This is about me wanting to track the flight status of my parent’s airline that just came in from Cali. Of course I could go to the American Airlines website, which by the way is at aa.com, but that seemed like a lot of work when Google is my default homepage. So I thought I would just type in the flight information and hope Google would give me a direct link to the flight status page.

Google’s response surprised me with the following:

Wow. Thanks, Google!

…That is, more educated in the formal sense. I think nothing can replace real world experience. However, one of the questions that have been on my mind for the past year or so is if I should be going back to school. I’m 24 and I got a couple of years of work experience under my belt. I recently got engaged. If there was ever a time to go back to school, now seems like as good of a time as any.

If I decided to go back to get more education, should I go for a Masters of Science or an MBA? In the industry I’m in, I find that a Masters in Computer Science or Engineering is not really rewarding as it was for my dad’s generation from a career perspective. Today’s smart IT employers focus on what you’ve done, created, or built more than what you have studied in a classroom or years of work experience (which I think is great). I think if I go back to school for a Masters, my reasons for going would be to surround myself with smart hackers and really dig deep into exciting research. I strongly believe that to get the most out of Masters program, you need to be there for the right reasons. Go back to school to learn more, not to get ahead in a career.

On the other hand, an MBA seems much more of a career booster and would give me the businessy-types of skills that I haven’t been formally trained with. The part about this that doesn’t excite me is all the finance and accounting kinda courses that I don’t seem myself really leveraging in my career path. That side of things doesn’t really get me excited. Plus, all of my friends that are taking MBA courses say that it’s nothing special. It’s just going to be another thing you put on your resume. Which might not be such a bad thing, but for me it doesn’t seem to make sense right now to pursue that avenue.

I would love to hear from people on their reasons for choosing to pursue higher education or choosing not to or choosing to postpone it until further notice.

As for me, I think I’ll postpone until further notice. There’s so much more for me to learn through real work experience and my natural curiosity of emerging technologies.

I wish you Happy Happiest Day of the Year.

As my final days with kajeet approached, I seem to be more productive than I think I was in awhile. I really was in support mode so I didn’t have a large number of tasks on my plate. I used this extra time to do some engineering-inspired projects (as opposed to business initiatives). In something that reminds me of Google’s 20% time, I was able to work on projects that meant something to me personally.

I prototyped a single-sign-on application. I built an application based off an idea our engineering team had months ago but never had the time to act on. It got demoed and was received well by the company. It took less than 16 man hours to build and business saw value in it. Hopefully, it will be officially launched.

After doing this, I am a fan of the 20% time. Being able to work on things you’re passioniate about and sharing it with others is, well, the whole idea, isn’t it?

I hope to see more companies, especially startups, adopt this practice. The engineers are happy and the return on investment is tremendous. Of course, this only works if you have an awesome engineering team, people that truly love to code. That shouldn’t be a problem though, you don’t really want the other kind of engineer.

Anyways, back to the point of this post. Leaving jobs is a stressful time. You worry if you are making the right decision. You worry if the relationships you’ve developed are going to continue. You worry if you will get to play ping pong at work..oh wait, we’re talking about startups right?

Regardless, I think it’s important to finish strong in everything you do. I took it as a challenge to see how much I could accomplish in my last two weeks, committing code up to the last day of employment. It’s a great feeling when you know you leave a place better than you entered.

I thought Alice was a really innovative way of teaching programming. It was GUI-driven programming that was expressive enough to do cool engineering stimulations, but with the simplicity that middle schoolers could understand and use it.

The other day, my mom asked me to find the “Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, some professor that made this speech. She had heard about on the T.V. and was interested in seeing what it was all about. I found the YouTube video and began watching it. To my surprise, Dr. Pausch’s work has crossed my path. He is the creator of Alice.

His speech is very inspiring. Watch it.

In the culture of computer science, an idea that works in one situation is called a hack, an idea that works twice is called a trick, and an idea that works often and pervasively is called a technique.

- Out Of Their Minds, 1998

For those of us who get little red envelopes today, happy new year!

In college, you learn the the basics of data structures, OOP, and algorithms. But being a software engineer is so much more than that. At my first job out of college, I was lucky enough to be a part of a great team of engineers. They understood the value of best practices, introducing me to design patterns, the power of open source, and how to approach hard problems.

However, it was very one dimensional. While I improved my technical experience, I really didn’t get a chance to be exposed to other perspectives. What I mean is it was very much like college again. My work was my own work. I studied, researched, and provided answers. I didn’t really collaborate with my coworkers. I was given an assignment and an estimated deadline and I would do it kind of like homework.

At my second and current job, I’ve been introduced to and been practicing agile software development, more specifically Scrum, on a daily basis. I’ve seen the HUGE personal benefits that a software engineer, like myself, can take away from developing software this way.

I’ll break it down through what is known as the four values of Agile Software Development.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
While being exposed to version control, bug tracking, and continuous integration systems is great for a resume, working with other human beings is much more rewarding and fun. You develop strong relationships and you are able to learn so much from other people’s experiences and perspectives. Pair programming has helped me develop a better understanding of what I don’t know and an even stronger understanding of what I already know. And it’s not only other developers you develop these relationships with. As requirements change, you interact with people from marketing, product, legal, qa, project managers, designers, and the list goes one. This is something you would never get as a programmer at an IT shop that practiced something like the Waterfall method for development, especially early in your career. You will be pigeon-holed into just being code monkey by the time the requirements get to you. Being able to interact with different types of people allows you to grow your network and it exposes you to different aspects of a business.

Working software over comprehensive documentation
As developers, we just like to get things done. We have a tendency to measure productivity with written code. With agile, we can embrace this 100%. I get to concentrate on writing bug fixes, add new features, refactor code, improving the build process rather than documenting some API that no one will ever need since the code is self-documenting. I take great joy in actually doing what I love doing and that’s coding. However, it is a fallacy to interpret this value to mean I don’t have to document anything. But whenever there is no documentation, don’t blame agile. Just rely on the first value and ask someone what that method does.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Developers don’t usually have face to face time with actual paying customers. Usually the “customer” is some other department in the company asking for a new development feature. The main point to be made here is that you want to engage the stakeholders. Not only do you develop relationships, you gather in-depth knowledge of what problems other people are facing on a daily basis. Understanding requirements is often the most difficult part of developing software. As requirements change, with constant engagement from the customer you have a better chance at meeting those requirements. The other piece of this value has to do with deadlines. Contracts are hard deadlines. In the software development, with all its moving pieces, it’s pretty silly to commit to arbitrary dates six months from today. But if you engage stakeholders into your development process, they have clear visibility into the progress of the project. You don’t have to make excuses for why the project is late. They already know what you’re working on and where you are. How does this benefit you? Well, you get to deliver software that actually meets the customer’s needs. Who’s the rock star now?

Responding to change over following a plan
Nothing is ever set in stone. Being able to respond to the evolution of a project is critical to a project’s success. If you are able to learn to design programs that have the flexibility to adapt to your business, that is one awesome accomplishment. It’s a great feeling to be able to say to a product manager that his requested change is already supported by the system, it’s just a configuration change. The language you are using now is most likely not the one you will be using in the future, if you choose to remain a developer. Being able to respond to this change in sought after skills will benefit you well.

Through agile development, I’ve been able to deliver working software time and time again. I’ve been exposed to all different aspects of the business. I’ve learn what I like and don’t like to do. I’ve learn what pieces of business I’m interested in and the pieces I don’t care much for. I’ve developed some really good working relationships. I’ve tackled some hard problems. I’ve learned to respond and adapt to the change and turmoil of a startup.

Most importantly, I still feel I’m growing as a developer. I honestly believe the best thing a developer can do in their career is to always be learning. Everything else will follow.

The saying has following me throughout the years. Other than being a variation of Nike’s “Just Do it” motto, I’m not really sure why I still remember it other than it encompasses what really matters when being tasked with something.

Given two options of doing something myself or having someone else do it for me, I find myself often saying that I want to do it. I think it’s just that I want the experience and satisfaction (maybe I’m a control-freak). When it comes to work, I have always volunteered to try out new things or build the next big feature. That’s the fun stuff to work on. If there’s a really difficult problem or bug, although I am hating the bug when I’m trying to fix it, in retrospect I usually feel a sense of accomplishment and pride after fixing it.

I think that’s what a lot of programmers that have passion about code have in common. We really enjoy solving problems, using that brain of ours, and building new things with code. Between the late night deploys, emergency bug fixes, and ridiculous business requests, the challenge, the sense of ownership, and the art of building software makes it worthwhile and oh so enjoyable.

So, open up your favorite IDE and do it to it.

One of the ways he suggests is to work in small groups. At my work, we do a lot of pair programming and sometimes 3-way programming. I find this to be extremely effective for the way I code. I enjoy being able to constantly ask if this is the right way to approach a problem or am I understanding the problem correctly. With pair programming, I get immediate feedback by my teammate(s) and it helps to spread knowledge of the code base without having to go through code reviews.

The second half of the essay is what really inspired me to write this post. Graham makes the claim that companies deliberately try to do things wrong when it comes to dealing with programmers.

Graham writes:

One of the defining qualities of organizations since there have been such a thing is to treat individuals as interchangeable parts.
…
It’s not merely true that organizations dislike the idea of depending on individual genius, it’s a tautology. It’s part of the definition of an organization not to.
…
The weakest point in big companies is that they don’t let individual programmers do great work.

Moral of the story: Create a work environment where developers are truly valued. They are the problem solvers. They are the closest to the product. They are the ones bubbling with ideas. Listen to them. Don’t act like a big company no matter what your size is. This is how to beat your competitors.

Start at TiECon, May 13, 2006.

I agree most of the items but would have placed them in different order.

I figured I’ll try to come up with a list of my own.

Here’s my list of 5 things I wish I didn’t learn in college.

1. Useless knowledge
   How many courses did I have to take because it was simply required for graduation? As a computer science major, why do I have to take American History 101? Why am I wasting tuition money on a course that I have no interest in? I’m all for developing “well-rounded” individuals but why can’t university allow the individuals decide where they want to be well-rounded in? Just because I’m a computer science major doesn’t mean I have other interests. I had interests in psychology, film, and I’m sorry to say, math. Let me choose to take courses that interest me.
2. Short-term regurgitation
   This is probably a by-product of the first thing I wish I didn’t learn. The fact that I had to take these mind-numbing classes that were of no interest to me, I quickly learned to memorize what I didn’t to and spit it out come test time. The fundamental problem with this is that it is blind-knowledge. I don’t know why, I just know who, what, when, how.
3. Time Mismanagement
   I always found it funny when job interviews asked me, how do you manage your time at college? Or how do you organize your schedule if you know you have a lot of things coming up? To be honest, I didn’t learn how to management my time. I learned how to stay up late, being useless and watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I learned how to wait until the last minute and get things done in the nick of time. I didn’t have a day planner. I didn’t use Outlook Calendar. How many hours did I waste surfing Facebook, playing computer games, watching TV instead of getting to bed for that 8am class or studying for that test, or writing that 30 page paper. Sure I got through it, but I’m sure the quality of the work would have been so much better if I had utilized my time better.
4. Working on a Team
   Yes, I know. This was on the other list. I put this here because my college experience with team work was generally crappy. College gave me the false impression that all group work would be like this: One or two people doing all the work, everyone else mooching off the work. There is no accountability. Professors turn a blind eye to it. The most professors can offer is “work it out among yourselves.” In college, there are your “haves” and your “have-nots”. The “haves” have the drive, determination, and interest in doing well in the courses and contributing to the team. The “have-nots” simple don’t have any interest in doing the work or contributing anything worthwhile. It turns out in the real world people take a vested interest in the work they are apart of. This isn’t true everywhere but at least you have some control over it. You can surround yourself with passionate people and, even for the dispassionate people, at least there is real accountability. Losing a job is much more of a severe consequence that a poor letter grade.
5. Lecture Learning
   This is more of a criticism of how a lot of courses are taught. Usually there’s a single professor standing up in the front of a class with a PowerPoint presentation with about 70 slides of material. For the next hour and a half, the processor proceeds to talk through the slides. You walk out of that room feeling mind-numbing bored and sleepy. This is a terrible way to learn. It’s only one-way. There is no creativity. There’s no exploration of concepts. It’s just facts. It is because it is. There’s no room to ask “why?” or question the why. On a small scale it promotes conformism. Conform to think the same way as the previous class. New ideas are inspired by taking a step outside of conformism. With lecture-style learning, the only reason why I would pick up a book is to read about something I missed when the professor went over it in his/her slides. If the learning was more dialogue between the professor and the students, students have a vested interest in thinking about the concepts deeper than face value. They would pick up the book to not only learn more about the concepts but to come up with their own beliefs and thoughts that they can contribute to the dialogue.

This leads me to some of my grips with the current education system in America. Why are there so many grading systems? And when did it become OK to be mediocre? Students are taught and trained to be evaluated on this teacher-biased scale of letters that mean different things in different places. An ‘A’ in an inner city school is probably not the equivalent as an ‘A’ from say, a Fairfax County school. In addition, there’s this ridiculous notion of people going to college with 4.0+ GPAs because they took AP, Honors, or GT (Gifted/Talented?) courses in high school. These grading policies are different all across the country. The standardized tests like the SATs try to solve this problem, but these tests do not evaluate the knowledge or comprehensive abilities of a student. It simply tests how good you can take the SATs.

As a by-product of this problem and on a more individual level, a student develops, what I believe is, a false impression of what level of aptitude is acceptable in society. I cringe every time I hear some kid say ‘I got a C on my math test!’, like they’re proud of it. Sure, maybe it’s a big improvement from the F they got last week but to initially set the standard this low advocates mediocrity and even worse, sets yourself up for failure.

I don’t think anyone should be aiming to be average or content with just ‘getting by’. Personally, I am continuing trying to better myself in all the ways I know how. This is predicated on the active realization that in order to better myself, I can’t be content with being only adequate. I want to surpass expectations, mine most importantly.