Tuesday, August 17, 2010

My Five-Year Plan

Recently, I just can't stop thinking: Am I doing things right?
I have always had the idea of having my own company. Honestly, who doesn't? What I really meant to say, is that I genuinely think  I have the necessary skills to accomplish this goal. Still, there is something missing.

When I finished college, I do remember thinking, need to gain some real work experience first. Four years has passed now, and I wonder how much of this experience is really worthy? and even if it is 100%. How much of this experience is actually product of a "classic work environment" ?  Just in case, lets define "classic work environment" as the following set: me(employee),many colleagues, my boss, his boss and the Big Boss ( you can add as many bosses as you want, this doesn't affect the model), fixed salaries, generic career plans, company values not usually honored, money comes first,etc.

Among the IT Consulting Industry companies there is one thing in common that stands above all others. The almost incredible lack of good leading technical professionals. In their defense I will say that this is not a one company problem. It is a business model problem. That said, the following quote really fall into place "It seems to me that many problems in software development stem from the desire to decouple software development from programmer".

I keep finding project technical leaders who are obsessed with becoming managers(budgeting,planning,profitability). Apparently, it is not that important to be first a software building expert to become and IT manager.  What happens next is that most IT managers end up with the responsibility of making decisions for what they aren't prepared for or not making decisions at all.

How is this related to My Five-Year plan? Let's see, my initial thinking of  "need to gain some real work experience first" has fallen into pieces. For two main reasons:
  • I have almost none valuable knowledge product of  that "classic work environment" I have been so deep into. Most of the skills I have are either product of my academic experience or self-learned while working. Just to clarify I consider valuable knowledge : design patterns,  requirement management, developing methodologies, problem-solving techniques,quality assurance,etc.  Learning JSF, Struts, or whatever are not examples of valuable knowledge to me.  I hope you get my point. When you start to work you expect to learn not only by mistake, but also by example. The last one hasn't happened a lot to me.
  • I have almost no interest in founding a traditional IT Consulting Company. So working in one probably is not what fits me the best. I like to do things the right way and I would like to work in my own products. From conceiving the idea throughout the whole development process. 
My Five-Year Plan is an Inflexion-Point Strategy for rearranging my professional goals and how I plan to achieve them. I don't expect to see results in five years. No one can put accurate timelines in this kind of Utopian projects. "Five-Year Plan" is simply a commonly used term for any plan for national economic or industrial development specifying goals to be reached within a period of five year. It was made famous by the USSR. It seemed appropriate for the title of this post.

In conclusion : I am going to stop waiting to feel ready and gonna put in motion one step-by-step process starting for trying to get myself that valuable knowledge I am not getting at work.


    Sunday, August 15, 2010

    Introducing the blog

    I finally have a blog. Now what? Where  do i start?

    I have never been much of a blogger, but suddenly, i thought of how writing a blog would help me with my English. Of course, you always need a subject to write about. At first, this was going to be a strict technology oriented blog. Algorithms, programming, web developing tools, etc. Not so fun right?  At least not for my girlfriend Andreyna who happens to be a journalist with absolutely no interest in computers. Therefore I'll be writing also about random subjects that catch my attention. It can be sports -- if you know me you'll know by now that i am a huge Inter Milan fan -- movies, life in Madrid, trips, pretty much about everything. But always trying to keep at least  50%  of the content Technology-Based.

    Every now and then i get to do some interesting stuff at work. Find a solution to a really weird bug, write a beautiful piece of code, trying a new tool or framework, etc. It would be satisfying if someone finds useful one of my upcoming posts. It would be even  more satisfying if a big company CTO reads my blog and i end up working at Silicon Valley.

    I think this is enough information regarding to "Introducing the blog". I hope to soon find the time to write the first real post which luckily will catch your attention, making of you an assiduous reader of this entry in the DNS database.

    For those of you who don't get the title of the blog it is a mix of Web 2.0 concepts, old-fashioned diary, and the following book that i had to read at college Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.