Do not send meeting invitations for a meeting in the next hour (or early the next business day) if you haven’t directly contacted me beforehand.  I won’t be there.

Do not invite me to a meeting in which I do not actively participate.  Instead,  just send me a recap via email.

Do publish meeting minutes and include Action Items with assigned responsibilities for meetings.

Do not invite me to daily status meetings.  I will be sending my status via email.  Better yet, I will be show you how use your project management tool of choice and run the canned report.

Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about my dream job.  Not that I’m not happy where I am right now, but what would make me really happy?  Just thought I’d share.

Company Feel – Excited or boring?  Does the company feel big or small.  I like to work in a fast-paced environment with a lot of control.  Others will like the warm, snugly feeling of a great big company will lots of bureaucracy and red tape.  What about the fringe benefits?  Do they have free beverages, Taco Tuesdays or do they sponsor a local user groups?  Are they located in a cool part of town, or do they allow working remotely?  These things can differentiate a good company from a great company.  I know some of these fringe benefits are kind of cliche these days, but they really do add to employee morale, especially that of a developer.

IT – Your IT team is there to support you in your work, not hinder.  Let’s face it, employees are still people and have obligations outside of work that need to be taken care of during work hours. Accept it.  Slow internet connections are simply unacceptable.  Things like site blockers take the “nanny for 9 yr olds” approach to adult management.  Instead of doing this, let everyone know that the internet is being monitored, and they will be fired if they use it improperly.

Management – Management is there to tow the company line.  But it can be done without severity.  Does management tend to say, “Hey, you were five minutes late!”, or “I saw you logged in last night at midnight, working on anything fun?”  Let’s face it, developers develop on their own time.  A great book that I read recently was Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, in which the author recognizes the necessity of a calm working block of time and the impracticality of getting one at work.  The best work environment (and hence the best manager) embraces this concept and allows you to work when it is best for you, yet still holding you to be accountable for promised work product.

Product Management – Do the product managers know what they provide?  Do they know their audience? or are they flying by the seat of their pants?  If they are, do they at least acknowledge that?

Executive Leadership (C-Level) – Does the highest level of management have a clue?  Or are they just blowing smoke?  Do they have an accurate view of what is going on at the lower levels?  A telltale sign that this is not happening is when product releases are delayed.  A good sign that this is happening is when you see them conducting 360 reviews, talking with people outside the C-level block, like investors, support staff, clerks, etc.

HR – I prefer to be a consultant and remove HR from the whole equation.  No one has your best interests at heart but you.  Earn your paycheck, and pay for your own damned healthcare.  Depending on your station in life, you may need to have company-sponsored healthcare.

Anyone with a compiler today can call themselves a programmer.  Some are doing it and don’t even realize that they are doing it (think Excel formulas).  But even narrowing the field down to those that make a living writing code, there is a great disparity in the quality of developers out there. Compared to  various other professional careers out there, software developers are vastly unregulated.  How can we tell (without extreme vetting and interviews) how good a developer an individual really is?

Engineer – An engineer can do the work.  She understands the basic and advanced levels of the work.  He knows the tools and knows how to do them.  In software engineering, this person does not need Google to write code.

Let’s begin with some definitions that help us understand Craftmanship:

Craftsman – A craftsman lives the life of their craft.  It is part of their being.  They know intimately the tools and materials that are available when building something from scratch. They know how to fix things the right way.  A craftsman intuitively knows when something is right.  This person learns and educates at the same time.  When I think of craftsman,  I immediately get this image in my head of some learned old dude in worn coveralls with a white beard, hunched over a tool, finely tuning that end product while dropping knowledge on some younger apprentice.  Craftsmen can just do their work without thinking, almost intuitively. Craftsmen mentor.  They educate.  They teach.

Levels – Many other professions regulate their membership.  These are the common levels of craftsmanship in organizations and professions like Masons, Doctors, Electricians, Engineers, Architects, Plumbers, HVAC, and others in which we place trust with our lives:

• Apprentice – Has identified an interest.  Studying, learning.  An apprentice must prove proficiency via testing and practice.  Must be supervised by a Journeyman. Membership at this level is usually a period of 3 or more years or classroom and practical experience.
• Journeyman – Can work alone at the direction of a Master.  Usually consists of 5,000+ hours of on the job training and hundreds of classroom hours.  Tested.
• Master –  10,000+ hours of experience.  Has been a journeyman for a certain time period.  Testing.  Proven track record.

Guild – An organization of members that facilitates and oversees the entire process.  A guild regulates and certifies its members, requires regular and ongoing professional training, and recommends professionals based on those certifications. 

What does the field of software engineering have today that satisfies the Craftmanship challenge?  In short, very little:

• Schools – let’s face it, from the 2 week programmer’s boot camp program to undergraduate and graduate school, these programs are all the same: A let down.  These organizations teach you a few skills, take your money, hand you a piece of paper, and wish you luck.  At best, these serve only a portion of the Apprenticeship requirement.
• ACM – I was a member of this organization when I was in college.  ACM leans a little more to the hardware engineering side of IT.  It is disappointing from the software engineering viewpoint.  Their levels fall short of a mastery certification or a process of development.  Membership levels  are based simply on years of membership and member endorsements.
• Software Craftmanship NA – Interesting conference.   But it’s only a 2 day conference. It is a good options for ongoing training learning.
• User groups/Meetups – Great ongoing learning opportunities
• Conferences – Also good opportunities for learning.  I especially like attending the community run conferences in my local area.

So why don’t we follow this same course in Software Engineering?  There is certification testing available:

• National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying
• PE exam in software dscipline

A Call to Action

So where are you along your journey?  Are you an apprentice, still trying to figure out if you like the  job?   Or are you just paying the bills so you hack out some code every few days?  Do you consider yourself a Master?  If so, why?