Today I am taken by the microcosm which is the
<project>McFeely</project> project team. I feel compelled
to give advice even though I am no better off than they
are.
I too live in that murky sysadmin/would be progammer
world. I took the leap a few years ago to become a
consultant (actually I was pushed). But I have one client
for whom I am basically an employee - so I end up facing
many of the same questions of focus, direction, goals
and definition that cdent discusses in
his diary. Strangely, he also brings up the calculus
people - geometry people spectrum. My thesis
supervisor described this as holistic thinker -
linear thinker and suggested that I sat in the
middle too. I compare this to my work mates who have a
thirst for detail that I avoid if I can. I find myself
programming less and less, but remaining very
opinionated about the projects I work on. I guess
that's the overview thing.
jlf (a friend of
cdent) complains of being dragged into the
politics of his workplace, ouch. Workplace politics is a
huge problem - also do you really want to be a manager or
is it the only route up in your organisation. I've
often wondered what became of the chief programmer
team concept pioneered by Frederick P. Brooks it's
worth trying to sell the concept to management (even if
only to get yourself a reputation as a creative thinker).
If you haven't read Brooks' book the "Mythical Man Month"
it is a classic case study of (failed?) Cathedral
development methodologies.
nymia asks "how contractors like me
could get into the free software and open source
market". I recently won a nice contract to build a
community web site (which I have to fit in after hours of
my other client). It is a government contract, so although
their stock contract demanded copyright ownership, they
were perfectly happy to place the source under a GNU
licence. There are plenty of organisations who are driven
by social rather than business goals (government, unions,
charities), and plenty of other businesses who wouldn't
know what to do with source code if it hit them in the
head. If (realistically) they will never sell their in-huse
software, and it won't be of use to their direct
competitors, then you should be able to sell them on Open
source on the basis of price, performance, compatibility
etc.
He roa rawa te kakau o taku paipa - the handle of my
pipe is way too long.
p.s. oops there is no <project> tag.