The Perfect Engineer

For reasons that should be shortly entirely obvious, I have been thinking about job interviews. It was so bad that instead of typing "routes.rb" while looking for a file, I typed "resume.rb". Heh.

And, in thinking about this I realized what I think companies want out of the perfect engineering candidate.

We've had a good deal of changes where I work. Let me state right now that I have a tremendous amount of confidence in the leadership, their vision and the work that we're doing. However, when things change, folks get all shook up. First, after a sizable push to get new infrastructure up and running on an accelerated schedule, we lost a bunch of folks. Some were contractors that wrapped up and others were stalwart members who accomplished something really great and felt it was time to move on to new challenges.

Then, we had a change in team leadership. This caused more unrest and another flurry of departures. Although we're looking for replacements, they are hard to come by and a linear extrapolation of our head count over the past year shows no one left by next July. We mostly look at that downward progression as gallows humor.

So, thinking about my departing colleagues and having had to do due diligence myself, it occurred to me that companies seem to be looking for an engineer with the following qualifications:

• Amazing Abstract Thinker: Software architecture, design and algorithms
• Rock-Solid Concrete Contributor: Code structure, comments, testing, source code control, branches, merging. Master of multiple languages
• Top-Notch Manger of the User Experience: Site flow design, UI design, HTML, CSS, JavaScript implementation
• Unshakable Foundation Provider: Schema architecture, database configuration, SQL wizard across multiple databases both commercial and open source
• Deployment Master: development, staging and production system configuration and management, deployment processes and scripts
• Systems Genius: Unix, OS/X, Windows, Networks and OS internals
• Unparalleled Business Analyst: Business needs analysis, specifications, requirements documentation, feature prioritization, cost estimation, ROI projections
• Zen Guru: personable, calm, professional, communicative, approachable, polite and respectful, unflappable
• Project Management Prodigy: team management, task estimation, assignment, prioritization, budgeting, conflict resolution, risk management
• Strategic Wonder: project current business realities into future business needs and align technical infrastructure, staff and supporting resources to meet tomorrows needs today.
• Workaholic: Put in a solid 40 hour week plus full time availability for emergencies and fire-fighting
• Hero: Take critical business needs and urgent projects, pull out all the stops and deliver them ahead of all expectations
• Inexpensive: after all, we're just talking about friggin' writing code for a web site. How friggin' hard can that possibly be? Plus, there are a ton of engineers and they're easy to please. Give 'em a fast computer and lots of free food and they're fine.

Ja, this is pretty snarky. But as I review it, I'm gonna stick by it. I recently realized that I started managing folks when I was 16 and ran a ballet studio for the summer while the owners were traveling out of the country. I've been doing this management stuff for over 30 years. Holy cow!

BTW, I can lay legitimate and concrete claim to most all of the aspects identified above and feel darn good about that. However, I've worked with a lot of folks and know that really good engineers are really hard to find; may be 1 out of 20. They have the ability to sustain an entire company and turn it around on a dime as needed.

Like I said, I feel good about where I am. I know the value I bring and know that I continue to work with some very talented engineers whom I respect tremendously. I also know that I would be hard pressed to replace them and hope I don't have to any time soon.

Deja Rue - I know again that I will regret this

Chatting with a colleague about parenting. He says, "You know how you're always talking about how much you like your kids? Well, I've gotten to that point!" "Oh," says another colleague, "your kids are finally interesting?" "Yes, " responds the first, "they're old enough to be interesting now. My wife and I aren't talking about orphanages so much any more."

I chime in, "I think you're up to at least 150, maybe 200."

My colleague is puzzled and it appears on his face.

"Thousand dollars in psychotherapy bills to help your kids recover" I clarify.

Comprehension dawns on the first as the second says, "Oh, sure, as in 'I just ruined the kid for month with that!'"

"Yes, " I agree, "we call that 'deja rue', as in 'Once again, I know that I'll regret this.'"

Things not to say to the customer

Yes, I know this is irreverent, but I'm a bit punch happy, so here are some ideas about things that one should not say to the customer. Especially one who has been pretty good about getting slow support.

• After banging on this product for over a year, we’ve moved on emotionally, spiritually and strategically. The product is going to phased out soon and we’re really busily focused on doing things that generate a whomp-load more revenue right now. So, for right now, we’re just plugging our ears with coffee grinds and ignoring the problem
• My apologies for the delay. My mom says I shouldn’t talk to you.
• Thanks for following up on this. Unfortunately the work to dig into the product issues has temporarily been put on an indefinite hold.
• My apologies but a traumatic brain injury has wiped out all my memories and knowledge of who you are and what you do. Could we start over?

Clearly, someone in Sales needs to pick up the phone. Hello, Sales? Um, Sales?

Ah. They're out, erm, networking.

This is the way to blog!

I was reading some of the product management blogs I like -- the ones that aren't so darn dry that you can fart in your sleep and immolate yourself. Aaaand, I came across this beauty of a blog: The Cranky PM.

She is irreverent, on-the-mark, and funny, funny, funny.

Whoo! Damn that's good stuff.

Power equipment is not always suitable

File this under "Note to self: consider using the shovel to find the paper under the snow instead of the snowblower"

Humor for Programming Geeks

I have been viewing and reading these and would like to share them; they make me laugh a lot.

RailsEnvy.com Commercials. These are a series of spoof ads that take off from the Apple Mac/PC schtick.

If programming languages were religions... from the Aegisub blog walks us through a number of programming languages and assigns them to religions. This works on oh so many levels.

The inspiration for "If programming languages were religions..." was the "If programming languages were cars..." blog post. I love the first lisp entry. Oh, and PHP, that made me howl.

Go ahead, look for your favorite languages there.