Staying ‘hands on’ in product development
Ben Rose
DCA Technical lead
I started trying to program a BBC Master when I was 7 years old, I typed out meticulous page after page of assembler code from a magazine called ‘Input’ which would create a game called ‘Cliff hanger.’ It took me 52 weeks (one edition per week) and it didn’t work.
Head held high, I started from scratch again, I re-wrote the whole codebase from the now available stack of 52 magazines by my side, it still didn’t work. Frustrated and now a budding 11(?) year old software developer I still hadn’t learnt the valuable lesson that there are ‘errata’ pages in magazines — hint: always read the whole of the exam paper before you begin work.
I never got it to work — ever.
At this exact point I think it became imprinted that I didn’t have it in me to a software developer which is probably why several years later I studied Music and Sound Recording at Surrey University and joined a Music Editing company in West London. I hated the job — utterly. As a result I kept drifting into the maintenance department in the next building over dabbling with Visual Basic — for my sins.
Eventually it became clear that I didn’t want the late nights, long weekends and lets be honest, low salary, that came with a career in music and I also found it intolerable to have to spend time making other people sound good. I was reminded like a jolt from the past that I wanted to become a software developer — it truly became my passion overnight.
I went straight out and bought a copy of Ivor Horton’s C++ Unleashed and read it, all 800 pages, cover to cover. I dutifully copied out the books program (a graphic design drawing package) and it worked this time! Of course I still didn’t understand a single thing I’d just written. I read the book again, I still didn’t understand it. At this point I wondered whether perhaps music was the life for me after all.
It took ages to find a company that would take on someone like me that had no experience or knowledge of programming but I suffered my way through 4 interviews with a small start-up firm in Essex that took a leap of faith — memorably(?) the 4th interview was 2 bottles of wine for lunch and a chat with the Finance Director. Finally I was in and I loved it. I loved the freedom of living in my own head, this was a job that challenged me in a way I never realised was possible and I was good at it in a way that the academically trained developers weren’t. I liked the art of it, they liked the efficiency and knowing which 1’s and 0’s to flip the fastest.
I was the play-by-ear musician, and they were the sheet readers — but I think you need a mix of both on a good team.
As time inevitably went on, I was surprised to find that my enthusiasm for software grew rather than diminished. It’s a world that is constantly changing, and I think you can’t get bored, although you can get left behind. At evenings, weekends, holidays and even on beautiful sandy beaches my laptop was with me. My wife still reminds me that I was writing software whilst on the beach in Fiji on our sabbatical time together. It’s hard to truly comprehend a job that is actually your hobby too — I think it irritates my wife 😊
On my pursuit of happiness in the workplace I’ve tried various jobs. I’ve been a money-grabbing contractor for banks and exchanges, I’ve been a permanent employee in several start ups and big companies, I’ve launched my own business (which is still running today making £0 per year) and then I stumbled across Doctor Care Anywhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe for a second that any job is going to be perfect, but this one so far has been my top pick of my career. Why I wonder? It could be just that I was ready for something different, something that wasn’t finance and at least let me vaguely pretend that it wasn’t all about money. It could also be that I’m in a position of seniority and I can get away with trying things when my ever vigilant CTO is distracted by something more important — either way it’s a great environment for growth — for me.
Something else that was important is that I think that Doctor Care Anywhere was ready for me, as immediately I was welcomed by everyone and I felt ‘home’ with my fellow employees. On that note I actually don’t even think of the people around me as fellow employees, they are more like friends. Of course, this is something that becomes problematic if you have a falling out about something on the ‘business’ side of your relationship but so far that has been very unusual.
The actual point of this blog post was intended to focus on ‘trying to stay hands on’ whilst being a responsible adult. My mother will tell you for one that I’m definitely not one of those. My position is one of responsibility and I strongly hesitate to use the term ‘leader’ and particularly hate the word ‘manager’ as they tend to be considered derogatory in the software world. Us software developers always want to be hands on, play with new tech as if it’s a new toy, trouble is it becomes harder and harder to maintain this balance and keep sharp.
I’ve had the privilege of helping to recruit new members to our team and realise more and more how tricky it is to carry on coding whilst trying to impart the ‘wisdom’ of 20 years of mistakes to people that have only been coding for 12 weeks. In all honesty it’s hard, as sometimes you just want to get on with the work yourself, get your head down and be just a developer again. For example when you start trying to explain something, your realise that you’ve started pulling on a thread of knowledge that takes you back years and years — do I have time for this? Of course you do. That’s the whole point of your position, it’s just reminding yourself that is the point.
As I try to say to myself anytime I’m frustrated, you’ve recruited people, they are here to help you and it’s important to remember that. It’s taken me approximately 5 different days to write this single blog post so it’s probably fragmented and that’s now how my brain works.
In order to stay on top of technology best I can, most often this has to happen outside of office hours so I continue to work on my personal projects, do a bit in the technical community (Stack Overflow in my case) and try not to become an old fossil before my time. I think it’s important that a team leader can continue to understand code and can continue to contribute to code. I don’t feel like I’ve outlived my usefulness yet, but when I do I hope I’ve left behind some people that will remember some lessons favourably.