Comments on: Will Work For … Nothing?

By: Visitor

Visitor — Tue, 08 May 2007 06:02:08 +0000

Thank you David for pointing that out. “Lead by example” they say. You just made my ‘aha!’ moment. From now on, I’m going to click on all of the ads on all the blog sites I visit. These people are sharing what they’ve got and that is the least we can do

By: David

David — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:29:41 +0000

C’mon people, click on some of poor Johnny’s ads. Johnny, I’m clicking every visit. We’re here for you dude.

By: bgriswold

bgriswold — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:12:48 +0000

Bruce, thank you for throwing in your two cents. I think you are onto something with setting some “ground rules” up front. And I do believe it is a good idea to emphasize words like “career” and “future” when discussing my extra-curricular activities.

Also, it’s funny you should write “only if your wife is a coder herself can she understand…” She was a coder, but she converted to project management. And in spite of this, I still married her. Can you believe it?

By: Bruce Dunwiddie

Bruce Dunwiddie — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 02:29:13 +0000

Sure there’s a way to gauge productivity, but it’s based off your goals. Don’t confuse this with business projects and gauging programmers productivity at meeting customer requirements. Here, you’re talking about your life goals. When your wife married you, her goals were probably to have a nice stable husband that makes a nice income, doesn’t waste their life in the bars, and cares about the family. Rate your success/productivity against her marriage goals. My guess is that if you’re like most of us, your income exceeds any expectation she could have had at the time, unless you just got married, you spend time with your computer instead of out at the bars, and you’ve held a consistent job the entire time. I’ve got friends who from my opinion let their wifes control entirely too much of their career. I feel that only if your wife is a coder herself can she understand all the nuances of the career path you’ve chosen. If you’ve done your part at meeting her expectations for your marriage, then she should leave you alone as to how you actually go about accomplishing it. I also think your wife is trying to compare the programmer’s career life to other people’s lives that have just jobs. I would doubt that she could come up with very many highly paid successful career minded workers in general, that don’t spend a majority of their free time trying to fine tune their craft, at the expense of other parts of their life I’m sure. I would suggest however that you make a point of leaving work everyday at the same rough time to split up the job from the career. It seems to me like my wife is a lot happier just having me at home rather than sitting at work. I’ve made an agreement with her that I won’t work a day job more than say 45 hrs a week, and I won’t do hourly side jobs for under a certain hourly pay, and very few of those even. Instead, I spend my time at home on the computer working on career/future oriented projects, things that will hopefully somehow improve our lives down the road. This is where I would put all your side activities into. She should be able to trust you that if you’re spending time not focusing on your family, that you see a reason for it, and not have to fully understand how. Now when the wife claims a family day, you better just shut down the computer and forget about being a programmer for the day. Just my perspective on things.

By: bgriswold

bgriswold — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:18:56 +0000

Haacked: My wife said you provided a “great response.” With a wink, she then asked me why I didn’t just say what you said in the first place.

Jon: Susenn said your response was “just okay.” She then sent a virtual smile and wink your way.

Gentlemen, thank you (from me) for the feedback. I especially appreciate that you took the time to write enough to make up your own full post yet you both chose to leave YOUR work on MY blog. It further demonstrates your dedication to sharing and giving [back] to the community.

By: Jon Galloway

Jon Galloway — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 07:24:23 +0000

I’ll throw in my bullet points, the maybe fill this out into a full post some time:
1. Working publicly (publishing code, blogging, etc.) forces you to really know your stuff. There’s a huge difference between Googling a few links on a technology and presenting it before educated peers.
2. There’s nothing like shipping and supporting code to really hone your craft. There’s only so much of that you can do in any day job. Shipping code on your own time can double the experience you’d have compared to your peers. More people have used my open source code than code I’ve written on the job by a factor of at least a hundred, and that doesn’t count code I’ve posted on my blog.
3. Passionate developers blog and contribute to open source project because they can’t stop learning and building when the 5 o’clock whistle blows. Blogging and working on open source projects puts you in a position where you’re routinely working with passionate developers.
4. Like I said before, passionate developers are going to be goofing of on the computer in their off hours anyways. Why waste your time on throwaway code when you can be productive as part of a community?
5. A blog and references from open source projects are getting to be more recognized as valid job experience. If you’re working on your own, it may bring you work.
6. You can actually make money by giving things away for free. I’m making a little over $200 a month from pretty minimal ads on my blog. That’s not a ton, but I’m not sure I’d do any better by trying to sell code I’ve written as products. I know some friends who make a lot more than that with a little more frequent blogging, too. The same goes for open source code – there are a lot of success stories for projects which have graduated to a free / premium model, or people who make a good living selling integration or customization for their open source projects.

By: Haacked

Haacked — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:07:47 +0000

Perhaps you should try the "Community Service" angle. If you spent a day at the beach picking up garbage as part of a community service project, is that giving away the "product" for free? By writing on your blog or contributing to an open source project, you contribute to the collective pool of knowledge. Consider the fact that you already make use of this knowledge every time you search Google or Google Groups during the course of your paid work. Why not give back? Also, don't underestimate the networking and job recruiting benefits. Hiring is challenging, so having a blog helps your case for more progressive interesting companies looking to hire. 37Signals, for example, points out that open source contributions is a great way to judge potential candidates. Through my work on open source software, I'm not only being put in touch with great software developers to hire, but great clients interested in the work we're doing.