Turn it off and back on again

I’m now six months into what I expected to be about a year out of working in technology, and I’m starting to think about what comes next and trying to make it happen. The difficulty I have is that it’s hard to explain what I’m looking for in a way that makes sense to those that are hiring, or that I can summarise in a search term for job sites. I’m considering running a company again to do all this myself, but that doesn’t obviate the problem, I still need to be able to describe this to potential clients and explain why they would want to buy one.

The difficulty comes from being a people person. I listen to people, I talk to people, I get people to talk to other people, I learn from people, I teach people, I perform for people, I watch people, I read what people have to say, and I write for people. And I happen to want to do that for money in the software industry, but if you tell that to a hiring manager on a software team you’ll get a blank stare followed by “um, but how much have you used MongoDB from Scala in your last job?”. You don’t need to try this yourself, I have done it. This is what happens.

I don’t mind much what technology I use, as long as we’re using it because it helps to address the problems we or our customers have rather than because a developer threw a strop if they weren’t going to be allowed to rewrite everything that already works well in NodeCaml. I care about understanding and solving the problems people have, and about understanding the people who have those problems. “I think we should use this” is not fine. “I think we should use this because” is perfectly fine. “We’re a $VENDOR shop” is probably not fine.

So the problem I have is that the job I know how to apply for and get is “programmer” (these days with some highfalutin prefix that really comes down to “better paid”), but that usually comes with some expectation to focus on the programming, and leave all the gloopy soft stuff like what programming should be done and whether it’s a good idea to do it now to other people. What I want to be doing is (being paid for) the gloopy soft stuff like making programmers into better programmers, working out what programming should be done (if any) and whether it’s a good idea to do it now, helping programmers to understand the people they’re helping, and helping the people being helped by programmers to understand the programmers, with the programming itself being a context not a focus. I have no idea how to explain that succinctly to people who might want to hire one of those, nor how to find people who might want to hire one of those.

Practically, based on what I’ve experienced about my own health and its relationship with my work, I also need to be realistic about where and when I work. That’s from or within cycling distance of home (around Leamington Spa, Warwick, Kenilworth and Coventry), from usual working hours my own timezone. If your company is in a different timezone and supports remote work, that’s great, but if you need me to work from your timezone then it’s not great. In fact, you don’t support remote work, you just support local employees who don’t always come into the office.

If you are someone who wants one of those, know someone who wants one of those, or know how to describe one of those succinctly, please do help me out. Based on the last time I tried this, here’s a couple of lists:

Things I’ve never done, but would

These aren’t necessarily things my next job must have, and aren’t all even work-related, but are things that I would take the opportunity to do.

• Work in a field on a farm. Preferably in control of a tractor.
• Have a job title that begins with the letters ‘C’ or ‘D’ (I managed ‘Q’ a while back).
• Spend lots of time supporting the Free Software Definition
• Include going to lunch with each other employee in the company in my responsibilities.
• Visit Iceland.

Things I don’t like

These are the things I would try to avoid.

• I still seriously hate raw celery.
• Client work, in those cases where we don’t all really think that the client is doing something important.
• “Rock star” programmers, and people who hire them.