I don’t really talk about work much at all, so I’m not sure most of you know that my role at work has changed from being a coder to a manager. Unless you’re Pete Rose, you can’t be a player and a manager at the same time, and the same thing applies for programmers. While the skills are all there, I simply don’t have the time for it at work anymore. The more code I write, the less code I review and the less I talk to the people that work for me. That’s not good for anyone.
Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue because I would get my coding fix at home. Life has made that difficult this summer, but over the last few weeks I’ve decided to get back in the saddle, so to speak. I spent the last few weekends cleaning up my office which got pretty cluttered and messy over the pre-wedding month (worse than normal), reading books to brush up on new skills, and refresh old ones, and came up with a couple of small projects.
Today, I started actually writing code and came to a startling revelation: It’s been a LONG time since I’ve coded at home for something that wasn’t related to work. The single biggest indicator that I’ve stopped coding for myself: I had to upgrade XCode… XCode 2.1 that is.
That won’t sound like much to most of you, but lets just say those are over a year old. Included in that bundle are a lot of the core development tools like gcc. There was a point in my life that I would’ve been up on the latest release within a week or two of it coming out.
It’s part of the difference between being an alpha geek and an alpha employee, I think. Alpha employees only keep the toolset they use at work up-to-date, while an alpha geek would keep everything they want to know up to date. I’ve clearly turned into alpha employee, which, while not terrible, isn’t exactly how I see myself. It’s true that my core toolset for work is up to date, but even there I don’t have the latest Java preview release installed at home (Java 6.0 is out at ADC).
Some things can change back, though, and this is the weekend where it all begins. At least I have that over a baseball player… I get better at my job with age.
October 14th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
As a player-manager like Pete Rose, you’d also be making large bets on your team
Yes, I’m posting at 10pm on a Saturday. Yes, I’m at home alone. Yes, I’m working on a school project. Perhaps the management route isn’t as much fun as it looks? Nah. Fun project, and I fell behind because I went to too much recruiting.
October 14th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
I hear you. I’m home by myself. Heidi is actually having less fun, because she’s actually at work right now catching up on some grading. My mother-in-law was in town last weekend and she needed to get some extra work done.
Actually, she’s just come home. Subversion still isn’t done building, either… damn.
October 14th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
I’m hip-deep in cashflow projections and realizing that I’m not going to have enough gross margin to start up this business without a second equity infusion…unless I can get some cheap debt. In other words, my company isn’t compiling.
The downside: I still need to finish this business plan for my final project for the term. Sometimes school is easier than life