Ah the thrills of working a dream. Being my own boss. Creating a company "of the people, by the people, and for the people" so to speak. A company that's not cut from the corporate or venture capital mold where every decision is profit motivated. How fun it is. No two days are the same. Such is life trying to build a software company from scratch with nobody's money but your own. Many folks would call my company a Micro-ISV. A term coined by Eric Sink, founder of SourceGear. I am not a big fan of this term because of its ambiguous perceptions, but nevertheless, the term does accurately describe my available resources. And with loads to do and micro resources, you roll up your sleeves and get busy. You learn to live by these ten words.
If it is to be, it is up to me.
Perhaps had I seen Neil Davidson's Micro-ISV survey before I started this gig I might have reconsidered and stayed marching to the beat of the corporate drum. Yet even in the face of undeniably bad odds, I am hopelessly optimistic because I firmly believe that with hard work, talented people, strong focus and persistence, success is inevitable. This belief doesn't help my resource problem though, and as a result, I do lots of things myself, both technical and non-technical.
Because I do so many different things, I've come to wonder exactly how I would title my work. Thinking purely technical, I would say I am a jack of all trades, which has me wondering… is knowing a little about lots of technical areas better than knowing everything about only one particular technical area?
It's interesting when I discuss software with corporate developers. Many of their issues have to do with people, opinions, and pecking order. Corporate, big money development involves lots of people, lots of specialties, and lots of individual interactions.
The list of specialties involved in creating high quality software is pretty long.
- Analyst
- Architect
- Application Developer
- UI Developer
- Technical Writer
- Graphic Designer
- Project Management
- Web Developer
- Tester
- Deployment Engineer
- Product Champion
- IT Support
- Technical Evangelist
- Database Admin
And the list could go on, even into sub-specialties.
I was discussing web development the other day with a friend and I asked a question about JavaScript and AJAX. His response dumbfounded me when he told me he didn't do JavaScript. He writes Asp.Net. The browser guys write JavaScript. This is shocking when I contrast it with a day in my world.
I am not a web developer… but I write a lot of Asp.Net code.
I am not an analyst… but I write a lot of specs.
I am not a tester… but I do a lot of testing.
I am not an IT guy… but I do a lot of server stuff.
So what's better? I think it's less about what you are responsible for, and more about what you are interested in and pursue knowledge of. A person who knows only JavaScript, and is not interested in anything else would not be very useful here. However, if that person knows far more JavaScript because of previous duties and responsibilities, but also knows about Asp.Net, IIS, and Data Access, we might have a place for them.
Speed is what you get with a highly specialized technical expert. I could write anything in JavaScript, but it will take me longer than it might take "the browser guys". Depending on the task, far longer. At $185/hour, I expect that many companies value speed over everything else. It goes back to that profit thing. But take into account the cost of the human interactions between specialists, and those efficiency savings start to get lost.
With technical tasks success or failure is pretty easy to spot, regardless of how long it takes to complete. Whether or not it works is usually easy to judge. So if all I get is five people to create a new software application, I would take 5 jacks like me over five specialists any day.
With non-technical tasks however, it's not that simple. The harder it is to assess the success of the work product, the greater the need for a specialist. I used to think that a smart developer can do almost anything. I still do for the most part, but let's just say that in the 15 months since I launched Kinetic Jump, my opinion on certain non-technical tasks has changed. But more on that next time…
Brian