…is that I’m hoping to master this:
Category: Work
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The Temptation to Loaf
This article originally appeared in Global Nerdy.
There’s a small TV set in my home office that I sometime turn on – usually to one of the cable news channels — as “background noise”, which I sometimes find helpful when I’m trying to get work done.
Today, I’m on the road in London, Ontario with Microsoft’s EnergizeIT tour. I’m hanging out in the hotel room with my coworker Rodney with the TV on as background noise and here’s what’s on right now:
When I tell people that I often work from my home office, they ask if I ever get the temptation to plunk myself in front of the TV instead of getting work done. The answer is no, and part of the reason is that there’s nothing but this junk on during the day.
[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]
Scenes from the Valley’s El Camino Real (left) and Seattle’s Pioneer Square (right).
Here’s some food for thought. Ahmed Hassan very recently wrote a comment in response to an article of mine, Ideas to Steal from Silicon Valley and Seattle, and it’s worth promoting to its own article, so here it is.
Being from Toronto and having worked in both Toronto, Ottawa, and the US, I think Toronto has severe challenges.
1. We build workers…not leaders.
We have loads of talent…but all we create is good worker bees.
2. Yes, lack of big companies is a big deal.
There are some ‘entrepreneurs’ who will just go at it on their own. yet, the vast majority of people like a decent job. So they meet up at large companies…work for a while…then maybe decide to start their own thing. All we have in Toronto proper is IBM and AMD. Anyone care to explain how RIM was founded in Waterloo. I ask that as a serious question. How does a small town create the only great Canadian tech company in operation right now? Why was it not founded in Toronto? Ask that question a few times…over and over.
3. Politicians do not understand business.
When you have someone like Miller who says he doesn’t care about companies who move to Mississauga for lower tax rates as he only wants companies who are willing to pay more to take advantage of Toronto’s urban character… you know something is wrong. They will try to push venture capital and ‘incubators…’.
As I say…mentality before process.
4. Sometimes you run out of talent.
How many high tech centers do we need? Everywhere you go, there is a lack of talent. If Toronto tech can just pickup and move to Seattle, Silicon valley, New york, boston, dallas, austin… in an already established tech base, why would they bother doing it here? Better weather, lower taxes, more like-minded entrepreneurs.
It’s not impossible. But Toronto has its work cut out for it. The biggest threat to Toronto…is actually Waterloo. Very close to Toronto and with a large tech base. It’s largely a mentality gap. Toronto embraces bureaucracy and structure. Startups are about freedom and independence. If you will…that’s why RIM was founded in Waterloo as opposed to Toronto. No Toronto bureaucracy would have ever approved of RIM. I mean they would be competing against Motorola, Nokia, MS… impossible…that’s a bad investment.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
[This was also posted to Global Nerdy.]
Local tech evangelist David Crow points to The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. Unlike What Color is Your Parachute? or Who Moved My Cheese?, Johnny Bunko is in manga form — that’s right, it’s a Japanese-style comic book.
An unusual book needs an unusual promo, and Johnny Bunko is no exception — it’s got a trailer!
In a review at Amazon, Donald Mitchell provides a quick summary of the book:
Most career writers when they want to simplify a message use a fable, with a few illustrations that show the key perspectives. The fable is clearly secondary to the details.
In The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, the story is more interesting than the advice. Having read a lot of Mr. Pink’s writing, I thought I knew what he would probably advise. But I didn’t realize that he would make the story so interesting, and that the manga format would add so much power to the story telling. Nice work!
What’s the advice? Let me rephrase to make it clearer to you:
- Don’t be rigid about planning out each step well in advance . . . it’s not possible to do.
- Build on what you’re good at (Peter Drucker originated that one) and avoid relying on what you aren’t good at.
- Focus on what you can do for others (start with the boss) rather than what’s in it for you (you can read more about this in How to Be a Star at Work).
- Keep at it. Practice makes perfect.
- Take on big challenges and learn from them.
- Make a difference.
I think I’ll pick up this book — it’s pretty cheap, and I’d like to see how Daniel Pink uses the manga format to advantage.
More Advice from Daniel Pink
Here are some video clips featuring Daniel Pink some pretty interesting giving career advice…
Abundance, Asia and Automation
Pink says that the really useful skills are those that are hard to outsource, hard to automate and that serves a need that goes beyond functional. And those skills are the right-brain ones — the ones often derided as “soft skills”.
Help! My Resume Has Too Many Jobs!
Don’t worry if your resume looks like it has too many jobs on it — the world of work today doesn’t give out prizes for lifetime service. These days, it’s about whether you can solve their problems.
Exercise Creativity at Your Job
The old adage applies: “It’s often better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” And from my own experience, I can tell you that he’s right.
Choosing a Major
Follow your interests — don’t choose a major based on what kind of job you think you’ll get after you graduate. The job market is likely to change! Follow your passion instead. You should also work on your “high concept” and “high touch” skills.
Over at Signal vs. Noise, 37signals’ blog, David Heinemeier Hansson asks Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco? Here`s an excerpt:
If your idea for a web business is more along the lines of the mundane “product * price = profit” (3P) variety, I think the culture of San Francisco and that famous 20-mile radius around Stanford is anything but helpful. I might even go as far as say it’s downright harmful.
The flush availability of other people’s money is simply too tempting. When you’re not spending your own money, it’s easy to splash on a big open office on day one, a staff of 10+ in no time, and have few worries about paying the bills on the 1st of the month. It takes away much of the urgency to make money that I think is critical to build sustainable businesses. It gives you too many resources to be satisfied building simple tools for niche markets. Everything becomes about catching that huge wave.
I can vouch from personal experience that the line about what happens when you’re not spending your own money is so true. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you about it.
Naturally, the question comes up: “If San Francisco, the Bay area, and Sillicon Valley aren’t good places to start a web business of the 3P variety, where is?”
David provides a quick list of cities where some interesting applications are being developed, which includes:
- Chicago (and originally, Copenhagen), home of BaseCamp
- New York, home of FogBugz
- Sydney, home of Campaign Monitor
- Ottawa, home of Shopify
- Austin, home of Blinksale
- Toronto, home of Freshbooks
I’m highlighting Toronto not only because it’s the city I call home, but also because there’s a strong small development shop community that’s been building up here over the past few years: we hosted one of the first BarCamps to follow the original, and created DemoCamp, CaseCamp and TransitCamp as well as the upcoming RubyFringe conference, which promises to be quite unlike any other developer conference out there. Toronto also offers some serious quality-of-life bonuses to techies, a very livable city with lots to do at night, Asian food aplenty (including three or four Chinatowns, depending on how you count ’em), a smart workforce and proximity to major cities in the United States (we’re about an hour away by plane from New York, Boston and Chicago).
Nerrrrrrrrrrrrrds!
When I accepted the position of b5media’s technical project manager, Jeremy Wright said “come up with a less-formal sounding title”. I did a little Googling and figured that I could “own” the term “Nerd Wrangler”. It’s happened — I pretty much own the first page of results for the search term “nerd wrangler”, with and without quotes.
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Scenes from the Office
My first week with b5media was my best first week on the job ever. On my very first day, I boarded a plane and flew to Austin to attend the South by Southwest Interactive conference, one of the biggest events in our industry. For a week, I attended interesting sessions, met new coworkers and colleagues, caught up with old friends, played a lot of accordion and enjoyed more than my fair share of beef, Tex-Mex and booze. We stayed on a ranch just out of town with my coworkers, where we had bonfires, a big end-of-week barbecue, breakfasts prepared by b5’s Director of Sales Chad Randall and the enjoyable company of a mellow Black Labrador named “Teaspoon”. We even saw a dead goat with a vulture circling overhead! (More about the dead goat in a later entry.)
With the conference wrapped up, it was time to go back to our respective offices, whether in Canada, the U.S. or Australia. I’m in the Toronto office, which is located in a converted warehouse building in the Queen/Spadina neighbourhood. Here’s what I saw when I first set foot in the office:
My welcome message, which was waiting for me on my first day at the office.
After I filled out the form for my benefits package, Darcie saw my real name, Jose Martin deVilla, and updated the whiteboard accordingly:
My welcome message, modified.
(Actually, it should be “Jose Martin”. It’s a double name, like “Billy Bob” or “Peggy Sue”.)
The office is similar to my first workplace out of university: a converted warehouse with hardwood floors and high ceilings in a funky neighbourhood. Here’s a shot of the main workspace:
The workspace, starring Darcie, Lee and Laura.
That’s Office Manager Darcie Vany in the foreground, Server Administrator Lee Newton’s arm in the middle, and Executive Assistant Laura Keeling in background.
We have a boardroom in the back, which doubles as a place to unwind. Like a number of high-tech companies, we’ve got an XBox 360 with Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. Here’s CEO Jeremy Wright taking a quick Rock Band break:
A number of people I talked to at South by Southwest told me that they have Rock Band at the workplace.
Here’s my desk, located near the front door. Note the wall behind the desk — that’s a baseboard-to-ceiling whiteboard:
My desk. The whiteboard behind it is a little more filled-in now, and the desk sports a few more tchochkes.
And yes, the computer on the desk is a Toshiba — a 17″ Satellite P200 which I’ve dubbed “The Coffee Table” because of its size. Although my preference would be to get a MacBook or MacBook Pro, b5 had this machine, brand new and still in its box, waiting for whoever filled the Technical Project Manager position. Having to use Windows as my primary operating system — something I’ve done for about half my career — is a small downside compared to the upsides and many perks of working for b5. Besides, it’s one of the best specced — if not the best — specced machines in the shop. (Perhaps after some time, when I’ve proven myself and earned one, I can hit them up for a Mac.)
Setting up “The Coffee Table”, my company-issued laptop. It’s surprisingly light, given its size.
(Yes, I tried installing Ubuntu Linux on it and couldn’t get the sound, SD card reader or built-in camera working and it took some tweaking to get the graphics card working properly. The card reader and camera I can live without — although the card reader is useful — but I need sound because I have regular meetings with the development team over Skype voice chat.)