Mmm…whoa, it’s been almost three months since I’ve started working for the G. It has gone by surprisingly quickly; I suppose having to learn a bunch of new systems helps move the clock hand.
Having been at startups for the past two years, it’s a bit of a shock to go back to a corporate environment, especially one as different as Google’s. On one hand, the big-company benefits are mostly as good as the recruiter’s pitch – nice having decent food, a well-stocked kitchen, generous medical insurance and matching 401k again. The other hand is dealing with the sheer scale of a twenty-thousand employee-company, where every meeting requires a conference call across five different time zones and everybody is a stranger in the office.
The Wall Street Journal recently published their 2010 survey findings on the best and worst careers, based around factors like income, outlook, environment, etc. As usual, software engineering ranks near the top of the field, though, for the rest of this post to make sense, you’d have to ignore “Web Developer” at #15 -I’m guessing HTML monkeys – and whatever the hell “Computer Programmer” is down at #34.
Now that I think about it, I’ve been pretty lucky to pick a career that seems to have an insatiable demand for a work force, in a place that not only fosters talented software people but also encourages entrepreneurship. That is, there’s always someone with an idea with a need for an engineer for implementation; the demand drives up wages and perks, with an unfortunate downside in jacking up living costs and, well, Californian taxes. The net result is that a “high-tech” job here in the Bay Area pays 60% more than one elsewhere, with cost of living expenses to match.
Oh boy. I feel another productivity rant coming on. Reader beware.
It’s pretty hard to be productive – trying to maximize the amount of work done in a minimal amount of time requires serious discipline, process, and fairly in-depth knowledge of all the moving parts (including, in a lot of cases, people). Though, there is a sweet solace which comes from the extra time saved and accompanying relaxation.
So why don’t more people try it?
Back when I was in school, Cal’s College of Letters and Science just started a so-called interdisciplinary studies major – a way to become well-versed in multiple areas of study, to prepare for a world where a single skillset was insufficient, a dabbler of many and a master of none.
Always seemed like a lame way to eek out a degree from Berkeley.
At least they got the idea right, in that there is usually a need for someone who can work in multiple areas, though it may not be immediately obvious. Your typical website or webapp requires a few dedicated individuals to build:
One of the points our ergonomic consultant made was to prefer keyboard to mouse use. Apparently, our hands and wrists are worse off with gliding motions than with stationary typing, and in most setups the device sits on a flat surface we have to reach for. The combination makes for quick carpal tunnel; laptop trackpads aren’t much better from their cramped positions, and they’re a pain to use.
Then there’s the obvious advantage of efficiency with keyboard shortcuts – they’re faster to input, and they keep your hands in the same position for additional typing. Mousing requires precious seconds of hand-eye coordination to hunt down the right pixels to click, and commits the entire hand to its usage. No wonder high-end mice are evolving to include more and more buttons to access common functions with simple tactile buttons.
There’s got to be a rule in the Corporate Handbook for Dummies (TM) which advises that a passerby with no stake in the company’s well-being is better suited to architect its systems than its own employees. Strange custom, woefully true.
Consulting is a pretty lucrative gig in the software industry. Ridiculous hourly rates, architectural design, and flexible work periods are nice perks, but consulting avoids in the hardest part of writing software: the continual maintenance and enhancement of existing code. And really, consulting is the pre-med of the job world; it sounds impressive until you realize the qualifications for entry are essentially zilch.