Success Event and its goals:
Designed to attract high school sophomores, the My Success Event aims to help retain as many young people as possible to meet the workforce needs of employers in the St. Joseph / Northwest Missouri area. To achieve this goal, the event will help students discover multiple possible career paths and provide area businesses an opportunity to promote quality jobs.
I used to scoff at the idea that I would need speaking and presentational skills. My train of thought used to be, “I’m going to be a web developer. Why would I ever have to give a speech? It’s not like I’m working at Google! And I’ll never have to talk to a customer, so why would I ever have to do a presentation?” Now I understand. Thanks to my past laziness in speech and classroom presentations, I have to work twice as hard at it today.
Don’t fall for the same stupidity as I did. I have been asked to give presentations for students in college and high school; asked to give a speech at an Angus event; asked to give impromptu speeches to clients who regularly tour the Angus Productions Inc. building; and I have even been asked to give long technical explanations over the phone to (gasp!) clients.
Give me a new server-side language or web technology any day. It is by far the easier task when compared to public speaking. Learning to speak clearly, offering concise examples and projecting confidence are skills I have been forced to work the hardest on, for the last two years. Who knew?
Web Services is Growing
A part-time Web Associate has been hired to help us with the web site updates. Film at 11.
