summer cleanup

work on the blog, thoughts on contract development in an economic downturn.

it’s been a while since i’ve put any real work into this site, and an argument could be made as to whether or not i still have.

here’s what i put on the plate this week:

1. tweets are smaller, more streamlined, and better fitted into a microblogging format.
2. now loading links from delicious and images from flickr. in other words, i decided to put in feed reading.
3. abstracted out the content items a little further, for the sake of drying up some of the presentation layer.
4. added a sections facility. this is mostly done.

the downturn

how can i do this? where do i get this free time? i don’t have any. i mostly have nervous energy. haven’t had a steady contract in a few months now, and piecemeal is not cutting it. there’s some difficulty, because of a seeming change in attitude in the industry.

i attribute this largely to the perceived uncertainty in the market. when instability is the problem, most backward business thinkers believe the answer is more control. this is false. the answer is adaptability. but c-level execs and project managers are control-oriented by and large, and when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

effects:

1. no one seems to be comfortable with remote work at the moment. i’m attributing that to penny-pinching execs who think remote workers play on facebook all day, and don’t trust anyone they can’t put under their thumb. i’ve worked comfortably remotely for years, and that on an all-inclusive rate for getting to meetings at my own expense. pairing remotely is easy. the internet makes collaboration pleasantly straightforward. even so, businesses still seem to want to live in 1990.
2. permanent positions are all the rage. this is a clever deception—there is no such thing as a permanent position. the ‘permanent position’ is a way to look like you’re promising someone security, without actually giving then any. i prefer contracts; they’re more honest. let me worry about my health care and investments, i’m just here to work. contracts, especially short-term ones are harder and harder to find.
3. hr and legal are getting more and more nervous about projects outside of the 9-5. i use independent projects for two reasons: 1) i can use a project to learn a new technology without waiting for the workplace to catch up, and 2) should one of them take off, i can either cash it out or write my ticket. yet there remains this idea that you should only be working on the Product, for the Company, and that anything else is heresy.

i like to work, and i like to learn, and we all dream of our lives being a little easier with a few fewer worries.

these trends in the industry mean that those folks like me are having a hard time finding a home in the workplace.

employers seem to be looking for local, long-term people who aren’t working on anything else, and don’t have any interest in the edge.

here’s what i’m looking for: a forward-thinking company that’s adaptable, creative, and doesn’t care where i am, what i’m wearing, or what i’m doing with my free time, so long as my code is solid, efficient, and maintainable.

no idea why that’s hard to find, but it is.