Archive for January, 2016

I’ve been doing front-line software development for more than a decade now.  I got my first job in the industry working for this small startup making the digital equivalent of a calendar or a fruit-basket for real estate agents to give out to their clients.  The business side of the enterprise seemed so far away then; the rest of the team and I put our heads down, banged out features, solved problems, and were shocked to find, three years later, that the product we’d so  lovingly crafted wasn’t selling because our target market didn’t have money to buy it.

Since then I’ve worked for the military and done battle with ColdFusion, a contract development shop where I tooled around with mobile before mobile was big, and another small company doing C# web development for the mortgage industry.  As I’ve changed jobs my roles and responsibilities have drifted further and further away from head-down coding and towards more nebulous things like “architecture,” “process,” and “professional development.” (more…)