Returning to a field you love

[Molly]

Congrats planet. I'm very much not a computer geek and know what IT stands for but what about VAR?

please don't make fun of me!!

[jim]

Congrats planet. I'm very much not a computer geek and know what IT stands for but what about VAR?

please don't make fun of me!!

I have a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science, and have spent 28 years in the field, and I have no idea what VAR is (other than declaring a variable in some computer languages). In fact I'll bet if planet and I spent an hour talking to each other about our work, neither one of us would have the foggiest idea what the other one was talking about.

[planet planet]

Congrats planet. I'm very much not a computer geek and know what IT stands for but what about VAR?

please don't make fun of me!!

I have a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science, and have spent 28 years in the field, and I have no idea what VAR is (other than declaring a variable in some computer languages). In fact I'll bet if planet and I spent an hour talking to each other about our work, neither one of us would have the foggiest idea what the other one was talking about.

VAR = Value Added Reseller, basically a company that isn't the manufacturer themselves (like Cisco, Microsoft, etc), but consults with customers and resells these type of technologies (hardware, software, services).

[jim]

So a middleman.

[planet planet]

So a middleman.

Yeah, the middleman who stands all these products up and gets them to work together, plus recommending the right products/vendors in the first place.

[jim]

If you can get Microsoft products stood up and working together and doing something remotely close to what is advertised, then you are worth your weight in gold. But then again - if you recommend the right products, you would never have to do anything with Microsoft or Oracle would you?

I do open source mostly so that's probably why I didn't know what a VAR was.

I wish you were with me last week when some guy came up and started talking to me about the stuff his company did. I guess he heard my talk and thought he could help. Basically what I understood was that his company has this thing that you do something and then it installs and runs all of your software and mobile apps and does all the testing and installation of everything including stuff in the cloud and your custom integrated apps and it works with SharePoint and it causes your software to do whatever it is you wanted it to do and it makes it do it really well and you don't even have to do anything like write code or think which is good because I think he said the last thing that happens it the skies get all blue like and it rains skittles.

I looked at him and said "Heap sort is the best".

And then we parted ways.

[planet planet]

If you can get Microsoft products stood up and working together and doing something remotely close to what is advertised, then you are worth your weight in gold. But then again - if you recommend the right products, you would never have to do anything with Microsoft or Oracle would you?

I do open source mostly so that's probably why I didn't know what a VAR was.

I wish you were with me last week when some guy came up and started talking to me about the stuff his company did. I guess he heard my talk and thought he could help. Basically what I understood was that his company has this thing that you do something and then it installs and runs all of your software and mobile apps and does all the testing and installation of everything including stuff in the cloud and your custom integrated apps and it works with SharePoint and it causes your software to do whatever it is you wanted it to do and it makes it do it really well and you don't even have to do anything like write code or think which is good because I think he said the last thing that happens it the skies get all blue like and it rains skittles.

I looked at him and said "Heap sort is the best".

And then we parted ways.

LMAO

No [expletive], we're the guys left behind post-apocalypse once the skittles guys fly off into the sunset on their rainbow unicorns.

[jim]

I really do struggle talking to people like yourself, because I'm so low level and in the weeds that I don't really see the big picture. You folks tend to not see the details, and when we talk it's just two ships passing in the night. To vaporish. I need to pop the hood and see the engine and understand what the parts are, and in fact I'll do that to the point that I've gotten so fascinated with the parts and getting the engine running that I have completely forgotten what a car even is or why you would ever use it. And the sales guy is talking to me about cruise control and reclining seats and trunk space and I'm trying to figure out what those things even are and what in the hell it has to do with a camshaft.

[jim]

I got a taste of what planet is talking about this week, one of the best feelings I've had in quite some time at work. I am a software developer. That's not what my title is, or my job description really, but that's what I am in my heart. I'm a manager of a large group with a diverse set of responsibilities - a mile wide and an inch deep, polar opposite of how I like to work. I really like to instruct, I was a adjunct faculty member for years and really loved that, and my boss' boss recognizes that. An opportunity came our way to accept a "GEM" fellowship student this summer (https://www.gemfellowship.org/gem-fellowship if you want more info), and they asked me if I would be willing to do this.

In a heartbeat!

These students aren't your typical college kid looking for summer work, it's pretty competitive to get one of these so you have a good chance of getting someone with some maturity and skills. These students get 2 guaranteed paid summer jobs in their field, free college tuition to finish their Masters degree, and enough of a stipend to pay for housing, food, and misc.

This is a serious commitment for me, I knew I would be spending a significant amount of time coaching this person, but like I said as long as the person is willing to learn I'm willing to teach. And that's been the case, my student has been everything I hoped for. He's smart, likable, personable, and a native Spanish speaker so I've been able to really hone my skills. But more importantly he wants to learn, his parents are immigrants and he's the first in his family to graduate HS, now the first to graduate college, and he's thinking about just blasting through his graduate program and getting a Ph.D. (something I have been encouraging). This past week we successfully rolled out his first deliverable - it was a success. Not the most complex thing in the world, but a little thing that makes this place more efficient. I was really happy for him, he took great pride in that.

The real fun though was the second part of this project, and as we started discussing it I could see his eyes glaze over. I put on a white board the overall data flow, and outlined what I thought some of the key data structures would be, which was fun. Not coding, but architecting, much more hands on that I usually get. When he left in the morning, something told me this was a bit more than he could handle on his own.

So Tues. afternoon I locked my office and started coding. Oh my goodness the rush - it was 5:30 when I finally got things working like I wanted. I looked up at the clock and was reminded of the times in my career when quitting time was when something was done, and not defined by the clock. I wrote the plumbing, he was still going to have to hook up to it to feed it and then hook up on the other end and process it, but the guts were there. Sure enough, next day I get an email - "jefe, I'm stuck".

I scheduled some time and showed him what I did, and you could see the change in his eyes over the course of 30 minutes going from absolute and total confusion to complete clarity. I sent him the code, told him he needed to hook the front and back pieces together, and I hoped he would finish the end of the week.

Yesterday he sends me an email with some sample output - and he got it. Success for him, and for me a feeling I haven't felt in a long time. I get this about 2x a year, where I actually feel like I provided real value. The other part 99.9% of my job? It just seems so pointless.

So planet I hope you get that feeling every day, mine is fleeting so I savor those little moments. I'll be sorry to see A.R. go in early August, he will hopefully be back next summer for his second tour.

Ok, now back to reality. I have stupid ridiculous meetings with my manager this p.m. who is just a complete idiot. Every day I get through without telling him that is a tiny success.

[jim]

And now I just got out of a mind numbing hour meeting called by my boss so I could show him and a couple of my colleagues how to click a radio button and type some text into a box in SharePoint.

It took the full hour, mainly because they have forgotten what a brain is.