Need a junior developer to work with release management tasks — Perl/Python scripting, C++ builds using GNU Make, source control and management. The right person could grow into Bigger Things over time. So, if you know someone who’s graduating or recently graduated, and who wants to live in Chicago, or if you’re interested in doing something different, fast-paced, and of course working with ME, then send me a resume.

As a challenge I’m going to complete a post before I get to the city this morning, so beware: coherency, intelligence, and an actual topic are optional for this post.

Today I’m doing training, which means that I get to take a class on something and then do all the work that I would have been doing had I not been in the class. I’m going to be learning about the parts of Boost that are planned for inclusion in the new C++ spec. I know, I know, riveting material here. Actually, I’ve been looking forward to it a lot; Boost is one of those things that I totally ignore until I need something, and when I do need something Boost usually has it, in an elegant, robust way.

But that’s not all: today my empire at work becomes complete. My new hire gets moved to the desk across from me, and in the process scores a window seat on his third week with the firm. I told you people to submit a resume; perks abound.

Ah, well. I finally feel like I’m making real progress again, and moving forward feels good. Between that and the springtime warmup, I’ve gotta say, things are well.

Yesterday I did a formal project plan using Microsoft Project.

I feel a little dirty, and repeated showers don’t seem to touch it.

Apparently, this is how managers do their work. What I’m trying to understand is this: how can you find fulfillment in keeping track of the cool stuff other people are doing? I mean, I put my name on some of the interesting tasks and my manager was scolding me for not having other people do the stuff. For me, the thing is that I never, ever, ever want to lose sight of what goes in to being a good developer. I work religiously on ensuring that any task I assign to someone else in my team is something I could take on myself and get done.

And the thing is, MSProject has one real goal: to abstract away the work into line-items with start and end dates, assigned resources, and the like. That way you can put them on a Gantt chart and see what goes where. Don’t get me wrong, there’s value in that — I need some way to show my business users that what they ask for has a very real cost in time and effort, and it affects when other things they want can get started/done.  But something about moving from the person who does the work to someone who supervises the work being done is bothering me, and I’m not sure I’m okay with letting go.

So I’m trying to decide how I can achieve balance here. I think that if I move to 100% supervision, I’m going to feel my soul drain out of me.  But if I don’t keep track of what I’m responsible for better, I’m going to lose the resources that let me get all the good projects to do.

I guess this is how managers earn their pay.

…hard work pays off. I just found out yesterday that my boss had me on his short list of names (12 people) who were brought to the attention of the CIO and CEO as top performers of 2007. Of course, that means a little extra at bonus time too.

It was never really my plan to try to get on that list; I just really wanted stuff to work. I’m addicted to workahol, and I’ve landed in a place that keeps feeding the addiction. I was fearful for some time that this job would grind me down, but I’m experiencing the opposite: I’ve become increasingly Zen with the pressure/stress of the job as well as taking on even more responsibility and pressure. Of course, without my family backing me up I wouldn’t be able to focus on it so thoroughly, but they’ve been rewarding me in ways that I can then reward my family.

Anyhow, I’m babbling. I’m just thrilled that I’m somewhere that recognizes the commitment I’ve made, the personal pride of doing this job well. Thrilled, and very thankful.

I haven’t been into the office in three weeks, and I’m actually kind of excited to get back. I’ve missed looking out over the lake, riding into the city, and I’ve even missed the hum of people clacking on keyboards and talking on speakerphones. I’m looking forward to getting back into the zone and cranking out some fixes to some nasty problems I’ve run into over the past year. Some of them belong at WTF, some of them are examples of how a project can go horribly wrong, and some of them - the most interesting ones - are simply because my software needs to model and manage a universe of data that grows more complex every day, without getting too complex itself.

So here’s the goal of this here thing: to write the process. Keep notes. Share snippets. And if anyone else has interesting problems who wants to share them, then so be it. We’ll see where this leads us.