My Life

Why Every Geek Should have a “Side Project” (and why bosses should love ‘em for it)

Apr 07

About 8 months ago, a software idea hit me that I really wanted to work on. Like all ideas, it was based on a hypothesis. In this case, the hypothesis was “if understanding how you spent your time was braindead easy, you’d be a lot thoughtful about how you spent (and often wasted) your time.”

Unlike a lot of ideas, the feature-set required to test this hypothesis was simple enough that I (with a few friends) could set about to build it without interfering with my day job. So we did (should launch in beta form sometime in May).

One of the concerns as we moved forward was the perception that the executive team at Jobster (my employer) would have. Was I giving up on Jobster? Was I hedging my bets trying to participate in two startups at once? Would I cut-and-run the instant my side project took off? The answer is to these questions was an unqualified “no”, but I wasn’t sure I could count on the rest of the senior management team to feel the same way.

As I started being more aware of these concerns, I began to see that a lot of our heaviest-hittin’ technologists had projects on the side. Phil Bogle, our CTO, is the mastermind behind Beyond411. Morgan Schweers, one of our esteemed coders, has an ebay auction monitoring and sniping tool that has a dedicated following. Mark Swardstrom (though he recently left the company), works on a rails content management system in his off-time.

So, are side projects like these (and mine) a bad thing from an employers perspective? Absolutely not. Here are half a dozen from-the-hip-thoughts:

It flexes muscles you probably don’t use much. Oftentimes, the larger your company, the more specialized your role. Coders spend all day coding. Worse yet, they often spend all day coding using a very small set of technologies. Have a side project and all of a sudden you are using a MUCH bigger toolbox. And, if your side project has aspirations of revenue, you all of a sudden start thinking about…. (wait for it)…. Business. Marketing. Sales. Design. While I think specialists are incredibly valuable, having a passing understanding of the tasks and challenges that other folks on your team face will make you better at what you do.
It allows you to play with some bleeding edge stuff (if you want). You can try out technologies, interface ideas, and more without the risk you’d have in a more established company/product. You might just stumble onto something that would be valuable in the “real world”.
It adds to your “shelf life” as an employee by keeping you from burning out. Seems counterintuitive, but it’s the truth. Web geeks love technology. When they go home, they futz with technology. If they don’t have a side-project of some flavor (ANY flavor, really), they will futz with the same stuff they futz with at work. Work on ANY project/technology for 14 hours a day and you’ll burn out quicker. Work on something new/different when you get home, and it keeps you fresh. Of course, ideally, people would find a different hobby, get some exercise, spend time with other people, etc…
Side projects almost never “make it”. They almost never turn into a full-time job. Starting a company is extraordinarily difficult, and success is rare. Stats vary, but only about 20% of first time businesses last 5 years or more. This chance gets pretty close to ZERO when the founder is only working on it on off-hours. Most realistic people aren’t aiming for the home run when they dive into side projects.
It might make a little bit of money. This is great for the geek– extra money is always fun to play around with. It’s also great for the boss– the more financially comfortable someone is, the less likely they are to start entertaining job offers based simply on the payscale.

As web technologies become cheaper and faster to develop in, it’s only natural to see more and more ideas fall into the “we can pull this off in a few long weekends” category. It will be interesting to see how many web geeks dive in… And how their bosses react.

Forgive your Customers and They’ll Forgive You (a lesson learned at SXSW)

Mar 24

The first day of SXSW was largely dedicated to picking of your badge (and getting a picture taken for it) and picking up your bag o’ schwag. The act of getting the badge involved standing in a HUGE line, riding up two escalators, standing in another line, getting my picture taken, and then waiting in a mob to hear someone call out my name. Then I had to go to another line to get my “big bag” (mostly advertisements). Once I got my badge, my friend and I looked up where we needed to go to find one of the two panels that was offered for the day (it was the panel on “Snakes on a Plane”). I believe the room numbers was 10ABCD. We dug around in the Official SXSW Program and eventually found a map (it was challenging– the advertisement to content ratio was pretty damn outrageous). We finally found the room where the panel was supposed to be and found that it was dead empty which, given the hordes of geeks at the Austin Convention Center, seemed suspicious. So, we hoofed back to the mail area.

The next logical step seemed to be to find a SXSW employee (there were a bunch of “volunteers” – I don’t know exactly why they’d volunteer). I approached a table marked information, where there were 4 people helping a single attendee. Well, to be honest, it was 1 person helping a single attendee which the three others watched with interest. I stood there expecting one of them to break away to see what I needed, but they never did. I was eventually told that the panel had moved to a different room than the one on the printed schedule that we had. Odd that they hadn’t bothered to put a note on the door. We finally made it to the panel (a bit late).

On any other day, it would have been an annoying way to spend an afternoon. As a guy who tends to be a bit of a usability zealot, inefficiencies and sloppy systems tend to really set me off. But the energy of the conference was overwhelming. I was thrilled to just be there and too excited about the coming days to get bitchy about the low level of service that I’d experienced.

That night I tried to get a full night’s sleep. Unfortunately, I’d just gotten back from a long vacation in New Zealand, so my internal clock was off by 6 hours… not just the three it normally would have been coming from Seattle. I slept terribly, woke up late, and rushed out the door.

And I forgot my badge.

After breakfast and coffee downtown, we headed to the convention center. I was confident they wouldn’t turn me away without a badge. After all, they’d made me wait 45 minutes the day before just so they could get my picture– they KNEW what I looked like. I’d registered early, so my name was certainly on file. And I had a pile of photo identification to choose from. But, turn me away they did.

I was pleasant. I owned up to the fact that it was MY fault. I mentioned the fact that I had just gotten back from New Zealand and was really hurting for sleep (true). I mentioned the fact that the hotel that my company had booked was 20 minutes and a $25 cab ride ($50 round trip) away from downtown (true). I expressed concern over missing the first panel session.

None of it phased the (bored looking) registration “volunteer”. “You’re out $350 [the cost of the conference] if you can’t find it.”

On the cab ride back to the hotel, the previous day all came back to me. All of the petty annoyances that I had happily forgiven started REALLY pissing me off. And, quite honestly, I was pretty slow to forgive SXSW for continued inefficiencies and annoyances throughout the rest of the conference. I still had a good time and I still learned a lot. But, like a powerful web site that has a crappy UI, it really tarnished the experience.

As I reflect on this experience, I think it really generalizes to a lot of aspects of software development and customer service. The cost of forgiveness is often very low, and a touch of forgiveness towards your users can go a long damn way.

Back to Blogging… Will it Stick?

Mar 16

So I’m diving back into blogging.

My longest stint as a blogger was for a few months while Brian Fioca and I were working on Jobby. My blogging efforts there were pretty pragmatic and business-centric. My reasons were limited to communicating to users (to let them know that we were frantically responding to their feature requests) and gunning for press/attention with a bit of blatant link-baiting (which turned out to be quite a bit easier than I’d imagined).

Once we sold to Jobster, there was already an army of Jobster bloggers filling these roles. Jason (CEO) and Phil (CTO) were both active bloggers, and we also had an official jobseeker blog to communicate with our users. And, of course, we had just purchased recruiting.com which, at that time, was a blog about recruiting.

I was out of reasons to blog. I didn’t feel didactic and certainly didn’t feel like talking about Web 2.0 (which, apparantly, I should add to my resume).

So what prompts the return?

First of all, I find myself far away from the people that I’ve spent the last decade with. I’m not sure how many of them want to keep tabs on me and what I’m thinking about/working on, but here’s an opportunity for them to do so if they do.
Second of all, I find myself having some things to write about. Ideas about design, user experience, customer service, running a web business, and more. You’ll see some of these in the coming weeks.
And third, there have been some recent goings-on at Jobster that I’d like to add my voice to.
Fourth, as I interact with other geeks from other startups, I realize I have something to offer. I’ve had a few email exchanges with folks who have told me that I was damn helpful. Wow. How cool is it that I could just type something, and help someone with their business? Andy Sack, who started Judy’s Book, says about blogging, “The more you put in, the more you get out.” I’d like to see if I can get this feedback loop by putting some in.
Finally, I’ve got a project that I’m working on (on the side– not plans to have this interfere with my work at Jobster) that I’d like to start talking about.

So, welcome back to my brain (but don’t get tooooo comfortable).