21:06 < calyth> \o/

21:08 < jeikobu> \o_

21:20 < calyth> _o/

21:20 < calyth> _o_

21:20 < calyth> |o|

21:21 < calyth> .o.

21:21 < ffff> (o(

[...]

22:50 < yangman> that is a fairly accurate depiction of climbing, yes

So, lets try and pin point why.  It may be that the current software business culture is fundamentally incompatible with my personal goals and philosophies, or that a string of bad luck has seriously jaded my subconscious feelings about the profession.  You may sympathize with the following, or dismiss me as a huge pussy that needs to suck it up.  Whatever the case, it’s time for a rant.

But first, watch this: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.  If you’ve already seen it, watch it again.

Financially, being a software developer has netted, essentially, zero.  Despite emerging from university a dozen moons ago with almost a year and a half of professional experience and free of debt, I have been unable to provide for my own living expenses since sometime in 2008.  Being laid off twice in less than as many years has certainly not helped matters.  Forget trying to make an impact on a team: being accepted in to team in the first place has never been anything short of near-impossible.  Even before the market collapse, my first co-op position did not involve working with software development at all, and my second attempt yielded only a couple interviews, despite having extensive programming experience outside of school.  Worse still, I’m paralyzed by a—perhaps irrational—fear that if I spend significant time in a field away from development I may never gain entrance again, especially having not yet made it past the “junior” phase of my career.  Does it not, after all,  signal that one is uninterested in pursuing programming as a career, and worse, that they might not be good enough?  Of course, it’s also time spent not getting more experience; with professional experience apparently favoured above most else, people with luck like mine appear to be perpetually “inexperienced” enough to gain more of it.

That, however, is not the cause of my shift in attitude.  Hang on to your tower of hats, because here come more words.

I became a programmer because I was intrigued with the idea of making computers do neat things.  Not computing, as through toolkits, libraries, and frameworks, but computers in the literal, physical sense.  I don’t mind having to know things like strides, fences, and word alignment; I enjoyed assembly programming on an 8-bit, single-accumulator microprocessor; I even once applied to be a firmware developer in Saskatoon.  Saskatoon, for crying out loud.  Alas, the modern software market has very little room for people with my kind of disposition, but that’s OK, because I kept myself occupied with mastering novel, shiny new things.

But, to what purpose?  Am I a better person for knowing how to work six different web frameworks instead of just two?  Can I derive happiness from knowing one more obscure, undocumented bug in PHP?  Is that mouldy block of cheese still in the fridge, or did I already toss that out?  I’ll just come right out and say it: I don’t care about the web development.  I find no joy in mastering more JavaScript, CSS, RoR, Twisted, or whatever database that’s currently the rage.  No, I won’t build you a website.

Furthermore, it frustrates me when job postings list “self-motivated” as a requirement, as if to deny any notion that programmers can—and do—derive motivation from the work itself.  On the whole, the divide between what developers need to thrive and what management are willing to provide is still as wide as ever.  For every story I hear about awesome work places and interesting work, I hear two more about micromanaging bosses, design-by-marketing, unreasonable workloads, or leadership by incompetence.

Finally, I have passions outside of hacking, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that none of them involve computing.  There are things I can do to improve my chances of employment (spend all my time at a computer working on open source projects, move to Ontario, give up computing and go back to school, etc) but most of them, I feel, must come not as mere compromises, but by giving up some fundamental part of my identity.  It’s a cost I’m not yet willing to pay.

I haven’t given up, though.  Not yet.

Despite the unbearable tools and brain-dead designs, all the terrible stories, and all the depressing weeks not knowing how much longer I may have to make my savings last, I’m still trying my chances in the hopes that, this time, it’s going to be great; that this time, there’ll be interesting projects for years to come; that this time, I can find purpose in what I do that aligns with my own.

Will I succeed?  Who knows.  What I do know, though, is that I am no longer afraid to complain out loud.

My earliest memory of using a computer is way back in the late 80′s, playing Pacman on a who-knows-what in a computer lab at my father’s university.  I wasn’t very good at it, but I was also five. There is a photo from even earlier of baby-me, wearing pants with a butt flap (hanging open; no diapers), back-side to the camera, again in a lab of one of my parents’. I’m standing on a chair in the photo because it would be impossible to reach the keys otherwise.

The whereabouts of the photo is unknown, but I have seen it, and I am damn proud of its existence.

I inherited most of my technical-mindedness from my father, who is a very capable hacker of his own right.  The story goes that although we couldn’t afford a TV of our own in China, we would almost always have one to watch because he was constantly fixing them for other people. To this day, if any sort of electronics break in our household, it will often be disassembled, then repaired or scavenged for parts.  It’s getting harder and harder, of course, but I can’t remember the last time we actually disposed of an appliance because it was deemed mechanically unrepairable.

There’s no being humble about it: I have The Knack.

Sprouting

“I got my start early” would probably be the expected opening to this paragraph. But, I didn’t. Owning a personal computer in China in those days was unthinkable.  It was less so years later in Japan, but still something very much unattainable on my parents modest income.  Less than a year before leaving Japan for Canada, my family received a used computer as a gift. I managed to find a few programming books from my elementary school’s library that teaches game programming, but only to copy the final code samples so I could play a few games. Although the interest was there, I was simply unwilling to put in the effort to learn programming.

My first serious dive into software development happened in the late 90s, towards the beginning of high school, when I got my hands on a copy of Macromedia Flash.  Not unlike most other youth with similar dispositions, the want to become a video game developer was a significant driving factor.  With my previous attempts at Java Applets and C++ failing to yield results, having a built-in vector graphics engine was an instant win.  My Flash development, programming wise, peaked when I produced a discrete 2-body gravity simulator for my Physics 11 final project. I was, no doubt, the biggest nerd in my class.

From there, I expanded to Delphi Pascal (to build a MUD client plug-in), took a brief detour in x86 assembly (Delphi’s substring replace function was too slow), picked up Java when I became a developer for the above mentioned MUD, finally learned enough C++ to hash out a few simple CLI applications, then dropped way down on the abstraction scale to PIC assembly for a self-directed project in electronics for my final year in high school.

A couple months later, I started formal studies in computing science at Simon Fraser University.  This would also be the first time since elementary school that I am taught programming in a classroom.

Growing Tall

The rest, as they say, is history. Theories were learnt, jargon was absorbed, and line after line of code were written.  I got involved in open source development, worked a handful of semesters at an actual software company, and, eventually, got a piece of paper declaring me a Bachelor of Computing Science.  There are even people using the code I’ve released to the world.

As a hacker, life was good.

A Drought Approaches?

Life, though, wasn’t good.

I’m not enjoying this.

Somewhere along the way, the side of me that hungered for intellectual knowledge and challenge had decided that it’s had enough.  What was once a hobby of novelty and intrigue has, over time, turned into the repetitive and mundane. While I still enjoy the act of problem solving, hacking for its own sake began to feel unfulfilling, banal, and, worst of all, pointless.

So, where to go from here? My long-term plans, as of the last few years anyway, have always been to make a graceful exist from the software industry after earning what I feel has been enough from it.  My hope is that once I am no longer programming for a living, I may be able to enjoy it again.  On the other hand, I am becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of no longer doing this at all. The knack and geekiness will always be there, of course, but, at least for the moment, my future as a hacker isn’t looking too bright.

Then again, who knows. I never planned to become a computing scientist, either.

It’s caturday, apparently.

(Not shown: a link about cats further down the page.)

The longer it takes to fix a bug, the smaller the fix will be.

When I first read this little gem of wisdom on DadHacker, I literally laughed out loud.  It was the same month that we finally resolved the once-infamous fd.o bug #13405.

#13405 was filed against xf86-video-radeonhd towards the end of November, 2007.  xf86-video-ati has a counterpart as bug #19215, but filed almost a year later.   Despite a handful of very bright core developers and a few dedicated newbies (including yours truly) looking very closely at the problem, the fix was not to be committed until early May of 2009.

That’s over seventeen months.

To be fair, I don’t think there were any serious attempts at actually resolving the bug until I came along a year after its initial filing, eager to prove to the open source world that I have what it takes.  Even accounting for that, however, this was a process that took roughly five months.

In that time, a couple other commits fixing cursor corruption were made, but they turned out to be additional bugs that were only affecting certain hardware.  While both happened under equally peculiar circumstances, the original bug remained unresolved, despite multiple pairs of eyes and man hour investment in the double digits.

Finally, in the first week of May, 2009, the ever-awesome Alex Deucher made commit da58e351 to xf86-video-ati, which I promptly ported to radeonhd, finally closing a year-and-a-half old bug.

So, what was the problem that plagued us for so long?

-	RHDRegWrite(Cursor, Cursor->RegOffset + D1CUR_CONTROL, 0);
+	RHDRegWrite(Cursor, Cursor->RegOffset + D1CUR_CONTROL, 0x00000200);

One bit.

Laugh out loud, indeed.

I believe it to be a totally awesome and worthwhile goal.

One of the most prominent parts of my software development history is my involvement with Sharune.  Today, while attempting—and so far failing—to locate some old Delphi code written for this little MUD, I decided to do a search for the thing that I had built to see if it had become yet another artifact of the web.

No such luck.

What I did find, however, was this old forum thread of me seeking help with what was the precursor to that project.

This, essentially, is the moment I stopped being just a video game nerd and started becoming a “fucking prolific” hacker.

It’s also a huge asshat.

The three fish are housed in a pathetically (but not quite unethically) small aquarium, and have only each other for amusement.  Now, I don’t know what goldfish or carps usually do for amusement when not being fed, but I’ve often noticed the largest of the three using the others to play what I’ve dubbed Upside-Down Fish.  The rules are simple: pick a fishmate, chase it into a corner, use the aquarium wall to flip your mate over and push it to the surface, then see how long you can keep it upside-down.

Remember those old-timey cartoons where sometimes a bully would pick up a smaller guy, roll him into a ball, then use him to play hoops or knock down some pins?  It’s exactly like that.  Except it’s only slightly funny, and mostly just mean.

In the words of the wise animal sanctuary warden:

Well, animals are not like people, Mrs. Simpson. Some of them act badly because they’ve had a hard life, or have been mistreated…but, like people, some of them are just jerks.

It’s this last point that I would like to elaborate on: why is there such an asymmetry of expectations for job seekers when compared to those in positions to hire?

(Of course, there is a clear difference in the volume of applications an employer may receive and how many simultaneous application processes an employee-hopeful is going through at the moment.  Let’s assume that the in-person interview has happened, and there is no expectation of a follow-up interview.)

Through the various career preparation courses and workshops I have had to endure, there was a consistent message that I, as a job seeker, should do my best to research and learn more about the potential employer and the position in question before sitting down at the interview.  However, in most cases, the true nature of a position is not revealed until the interview is happening, and, all things considered, this is reasonable.  What isn’t reasonable is the fact that employers are not held up to the same expectations.

Truth be told, half the time, I am unconvinced my interviewer has even read my relatively short, 1.2 page resumé beyond scanning the headers.  I am, however, fairly convinced that none have taken the time actually investigate my open source work.  Some don’t even seem to understand that I had just finished school, and unlikely to have years of professional experience.

However, this is a minor annoyance compared to the lack of communication following an interview.  Despite the promises of “get back to you next week” and “staying in touch”, only some ever do.   I am not expecting feedback on my interview performance or tips on how to do better next time; a courtesy one-liner will suffice. Paradoxically, but not surprisingly, the probability of being notified of a rejection seem to be inversely proportional to the size of the company in question.  Empirically, I have had exactly zero rejection messages from companies big enough to have dedicated HR staff.  Most of the smaller programming shops have been good in this respect, but the score is not quite perfect.

Granted, I have not requested for a response when none were received in the assured time frame.  And, frankly, why should I?  If I were responsible for making the final decision on a business transaction of such a scale, I will have the common courtesy to notify the other parties affected regardless of outcome.  However, as a job seeker, the expectation of such a reciprocation is apparently foolish.

The mind boggles.

I will end with this list of wishes and advice for employers:

• If you are collecting resumes over a month or more, and plan to have phone screenings, don’t leave it all until after the deadline.  We might not remember having applied with you at all.
• If you have brought in candidates in for face-to-face interviews with the expectation that the outcome is Hire or No Hire, do let them know regardless of the outcome.  You wouldn’t leave a business partner hanging like that, would you?
• Don’t take weeks making the final decision after the interviews are held.  In the odd chance there is a good reason, let people know.
• Research us.  If we have impressive stuff to show, we would, and it’s not always the case that it should belong on a resumé.
• Treat this with the same professionalism as you would any other business relationship.