Category: Branding

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Re-invent Yourself: Flash to Flex Developer

Preface

I missed David Samuel’s Re-invent Yourself Personal Retreat this weekend. Last week was stressful, and I got little sleep Thursday. When the alarm went off Saturday morning at 6:30am, rather than hit snooze, I just turned it off. In my fading moments of consciousness, my left and right brain had a friendly debate, neurons firing over postulates and hypothesis of the risk/reward ratio of getting up and going.

I had decided 3 months ago I would go. I had decided Friday night I would go. Yet, I didn’t go. At 11:00am, when I finally awoke to a blonde licking my face and stepping on my neck, I was very disappointed in myself. I’ve been cursing myself since.

When I look back on my life before I pass, I’ll have no regrets, but this will be one of my admittedly bad mistakes. I’ve seen David speak before, and he had 2 colleagues with him this time, so I’m sure it was off the hook and I could of gained a lot.

Background

Why so glum about a seminar I missed? Because I really could of used some insight on how to re-invent myself.

11 months ago, I fell in love with Flex. Coupled with Flash, it makes for a great team to create great apps, web and fat client front-ends.

After a few experiences in large Flash applications, I realized it was time to move on. I was hoping I could remain a Flash Developer, and support the Flex Developers like Nigel’s article describes, but it was not to be. The more responsibility that was bequeathed to me in terms of application architecture, as well as a growing amount of team members, the more I realized Flash isn’t cut out for large application development. Weekend contract jobs, 3 month web app stints, and components created for re-use? Flash owns.

But when you start getting into 6 months, have significant amount of views, and large amounts of data that are kept with your apps state… there is no other alternative than to use Flex.

Developer Attitude & Pashion

I am not like a lot of my colleagues’ in the industry, however. A majority I would assert are definitely of the mindset that you utilize the appropriate technology for job. If an application requires AJAX, Flash, older browsers, MySQL, Oracle, .NET, ColdFusion… whatever combination of client, middle, and back-end tier technologies work best given the business requirements, technology constraints, and your current resources.

I, on the other hand, am loyal to craft, not to company. An ex-marine (once a marine, always a marine) manager at a former job told me that. I always liked to ask him questions about management and other terms that had nothing to do with programming since he could explain it using terms and analogies I could understand. “Managing Einsteins” as he put it was challenging, referring to managing a plethora of engineers in our technology department. He used that phrase towards me, saying that because I am loyal to craft, and not to company, he as a manager needed to provide opportunities for me to excel and be challenged at my favored technology or risk losing me as a company asset. Bad ass concept!

I find that extends, however, to my view on my career. I thrive in instability, work extremely well under pressure, and have a passion for what I do. So, if the appropriate technology to use on a project is AJAX… I simply wouldn’t do it. Hear me out. Am I qualified? No, I don’t do HTML + CSS + JavaScript for a living, so anyone who considered me a resource on that project has grossly misjudged my skill set. Can I learn to do it? Absolutely! It is very similar to what I do today; using an SGML markup to render form elements, connect the logic the forms use together via an ECMA script based language, and style them using CSS.

Do I want to? Hell no. I’m not passionate about it, fail to see how I can excel at it since I hate it, view it as an inferior technology, and if Jesse Warden isn’t kicking ass and taking numbers, he’s finding a way to do so. And that way is finding an avenue where people can utilize my skill set for an appropriate job.

What that boils down to is targeted employment opportunities. Meaning, my contracting and employment goals are focused on getting employment in a specific area of development, mainly Flex with a little Flash vs. just a steady job that pays. Many jobs, big and small, require developers to wear many hats. I believe any competent engineer can code .NET 1 week, and learn to code in PHP the next, and succeed at many projects in the long run.

Do I want to? No, but will I? Well, in my experience, I’ve never had that happen. I’ve had to learn ASP because there were no programmers available, but I still used Flash for the front-end. I’ve had to learn enough about SQL Server to update database tables… but I still used Flash on the front-end. Currently, I’m learning about setting up and using ColdFusion… but I’m still using Flex on the front-end. The only thing I can conclude is that in my case, there is no question what Jesse Warden will utilize on the client-side, but on the middle-tier and back-ends, whatever is appropriate. It is already assumed that Jesse wouldn’t be here working on said project if it were not already previously established Flex was the appropriate client side technology.

Hiring Craze

So, with that being said & established things have been crazy this summer. Thanks to my large contractor list, I’ve managed to hopefully fulfill the daily job & contracting requests I get to potential clients & headhunters. There have been cases, however, where potential opportunities were actually in my best interest to see where they led. It doesn’t mean I’d actually take said positions, but hearing what people have to say is very telling of the industry, opens up new networking contacts, and at the very least hopefully allows me to find them a potential candidate I may know who’s appropriate for the opportunity.

Usually February/March and October/November are “Hire a RIA Developer” months. Not sure what it is, but my guess is budgets are either approved by the beginning of the year, or there is enough left over towards 3rd quarter to hire more. Either way, I usually get inundated with contract positions and potential jobs for employers either seeking me, my skills from a website, or most often if I know anyone. My canned response is usually that I’m busy (which is true), and I then provide them with my list of contractors, with notes on who’d be most appropriate to contact.

The ones that sound interesting to pursue, I’ll usually follow-up with I’m interested, but not available with the hopes that they’ll let me in what their company is doing; I’m always fascinated & interested in what companies are working on in the Flash & Flex sphere so take every opportunity to find out more about it.

Three opportunities in the past 3 months have really hit home to me, 2 of which made it to employment descriptions and I had to decline because I already have a great gig going on, but again wanted to hear what they had to say.

The first was a Flash opportunity working with a bunch of experienced and talented developers as well as some I could work with to train. I could make good money, work in a stable & growing company doing product based work (meaning re-use of code base without wildly different approaches to different projects), train fellow developers, and hopefully work towards management training. Problems? No room for Flex in the near future. I’ve had enough battling with Flash in my career to know that even when developing multimedia games, I’d prefer to utilize Flex. I couldn’t justify doing small time development; while extremely less stressful as well as leaving more room for getting myself mentored, something I’ve longed for from a couple past jobs, I know I have other areas where I should be to improve my career, case in point working on larger scope projects with more appropriate deadlines. Challenging my pragmatic assumptions is my current personal goal. Meaning, I know enough about OOP, encapsulation, and design patterns that they really falter under tight deadlines; I’ll use them until the boss starts giving me the stern gaze at which point they go out the window without much fan fair.

Ok, cool, so at the time, I had 2 other real, Flex opportunities on the horizon. I’m ready to move to the my next level. Keyword, my, as I don’t think going from smaller time development to more Enterprise level development is the next level, because seeing Enterprise Developers put into a smaller shop is just as paradigm smashing, and fun to watch.

I’ve had a series of emails that lead up to a 2 minute call this morning. Usually what happens is, if people press me to talk to them instead of sending them contact information of those of my fellow contracts, I give them my current contract rate and explain again how much I apologize, but I’m busy beyond belief, and am willing to take a few minutes to hear what they have to say, and recommend either a personal path or a technology path; they should look into hiring “X”, and/or using technology “X”, sometimes what they already have.

The majority of the time, these extremely short phone calls are with recruiters, while I’m making lunch. I try to be as positive and helpful as possible, gleaning as much information as possible about the position(s), and recommend who they contact and why.

When it’s an actual potential position, like today, I try to pry as to why they want X technology (Flash or Flex), how they found me, and why, all the while preparing in my head who I can recommend, and confirming they sound like they are on the right technological path.

Tipping Point

Today was the 2nd time I’ve seen a clear gap in Flash vs. Flex developer employment. This is big to me, because for the past 18 months, it’s been more about education. 9 times out of 10, they just had no clue about Flex, or had heard some information about it and Laszlo, but were investigating it at the same time as looking for potential candidates. At this point, I’ll proceed to explain the various options, and give my suggestions.

I clearly explained I am not interested Flash development, I am 100%, gung ho for full-time Flex development, and recounted my past experiences up till now to give some context as to why. I heard him out, heard what he is looking for, and got a tiny bit of information on their existing products and plans.

I’ve done this like 3 times this year, first 2 with recruiters, so it wasn’t anything new… hell, it’s getting routine. What was different about this call, however, was the clear cut & quick understanding that I wasn’t a fit for the position.

People may think it’s obvious, but it’s amazing how easy this stuff is when you know what you want to do. Ask anyone what they want to do, and I bet you the majority have a guess, not a true, confirmed understanding. I do, so when people ask, it borders on yes or no.

I guess what was scary is this was an additional incident in a growing series, and most importantly, it happened when I’m an already employed Flex contractor vs. a recently un-employed Flash contractor. It was confirmation I had crossed to the other side.

Eerie.

The only thing I didn’t like about the conversation was I gave the false impression that I use Flex for mundane, forms based development, creating SWF front-ends for CRUD (create, read, update, delete) back-ends, and how I no longer utilize my multimedia skill sets that flourished when using Flash. That isn’t really true, nor an accurate picture of what I do, but it certainly was illustrated in the gentleman’s response comment asking if I knew anyone who was good at doing creative, application development with Flash.

Apparently, I failed at illustrating that Flex was more than capable of doing that was as well, even with Flash’ help via integrating the workflows. It was ok, though, because the current Flex 1.5 license doesn’t fit with their budget and team size. Regardless, Flex Builder 2 does (at least from initial reports), and I was frustrated at myself for not correctly articulating those points.

I may give the impression I get these calls “all the time” and that’s not the case; it’s just the pure volume and frequency of emails & phone calls about asking for Flash & Flex talent, compounded by the re-invigoration in discussing Flex because of the Flex Builder 2 announcement at MAX is making me euphoric about the state of this industry.

Conclusion

Bottom line, I’m in the process of re-inventing myself as a Flex Developer, and it’s hard. I could really use some guidance and that’s why I was really upset about not attending last weekend’s Re-invent Yourself retreat. Although the work I do is more appropriate for Flex development, my years spent in Flash make it that much cooler, and I can see a lot of opportunities in mixing the two.

Explaining that, formulating that into an actionable plan, and setting multiple personal goals at attaining & defining what a Flex Developer is, however, is proving extremely challenging.

I know I want to continue doing what I’m doing currently, and that is doing Flex work for my current employer. At least I got a solid base to work from, and all your base are belong to us!

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Personal Branding: Presentation Availability

Received a really cool email response from Mr. David Samuel this weekend. He sent me a link to his presentation as well as some free advice (gotta love that!).

For those of you wishing to obtain a copy of his presentation, even if you didn’t attend (as it is still valuable & applicable since Flash developers will soon stabilize the demand by increasing in numbers), simply email him requesting a copy; “Personal Branding Seminar @ BellSouth”.

He’s probably a busy man, so have patience in a response.

david@leanforwardandgo.com

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Personal Branding: Post Seminar

I just returned from a seminar about Personal Branding given by a Mr. Samuel David. There was a lot of great material covered, and I learned a lot, am still reflecting on a lot of it, and was inspired to action. I want to relay a lot of the key points and I’ll try to do so in the order they were presented, however as an audio learner, some of my conclusions might be intermixed. It must be said that Mr. Samuel David is a great, public speaker. His delivery of material, covering the main points, pause in making statements, audience interactivity, and ability to convey relevance was spot on. He apparently does workshops and other classes which sound schweet. I apologize, therefore, for my haphazard gathering of thoughts and attempting to organize them here before I take the long drive home.

Introduction

To give you some background, BellSouth I’m thinking sponsored the seminar, calling it, “Personal Branding As a Career Mobility Strategy”. The 2 beginning words were what inspired me to go. Here a large, corporate company is making an active effort to inspire BellSouth employee’s to actively pursue Personal Branding to help them in their career’s. I was fascinated in the enigma this caused. Why would a company want their own employee’s to care about their own career marketability? The seminar answered this as explaining to the audience how they can increase their career mobility strategy within their respective company. As the speaker was from IBM, he relayed the message applying it to BellSouth, as well as other companies as it seemed there were other people there not from BellSouth (Delta, Bank of America, etc). I took Marta to the Midtown BellSouth building 2, and I must say public transportation is lame. While the experience of actually going through the subway was easier than Washington, D.C.’s, the price was straight crazy. It cost me, in total, $4. I could of driven there for less, and then headed straight home afterwards… assuming I found a free parking spot.

At any rate, BNAT, the BellSouth National African American Telecommunications …something… may have misquoted the name, can’t find their website, appeared to be involved. My co-workers and I arrived a little late as getting some of our tasks completed proved unexpectedly challenging, but nothing my team couldn’t handle. Therefore, it sounds like I missed a great introduction, but alas I still made it time for more good stuff.

Changing Times

He started talking about the 3 main points he wanted us to carry away with us in dealing with Personal Branding. I’ll have a copy of the presentation emailed to me, but for the time being here’s my best guess. He first discussed the changing world we live in compared to 50, 20, 10, and 5 years ago. How everything is networked, how we are now in communications with many who we were not before, how the top-down management and/or company structure is a thing of the past and has been turned on its side, adding horizontal career growth to the mix. Key points also being contracts between employers and employees used to being you give me your blood and sweat and I’ll provide you with a lifetime job… that concept is, in the majority, no more. Then, discussing how instead of us going to work, the work comes to us. The company assets no longer being in currency (money, gold, oil) but instead in intellectual assets. The grand cool thing about this is instead of me giving you gold, and now you having it and I don’t; instead it’s I give you information and now you have it, and so do I. The weeding out, outsourcing, and marginalizing of people based on performance says that no longer will you stand out by your performance alone… as everyone around you is there because of their performance. If it wasn’t good, they wouldn’t be there. Therefore, that is why Personal Branding is important; for you to stand out. He quoted a lot of great sayings, such as “Your either distinct or extinct” and a lot of reasons behind why you need to take proactive action to let others know who you are.

What is a Brand

He talked about what a brand is. It represents “What its best known for?”, where the it is whatever the brand is conveying. He showcased some logos, such as Starbucks, Harley Davidson, and asked us what we thought when we heard those names; what did they stand for. Starbucks, instead of being coffee, meant “It’s not work, it’s not home, it’s a refuge for our customers.” They are providing a culture for people to go to and hang out.

Harley Davidson, instead of being about American made, freedom, was instead about “…a 43 year-old accountant having the ability to wear a black leather jacket, and ride his motorcycle in a residential neighborhood.” They’re selling a lifestyle, the rebel lifestyle.

He then showcased a lot of BellSouth leaders and others, showcasing their leadership traits which got them to where they are. Neat to hear members of the audience adding depth to those bullet points, since a few of them were present in the audience. Additionally, it was really about understanding that those leaders DO understand how they are perceived, and capitalize on that.

Personal Branding

Finally, he discussed the many facets, and man were there a heck of a lot of facets to Personal Branding. The first dealt with confirming this is not a CEO thing, but for everyone in any level of an organization; again, it is about the teams we work in and those teams ours works with. There were many strategies mentioned on how to further improve the perceptions, and ways one goes about getting noticed, positively affecting your perception, and pro-active things one can do to help further your growth. He accentuated that if you are not happy at your job, by being there not happy, people will notice, and you can’t expect to get a promotion and then be happy. You need to show that passion. He conveyed that isn’t easy, it’s hard work and is a very introspective thing. To know yourself and what you want to do, and have passion about it. I offered to the audience my way of finding what it was I wanted to do via the trials of working various jobs, school, and talking to thousands of people realizing that none of them were going to have an answer for me and I had to find out myself. And when I found it, the passion just merely followed; easy as that. Another audience member contributed that it was also about attitude. True enough.

A few techniques that stroke home like a ton of bricks was your “branding statement” and your “elevator pitch”. The first being an advertisement of yourself and what you do. It is high level, and is attractive to read; it should entice the reader to question what you do and have a positive feeling about it before they even ask. You follow that up with a Branding Statement which is more in depth, and finally your role. The role, obviously, will change with your career, but you put it down in writing. I guess those go on your resume, but he also mentioned you can put them on your corporate website’s bio page, like IBM does at their intranet.

Ok, I can handle the branding statement, “A multimedia developer, specializing in Rich Internet Applications and Rich Media nTier implementations.” Now, that’s just off the top of my head, but you I can see how that would of helped a frikin ton when my father would ask what I do, or someone you met while traveling.

The 2nd however, the elevator pitch, was laughable. While taking the elevator from the 9th floor to the 1st, a gent who works on my floor asked what we do. I replied, “We code.” He responds, “What do you code?”. I respond in a laid back tone that “Currently I am developing with some XUL, Mozilla’s bread and butter, but I usually code Flash for the [edit] we’re working on… currently, though, we’re [so deep in our project] that [department X] wouldn’t like us doing development without being immediately available for support work (which I am mind you).” … and a “huh” later I was like, ya know, if I was prepared, I would of sold that guy into coming to work for us. I mean, heck, he’s on our floor already. Anyway, when he, the speaker, mentioned that, “Can you describe the essence of you in 30 seconds or less” I just laughed internally. What a freak I am… next time, I’ll be prepared. A great example was a Yellow pages ad for a CEO in the room. Damn, that was a good example.

He ended on some additional action items, such as a questionnaire asking what are your strengths, what have you learned in the last 90 days, the plan of how you develop your brand, how you execute it (make it available as well such as email signature, personal website), and finally how you drive it home (speaking, getting quoted, published).

Conclusion

So, I’m insanely glad BellSouth held such a thing, it reminds me that a lot of geniuses out there need to frikin blog, even if they don’t feel like it, they feel like they have nothing interesting to say, or whatever… no one cares cause they know your smart when they read your stuff, and you turn up on Google when people are searching for answers and find your blog. Just because you don’t get a thank you in the comments doesn’t mean jack… you just scored mad personal branding points. I can also see why a lot of people don’t make it all the way to where they want to be. I found it funny, too, the example given where a 25 year developer at IBM was an apprentice of the speaker since he wanted to get more involved in the business side and mentioned, “I just can’t get comfortable with this… I don’t like talking about myself.” The speaker’s reply was “get over it.” That’s gotta be my hardest challenge, too. Finally, I can see I have a lot of work to do, both intrinsic and extrinsic.

I know I left a lot of insanely great points out, so I’ll try to (with the speakers permission) post some of the presentation.

*** Update 1.23.2006: John Dowdell of Adobe has a link to creating an Elavator Pitch.