John's Adventures

Back in February I mentioned that I was joining a start-up founded by some ex-colleagues of mine. I was hoping that we’d build a product and spend a few years building up a business that would mean an escape from the evils of the corporate world. To have a direct say in the direction a product takes and potentially a better share of the success of the company. Instead only 8 months after I joined we’ve been bought out by a large American company called RiskMetrics.

I’ve not had a lot of happy times working for American companies before. One closed our office down thinking they could kill our product off (and ironically it’s the now only product that they are able to sell) after a prolonged period of “us against them”. They were a large, slow-moving company with more Vice Presidents than I’ve had hot dinners, everything that’s wrong with corporate America. The second company did pretty much the same thing and made the working environment so miserable that I left after a year and a half. So it was with some feeling of dread that the directors told us that they were thinking of selling out to a big American company.

However following a 2 day trip to New York to meet some of their senior people I was really impressed. This wasn’t the sort of company that had 20 layers of management (and no obsession with Vice President of this and that). Every person we met was not only very intelligent and insightful, but genuinely interested in and passionate about what they do. We had a meal out with them on the first night where we were just ourselves and so were they (although to be fair I’m just myself all the time) – and we had a great time. But the thing that really impressed me was how the people were the next day – the “corporate types” I’ve worked with before would be friendly outside of work but put their business faces on the next day as if the previous night had never happened. This was not the case with these guys. From the 2 short days we had it was clear that these were the sort of people I’d relish the chance to work with and could learn a great deal from.

I do have mixed feelings about joining a new, 1000 employee company. As a regular employee I don’t make any money from the buyout and my long-term hopes for the company will not come to be. But I will get the chance to work with some incredible people on a platform the scale of which I’ve never encountered before. A big reason I joined the start-up was to work in a small company away from a large organisation and that’s exactly what I’m going back to – time will tell what working for this company will be like although all signs so far are good. The work I’ve spent the past few months doing has been pretty frustrating and “bitty” while we were chasing business in the short term (which I guess is unavoidable in a start-up) so having the backup of a larger company will mean we can be more organised and structured and I can get more of a chance to do what I do best.

Ultimately from what I’ve seen so far this may turn out to be a great opportunity that otherwise I’d never have had the chance to take. And so the John Conners career roller-coaster ride continues with more unexpected twists and turns!

I’ve certainly learned a few lessons in this short journey working for a start-up that would make me a lot more wary about doing it in the future. But then again, to coin one of my favourite non-Steven Seagal phrases: nothing ventured, nothing gained!

People like Joel Spolsky have been going on for years about how paying a bit more money to get a better quality chair up front can make a massive long-term saving, combined with increased productivity and “cool” appeal (there’s a lovely comparison of the cost of a quality chair compared to toilet paper Joel wrote here). The sort of chair that the hip start-ups in the Valley choose to show how cool they are and how valued the employees are has always been the Herman Miller Aeron Chair.

Unfortunately I’ve never worked anywhere that values me enough to buy me an Aeron chair, so instead of shelling out £700 for an office chair they’ve preferred to shell out a tenth of that. And that’s been OK. However, since I started working from home it’s meant sitting in my 10 year old cheapo office chair for up to 10 hours a day. And it’s been painful.

Since it offers no back support, lumbar support, buttock support or any other kind of support that a chair should provide I’ve had more than my fair share of aches and pains. My good lady has had to give me numerous back massages to get rid of the searing pain in my shoulders. I soon decided this couldn’t go on and it was time to splash out on a new chair. At the back of my mind the Aeron chair was always there and no matter where I looked I couldn’t find anything good enough (even the top-of-the-range IKEA chairs wouldn’t cut it). So I decided, if it’s good enough for John Topley (who has one), it’s good enough for me – I’m buying an Aeron chair. And then, while about to shell out the requisite £700 I came across the Mirra chair, also by Herman Miller.

The Mirra chair, while £200 cheaper than an Aeron, is really the new Aeron chair. It’s more adjustable than an Aeron, more recyclable, looks cooler (IMHO) and has myriad colour options (unlike the Aeron). Since the thought of a black chair in my home office wouldn’t go down too well with my good lady (it just wouldn’t match the decor), I realised that we could customise the Mirra to perfectly match its surroundings. So with a deep breath and credit card in hand I ordered the most expensive chair I’ll ever buy. And a couple of days ago it arrived!

So, was it worth the money? Well, to be completely honest I’d have to say yes. It’s worth every penny. As soon as I sat down in it, without even making any adjustments, I found I was sat in a position that was really good for my posture (my posture is usually terrible) and I was completely supported in all the places I should be. I could sit literally all day and know I wouldn’t get the slightest bit of back or shoulder ache. Some tweaking later and the armrests are the perfect height so I can use the keyboard with no effort or strain. It is without doubt the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in and really, all office chairs should be like this.

So since I’m not knackered after a full day’s working it means the quality of my work will increase as I won’t be battling fatigue and pain. Instead I can concentrate on what I’m doing. If you too spend your working life stuck at a desk in front of a computer screen you owe it to yourself to get your boss to buy you one of these chairs. And if they say “no”, then sounds like you need to change jobs – it certainly worked for me, kinda! I just know that in 20 years time my older self will thank me for spending a bit of cash on a chair now to save the medical bills later.

One of the frustrating things about starting a new job is the time between starting and the time I’m actually productive. I’ve had 6 jobs in the last 10 years and the process usually goes something like this (in a sort of rough order):

• Say hello to everybody then immediately forget their names.
• Find out what the product or products I’ll be working on actually does and start trying to understand the field I’ll be working in (be it financial, sales, electronics or whatever).
• Figure out how the source code for the software is organised and have a look at it to get a basic idea of the quality of the software, how it’s organised and what not. Nothing too in-depth.
• Try to understand how the team culture works: do they have friendly banter? are they all-business? are they all prima donnas? (if so polish the CV and get out).
• Get my first piece of work. To do this I need to…
• …work out who “owns” each system or sub-system. When working on a system there’s always someone who understands it intimately and has some sort of ownership of it (whether they want that glory or not). Since software is a complex beast you can’t always understand all of it all of the time and when you’re working on it you’ll invariably have to interrupt this poor person quite a lot while you learn about it.
• Following on from that I need to know who the business brains are. They are either customers or colleagues who are less techies and more business types. These are the people who appreciate the software from the user’s perspective, understand the problems the software has to solve and I need to build up a relationship with them. Doing this means less of me misunderstanding what I’m doing and having to go round the houses again and again.
• Slowly get up to speed with the business as I do more projects / pieces of work. Writing software is the easy bit, working out what the software needs to do and all the nuances of the business that the software operates in is the tricky part and takes time.

As I progress through those stages I become more and more productive and the quality of what I deliver gets higher and higher. But it takes time and when you hire new people you have to appreciate that despite having to pay recruitment agents you also have to pay for the time it takes for them to get up to speed and the impact on their colleagues as they learn the business before you see a healthy return on your investment. I always find it frustrating because I know I can gather requirements, write specs, build and deliver software, but like I said they’re the easy things.

However this time it’s been a lot easier. Since I’ve joined a team I’ve worked with before I already know the people and I know the culture they work in. I’ve already worked in the industry (financial) with them and have done all the learning about what the market entails, what the software we’re building needs to do and enough to be effective when I worked with them last time (it’s amazing what knowledge gets buried in your brain but can come back when you need it). I know how they organise their code as I helped them choose the systems to do it. Since we’re working from home most of the time and I know the guys so well I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone or use IM to talk things through – whereas if I was a new-hire who’d never worked with them I’d probably feel a lot more isolated as it’s hard getting to know people via non-physical communication channels.

As it’s a new product we’re building I still have to learn about the software (how it’s designed and where everything lives) but that’s a much quicker process than getting to know people and learn about the industry you’re working in. All in all it’s slashed my start-to-productive time. Although that’s a double-edged sword as it means I’ve got no excuses for delivering pretty much straight away! I better get back to it! 😉

After two and a half years working for Marshalls I’ve decided to move on. Despite being in essence a concrete manufacturing company and therefore theoretically about as far away from the cutting edge of IT as it’s possible to be, Marshalls has actually been a fun place to work where I’ve managed to write some interesting software, been a bit creative and met some really good people. Despite the fact that I always call myself a software developer, I do a lot more than sit down and write code. I enjoy doing everything from gathering requirements (that means speaking to real people who’ll use the software I write) as well as designing, building and delivering the software to do what they want. I’ve managed to do plenty of that over the last couple of years.

My first ‘real’ job (working for a University doesn’t count) was for a company that had just been bought out but it continued to operate as a start-up. We were building a product, chasing our first customer and having to change direction all the time to try and make that sale. It was at times frustrating (like sometimes having to cut corners to get things out the door) but the fact was that every person in the team counted – there’s no room in a start up for people there just to make up the numbers if you want to be successful. Everybody had to be able to turn their hand to any problem – it wasn’t as though there was a whole department dedicated to setting up machines and networks, one of us would have to figure it out and do it.

What I’m getting at is that in that start-up it was all about the end result – building the product was the most important thing. Since building a product that sells is what keeps you in the job, you’re strongly motivated to make sure it’s a success and since there’s only a few of you you’re in prime position to make that happen. And that’s what I’ve always been interested in as far as software development is concerned – building something that people want to use.

But in the big companies I’ve worked for that’s not the way things work, and this is especially true of companies where software is not their primary business. At the end of the day, if you’re writing in-house software that your users will have to use no matter what you produce, the standards just aren’t going to be as high as shrink-wrap software to paying customers. You’ll never hit the high notes and frankly there’s no point in senior management making that a priority – where’s their return on investment they’ll wonder?

And as my friend Stu (who I worked with at that start up all those years ago) told me when I last visited him, end-user software is the most satisfying place for people like him and myself to be. I want to build something that’s a success and is good enough that real people want to pay to use it, something I can be proud of.

For me the best place to build something I can be proud of is a start-up with none of the politics, red tape or risk aversion that gets in the way. Sure it’s longer hours, harder work, more responsibility, more risky in that if you don’t get things right you’re out of a job, but for me the potential rewards and satisfaction of building something I believe in makes it all worth it. The chance to join a start-up where I live doesn’t come along very often so I always promised myself that if the opportunity came along again with the right people I’d take it.

Imagine my surprise when an ex-colleague of mine phoned me up over Christmas to talk about joining him and some other ex-colleagues in their start-up. After meeting them it took me all of about 5 minutes to decide I’d say yes if they offered me the job. For me the risk is a lot lower than just joining any start-up. For one I know them all very well and they happen to be some of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with. I also worked with them on a similar product to the one I’ll be helping them build so know I won’t be starting from square one and having to learn the ropes. And there’s a lot of market interest in the product which is half the battle. For the first time in a long time I’m really looking forward to starting something new and seizing the opportunity that has presented itself to me.

I start tomorrow. Wish me luck! 🙂

Update (2010): Read all about how it went and what happened next here!