I was just rereading some of my posts from this blog, and I realize that it was born out of a desire to capture my thoughts as I ventured down the path on Android development. If you've read them, you probably picked up on the fact that I'm really a .NET developer. I "think" in C# when it comes to programming, and that's because I've been doing it for a long time and it's been burned into my brain. I think that every programmer has a "mother tongue", which is the language they think in.
But I wanted to take a moment here and get back to .NET. Because my resume and professional experience are so .NET heavy, I typically land myself in jobs that are .NET jobs. And my current position is no different. I've spent the last year and a half in ASP.NET MVC / JavaScript / CSS / SQL Server land. I am in the insurance sector writing line of business apps, and we use these tools because they help us just get stuff done.
I'm excited that Microsoft under Nadella have embraced open source, and made some shrewd business moves to attempt to remain relevant. I'm excited for selfish reasons, because in some ways I've hitched my wagon to Microsoft technologies with regards to my livelihood. I have no real loyalty to them, and I'm always intrigued by non-MS technologies (see previous posts). Tools are tools. Let's not get into a religious war because you like a 16" long claw hammer and I prefer an 18" curved claw hammer. At the end of the day, we're both just driving nails.
Over the past 20 years, I've flitted around different industries. And the more exposure I get to different businesses and domains, the more I believe that the technologists who add the most value are the ones who understand their customer.
I'm a believer that a good, battle tested developer can pick up a new tools very quickly and outperform mediocre ones who've been using the same tools for years. It's a shame that we still live in a world where hiring managers want to know how many years of technology X you have, rather than assessing what kind of problem solver you are. But I get it. Measure what's most easily measurable. But I would still love to work for a company that is not quite so lazy. Like, if a candidate lists git repos on their resume, maybe you should go take a look. How about a job interview over a beer where you can get a more pure signal for your bullshit meter to read?
Which really brings me to this: small companies and start ups are where it's at for me. The enterprise and it's heavy process rigamarole and constant fear of being sued creates an environment where the pay is decent, but the culture is one step removed from a government job. I don't mind engaging with MegaCorp, but it needs to be on terms and conditions where they act like a small company. For example, I'm in the middle of changing teams right now inside an enterprise-y company. But I'm going from a team that sits in an open office plan and must dress business casual, to a team that sits in a satellite office, wears jeans every day and has an impromptu work space setup using folding tables. Those kinds of details that may seem small to some, mean a great deal to me.
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