I am honored to announce that I've been accepted to deliver a talk at That Conference this summer. I was unable to attend the first ever That Conference due to a scheduling conflict last year, making me double happy to be able to attend this August. Full details on my session can be found here. I hope to see many familiar faces there as well as connect with those of you I've only known virtually up to now.

Getting Started With Machine Learning

 Data mining, Big Data, predictive analytics, machine learning. Developers hear these buzzwords constantly but may not have a firm grasp of exactly what is involved in this exciting area of computer science. In this talk we'll explore some fun and easy to understand yet practical examples of both supervised and unsupervised machine learning. Example code will be in C# and we will focus on logic and algorithms over hardcore math.  Come and learn how to make your software better just by feeding it more data!

 Level: 200 - Category: Other

While my Taekwondo and Hapkido training are getting me close to my pre-children level of fitness, I have been avoiding running. TKD is hard on my shins and the sciatic nerve has been acting up again lately. Here's to hoping the chiropractor can work some magic because I'm entering my first race since the 2003 Al's Run:

http://www.wisconsinzombiemudrun.com/

 If you're interested in running with me or heckling, I'll be running at 11:30am.

I’ve been reading Alex St. John’s blog for a while, and it’s just amazing. His stories of ancient Microsoft history, his tracing popular video game features to fundamental human behavior shaped by evolution, his insistence on the importance of hard work and commentary American Privilege. A couple of his articles lately, though, have kicked me right in the throat. If you have any entrepreneurial aspirations, I highly recommend:

Educated Idiots

Café Easy

I might also throw in this less recent one from Hanselman:

I’m a Phony. Are you?

Over Sharing Inbound

I sometimes feel like these articles were written directly to me, probably because I’ve internalized a lot of guilt. Guilt about not taking action on my ideas. After all, since software is eating the world it doesn’t seemed too far fetched that every competent software developer is sitting on a gold mine. The only thing between me and amazing success is the will to make it so. Yet, I have no idea what I did with my 20s (professionally) and despite often thinking about and working on business ideas, I’m still a wantrepreneur in my late 30s. The Saint’s comments on work-life balance are what really got to me. My week night schedule might be something like:

•    Get up at a questionably late hour, go to my good-paying job.
•    Come home, make an unnecessarily elaborate dinner.
•    Hang out with kids, clean up, etc.
•    Hang out with wife
•    Devote a few pre-bedtime brain cycles to open source projects, blogging, continuous learning, and modeling stuff for one of my business ideas.

Unsurprisingly, I can think of no successful business owners who share my story. Have you ever read an interview with a truly successful individual that sounded anything like “Yeah, we worked 10 hours a week or so on this, no big deal, until it was done and we hit it big.”

I’m doing better than I ever have before in my life, yet it’s still not enough. One of the reasons why I haven’t been participating in community as much is because I’ve been writing huge amounts of code. It’s not enough, it’s not getting done fast enough for my taste. There needs to be more hard work. Some people may find themselves in an existential dilemma trying to figure out what to cut out so there’s time for more productive work. In my case, this has been an evil exercise. I shouldn’t spend less time with my kids! Surely not less time with my wife! I need my sleep and exercise. I need my movies and video games to decompress from the “hard work” and “stress” of my day job. Yet I shed a tear when I think about how much time I played Diablo 3 last year. (Not really, but I should be ashamed!).

This is where The Saint’s words hit home. If you’re content with the overall trajectory of your life and career, there would be nothing wrong with seeking balance between work/sleep/games/movies/wife&children/hobbies.  If you’re not, though, you need to think really hard about how much down time and “balance” you actually need. If you’ve always wanted to be a blogger with a million followers or a successful Micro ISV writing phone apps, or to become an independent consultant,  what value will you place on ‘balance” when you look back and realize you are no closer to those goals than you were years ago?

Golden Hours

The real problem in insisting that a few days of productivity entitles one to some marathon gaming sessions or re-watching all of Battle Star Galactica is the value of the particular hours when most of us are doing our side work or learning projects. I call these the Golden Hours.

Many of us, in our day jobs, are not afforded much focus. We may be committing code on multiple projects, reviewing our peer’s code, and generally participating in various unfortunate unproductive activities. No so during the Golden Hours.

My home workstation setupis slightly better than what my employer gives me. There’s a door I can close and I can play music through my excellent Klipsch PC speakers. The house is quiet, my family is asleep, there’s some red wine on my desk, and the time of night where my mind is most awake and focus approaches. What to do with this time?

If you have the numbers available, take a look at your favorite PC games (or Xbox or PS3) and see how many hours you spent playing your favorite games. Suppose that number was 400 hours last year. (oh, if only it were a mere 400 hours last year) At your day job that 400 hours may represent a fiscal quarter worth of office hours and you may have built a major module or accomplished a similar cog-in-the-machine type of contribution. But now, you’re at home. You’re using only the tools you love, only the libraries and frameworks you love. No architect has told you what you can’t do and how you can’t do it, no scrum master has told you Boring Crud Screen must take priority over Interesting Problem from a later sprint. The Golden Hours where you are awake and in your most productive environment approach. Now what could you do in 400 hours?

This, for me, is the true tragedy of seeking balance with hobbies, entrepreneurial dreams, and the stuff that actually must get done. Many of us have ambitions and skills, but proceed to spend the most productive time we have available surfing hacker news, watching zombie movies, online gaming, engaging in meaningless debates on twitter, or re-connecting with people we hated in high school on Facebook.

You may in fact reach a point where your brain is Jell-O and you truly need some downtime in order to return to productivity. Most of us probably indulge ourselves way, way too early though. I suspect that, like training your body with a “couch to 5k” program, you can train your mind to expect a life of more and more productive work and less and less Archer or Game of Thrones.

It’s easy for a programmer to do incredibly well in America today. If you want more, though, If you want to be really disgustingly successful, you must evaluate every activity through a simple heuristic: is this simply indulging my entitlement to wealth and leisure, or is this moving a possible revenue stream forward?

I have always considered stock options to be Monopoly Money. I came of age in the 80s and 90s and grew up watching the creation of Microsoft Millionairs and .Com millionairs but I never put much stock (pardon the pun) in this as a source of wealth. It's easy to look at successful companies like Microsoft whose stock split so many times and think of stock options as a path to wealth for the average worker bee.

I've spent my career up to this point in the midwest, and I saw some of my friends working heroic hours to make something happen for their company. Their motivation was going public and (at least) paying off their homes with stock sale proceeds. For a long time part of my fear of stock options was due to a bit of small-minded thinking: I couldn't envision any of these small Wisconsin companies making it big, and therefore viewed these stock options as essentially motivating a lot of free effort for the company by promising the moon to employees eager to cash out on a big deal.

My main issue, though, is that I find employees are generally woefully under-educated about exactly what kind of stock they are given and what they can do with their stock options. This Ars Technica article is just the latest in a long stream of examples. Stock Options, and Common Stock in general, often exist at the pleasure of the company. This is not to say that in-writing agreements are discarded at will when it's convienient, but rather that employees are not usually presented with the whole picture. You will happily sign something saying "We are granting you XXXX shares of Common Stock" without knowing there may be so much preferred stock that the likelihood of you getting any money out of a company sale is incredibly small. As Dell employees are now finding out, the bylaws of any company may also allow so many restrictions to be placed on stock options that only the narrowest sequences of events could even lead to an employee exercising & selling in a moderately profitable fashion.

As an aside: this also brings to light one of my personal biases. I'm extremely old-fashioned in that I greatly prefer stocks that regularly pay dividends out of profit. I find this a much more sound concept than the current practice of what essentially amounts to speculation on stock price. So many non-market forces (rumors, etc) can affect the market valuation of publicly-traded companies.

As the article about Dell points out, the higher you are on the food chain the more likely you are to do well with company stock. Call me cynical, but it's hard to look at this situation and call it anything but the top-decision makers fixing the game in their favor. Enron-style practices that allow executives to sell stock while employees are in a blackout period are common. Preferred stock agreements that gaurantee minimum share prices for executives even to the point of employees earning nothing from a sale are common.  The rules are complex and often hidden in secret company charters or in SEC filings that only employees with extremely deep financial knowledge can decipher. While the premise of encouraging the best employee actions by giving them a piece of the pie is a sound one, it's sometimes hard to look at these stories as anything but a case of fraud.

Software developers, more specifically talented software develoeprs, are unicorns according to a recent venture beat article. ⁽⁰⁾

 I am fond of quoting the "Software is eating the world" article. Salaries, benefits, environments, and creative signing bonuses are constantly in flux as the startup communities of Boston, New York, Silicon Valley, and Seattle compete with each other and with more established companies for software development talent. Scopely went so far as to offer $11,000 wrapped in bacon as part of an over the top signing bonus/publicity stunt as they sought out the Most Interesting Engineers in the World.

I think, indeed, it would be hard to overstate the need for skilled software engineers these days. Given this urgent need it's surprising that a huge, energetic, hard-working and incredibly skilled pool of software developers is being ignored by these talent-hungry organizations. I am speaking of course about all the software developers who do not live in one of these recognized technology meccas. To be sure, startups along with established technology giants like Amazon or Microsoft are always willing to interview qualified developers from a flyover state. It is nearly always a requirement, however, that one relocate to one of the coasts. No matter what developers, housing, or Bacon costs in Seattle, you can not work remote.

It's the Collaboration, Silly!

The inability to work remotely for the most talent-starved companies has long perplexed me. I asked a friend who works at a very successful Silicon Valley startup if she could provide more perspective on this topic. She look at me, and, apparently unaware she was stating something so obvious it bordered on cosmic absurdity, she stated "Well, it's just so much easier to work together when people are co-located."

Of course it's easier. The Currents of Information that flow around the office, the impromptu water cooler conversations that lead to a breakthrough, the ability to pull the right few people into a room to whiteboard a difficult problem: these can all be marvels of productivity and problem solving. Not only is this an obvious boon to driving business value, but software developers like it! Gone are the days of the software geek in a dark room littered with pizza boxes and empty cases of Mountain Dew, we like interaction with other skilled developers and (gasp!) business stakeholders too. Yes, it's clearly better to be under the same roof, but we're talking about escalating salaries⁽¹⁾, offices that look like entertainment complexes, and bacon-wrapped cash.

How many trips from Kasas City to Seattle could $11,000 plus the cost of bacon⁽²⁾ finance for a talented software developer? What is the conversion ratio between attractive relocation packages versus plane tickets, hotels, and food? Given ever improving technology and bandwidth, can US companies figure out how to collaborate across the country? The world? There are certainly precedents. Skype, for example, allows its engineers to live whereever they want and often features customer success stories on its blog. Vertigo has remote people in several states. My friend Steven Murawski lives in Wisconsin and just started work for Stack Exchange. These high profile companies are the exception that makes the rule look extremely odd. 

Cultural Bias?

While I can't precisely put my finger on it, there are also some Vibes of Bias I've sensed when talking to people in other areas of the country.

According to my friends in California, there appears to be no sane reason why you'd want to live in a fly over state. You must clearly value fishing and binge-drinking over technology to live in a cultural wasteland like Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, or Montana. You must appreciate less than optimal weather to opt for tolerating a cold Minnesota winter every year instead of the superior climated of Sacramento. If you took technology seriously, or if it was more to you than just a way to fund your deer hunting habit, you'd move.

The fact is, there are literally millions of people living in the fly over states, many of them brilliant software developers. Some of these people may have gotten married to people with less yearning for a fast-paced lifestyle on the coast. Some of these people may have close family ties to the area, kids in school, or are anchored to a bad real estate situation. I even know people who have commited the ultimate act of apostasy: left the West Coast to return to the Midwest.

Shortage?

For whatever unfortunate and misguided reasons an enormous percentage of the American population cannot, or choose not, to relocate to a hot technology area on the East or West coast. Yet both attention and Venture Capital flow so much easier to these areas than to a fly-over state. Is there a shortage of Talented Software Developers, or is there a a shortage of Talented Software Developers who had the foresight to establish no roots in a flyover state?

There is a huge opportunity here for the businesses who make this work.

Footnotes:

⁽⁰⁾ I'm a fan of Pluralsight and not picking on them. That writeup did inspire me to write this article though.

⁽¹⁾ Salaries really only seem to be escalating in certain areas of the country, which I will address in a future article.

⁽²⁾ Obviously over time the travel costs could start to outweigh a signing bonus. Regional salary differentials due to lower cost of living in non-coastal states likely provide enough room to negotiate a better salary for the employee and cover regular travel costs.

The difficulties of finding, hiring, and retaining great software developers does not end with filtering out the non programming programmers during your interview process. Any career minded individual must also be constantly thinking about the future. Am I learning enough here? Am I being recognized for what I'm contributing? Is this organization actually incenting the kind of behavior it claims to value? Do I need to try to get a different title that represents my contributions in order to sell myself to my next employer?

Does your organization have a universal and transparent system for evaluating title changes? Is it clear to you what you'd need to do in order to Level Up ? Unfortunately, it's likely not the case where you work. In fact, many people may find themselves with titles (and therefore salary ranges, recognition, and opportunities) that are unhinged from their contribution relative to other employees. Why is that slacker over there a Senior Software Engineer III while I languish as a mere Entry Level Software Grunt II. Your may not have titles, as many titles, or such boring titles, but keep reading.

My wife is a Registered Nurse. The hospital system where she works uses the odd title of 'Staging' as a rough descriptor of skill and therefore salary bands. A nurse can be from Stage 1 through Stage 5. Leveling up is done through the process appropriately called "Staging". The organization has guidelines around staging. When you are a student nurse in training you should be a Stage 1. A nurse who's recently graduated and passed the state Boards (examinations) should be a Stage 1 or 2. Once you have some work experience you will be invited to Stage again, and after a year you ought to be about a Stage 3.

The requirements for successfully Staging at each level are published and transparent. While there is some subjective evaluation: talking to people who have observed your work, etc. there are also various objective requirements, written work, and an oral interview with a small panel that evaluates your fitness for whatever Staging level you are seeking. If you successfully Stage Up, you get a merit increase outside the annual cycle and are more or less considered more of a Senior nurse (in terms of ability, not age) than people of a lesser Staging level.

This carries appeal for a lot of reasons. For one, the process seeks to be evidence based rather than purely due to putting in your time, hanging out with the right people, or job hopping to get a new title. The fact that Staging to a new level requires a significant amount of effort on the part of the nurse also resonates with me: I'm not going to promote you just because it was time. Rather than wondering how your co-worker got to Stage 4, it should be very clear to you what you'd need to do in order to get to Stage 4. If you want to.

I'm not sure what the hospital would do if a nurse tried to stage three times in the same year, but presumably a failure would be accompanied by strong evidence of what was lacking.

In software development, one sought-after title by some is "Software Architect"; to some this is distinct from and superior to being a mere Developer. I happen to agree quite a bit with Joe Duffy on the role of the Software Architect, but in my own way I try to also provide an objective path to anyone who approaches me and says "I'd like to become more of an Architect..." There are things I think you should understand. There are seminal works I think you probably ought to have read. Ultimately, though, in our field, you become a Software Architect by hanging a sign outside your door that says "Damon Payne: Software Architect". (You may want to consider replacing my name with yours) You may succeed, you may fail, but if you're paying attention and you're open to thinking about why you've failed you will learn a lot. You'll keep those things in mind and ask better questions next time. One day you'll leave work and think to yourself "Hey, I really am a Software Architect".  Does "fake it till you make it" work sometimes?

In our world of fakers, pretenders, non-programming programmers, and job-hopping, could we promote software developers more like nurses?

I recently traded in my Samsung Focus for a shiny new Nokia Lumia 920. I like the hardware very much, and generally Windows Phone 8 is nice. I appear to be among those afflicted with what appears to be a poor Bluetooth stack, but I’m hoping that gets patched soon so I’m willing to suspend judgment on that facet.

I continue to be frustrated by the adoption and market perception of Windows Phone. I mean, really frustrated.

My wife got me a Nest learning thermostat for Christmas. Not only does this thing tickle my interest in machine learning but it’s wicked useful in its own right. One selling point, for her, was that “we” could control it remotely. Except the nest app is available for iPhone and Android only. Not only this, but IE10 is the black sheep of the mobile browser world and no amount of rotating or failed resizing makes the mobile version usable on my WP8.

Of course it’s not just Nest. Fitocracy, Pinterest, my bank, and nearly everything else I have interest in is an exclusive club where membership is available only to those who know the secret handshake of the Ancient Order of the Not-Microsofts. Of course it would be great if all these folks started making Windows Phone apps, but why should they? Android continues to sell one trillion phones per millisecond and the iPhone is still considered cool. I can’t even claim to be a part of the solution myself. I am involved in a side project/startup with some folks right now, and the question of a Windows Phone app has never come up. Although it’s entirely my decision and my time I simply cannot justify it. Maybe when absolutely everything else is done I’ll circle back and build one for the home team, but when I put my Business Owner hat on it’s easy to see why the decision to not build a Windows Phone app is so easy.

Microsoft has some of the smartest people in the world working for it. I have to wonder, though, if any of them are in marketing? I’m tired of not being able to participate in Mobile because I bet on the wrong platform. I’ve had well-meaning Microsoft folks ask me which apps are missing: the intent is to contact these companies and try to educate them on the opportunity. Sadly this merely kicks the can down the road a little. When the next new mobile app hotness comes out the overwhelming likelihood is that it will come to Windows Phone last, if at all.

Until it is a must that companies also release their software for Windows Phone, they won’t, and their users will feel the sting of second class citizenship.  Microsoft needs to Fix It, or lose mobile entirely.

Let's think about some industries in the age of the Internet:

Newspapers
Music.
Movies.
Real Estate.
Publishing.
Retail.

The way we’re doing things now are profitable, proven, known, safe, comfortable.

What Year Is It?

So What Should Retail Do?

This weekend I'll be presenting on WinJS and HTML5 development at the Fox Valley Day of .NET in Appleton, WI

Do you want to build native applications in JavaScript?  The HTML5/CSS/JavaScript stack shown at Build 2011 caused quite a ruckus within the .NET and Web Developer communities. We won’t talk about Plugins vs. HTML5 too much, but we will take a hard look at how well WinJS delivers on the promises of re-using Web Developer skills for Windows 8 and making JavaScript a first class citizen in the Windows 8 ecosystem. Come to this session to explore common smart-client application techniques such as control/UI, navigation, data-binding, service consumption, and more.  XAML developers looking for a peek at the dark side are welcome.

I hope to see you there!

If you're interested, there is also a day long HTML 5 and Azure boot camp coming up too.

The first rule about the MVP Summit is that you do not talk about the MVP Summit...

I'm back in the Seattle/Redmond/Bellevue area for the 2012 global MVP summit.  Obviously what goes on out here is under NDA so I can't blog about it.  There's a lot of reasons to come out here every year: interact with the Microsoft teams who build the tools I use, connect with other MVPs I might only know through Twitter or their blogs, and recharge.

Here in the afternoon of the first day, I'm already feeling a little more myself.  Conferences like this carry a huge benefit that it's hard to put a price tag on: a chance to step back and reflect, and get re-enganged in your career and your love of technology.  I'm hoping for some serious reduction in Burnout this week, wish me luck!