The Nomadic Developer

It has been a long run, but after working in the following cities over the past 37 weeks:

• 10 weeks in Seattle
• 1 week in Los Angeles
• 1 week in Las Vegas
• 12 weeks in San Jose
• 6 weeks in Beijing
• 1 week in Orlando
• 3 weeks in San Francisco
• 3 weekends in places like Winnipeg and Minneapolis for Code Camps

… it appears as I will be back in Chicago – for at least a week! (I know… wow!).  The last one was a project we finished in 3 weeks out of 5 budgeted – which was a nice way to end what has been the most insane run of travel I have done in my career.  Now, I work in consulting, so I will likely be on the road again soon, but I thought I would take this opportunity to provide some thoughts on what works and what does not work when you are on the road as a traveling consultant.

Tip #1: When Possible, Get an Apartment

During my longer stints, in this year’s case, Seattle and San Jose, I managed to at least get corporate apartments that had fully supplied kitchens and laundry facilities.  While such arrangements are not practical for shorter projects (i.e. 2-3 weeks), I found that having such a place is a huge win/win for my clients as well as myself.  The cost of a corporate apartment is almost always lower than a hotel room – despite being far larger.  But more importantly, at least with me, is that I tend to prefer to cook my own food – which costs far less than spending a typical $35 per day on restaurants.  I often would have a net food cost – eating very high quality stuff, well under $100 per week, which would easily be blown on 3 meals during a week at a restaurant.

Probably more important though than the cost element is that I always felt healthier at the various corporate apartments.  I would routinely eat healthier when I prepared stuff myself.  It also kept my domestic rhythm going, as the practice of constantly eating out can make you stop remembering how to operate in a kitchen.  Same goes for having laundry facilities – something for me makes me feel normal if I have a daily routine, regardless of where I am, that involves taking care of myself.  Seems to make life, for me at least, feel more “normal” on the road.

Tip #2: Find the Local Bookstore (or Local “Whatever It Is You Like Doing”)

I am a bookworm – I read 3-4 nonfiction books a month, and probably skim through at least a dozen more.  Whenever I arrive in a new city, the first thing I do is find where the nearest good bookstore is, preferably an independent if I can find one, or the B&N or Borders if I can’t.  On the road, unless you are working 14 hour days (god help you), you want to find something to do with your idle time that isn’t work.

Tip #3: Do your Expenses Weekly

(note: I say this as I stare at a basket with 3 weeks of receipts in it…  ugh).

Expenses is a minor hassle if it is a weeks worth.  Much past that though and you a.) have what feels like an insurmountable burden in front of you and b.) you tend to forget things.  Just make it part of your routine to do them on Thursday night.

Tip #4: Avoid Too Many “Drinking Adventures” With The Team

This may be controversial – and thankfully, I learned this more in my twenties than in my far more tame late thirties I find myself in today, but man, does your effectiveness go down when you come into a client hung over.  I see people tend to drink more than they would at home when they are always going to restaurants, out with the team, and so forth.  After about 4-5 nights in a row of it, your liver will be screaming at you.  Do it, but certainly not to excess.

Tip #5: If You Have Family, Make Sure They Know You Still Exist

Another one where I all too frequently fall short, especially with west coast travel when I work too late and find myself home past bedtimes.  If you have kids, or a spouse, make sure they know you are around at least every couple days.  I swear, I got in the worst arguments with my spouse when I forget to call for a few days, and suddenly need to call because I need something “done at home”.  It is too easy to get lost in your project and forget to do things like that (at least for me)… but staying in frequent contact is critical if you have a family.

BTW, even if you don’t, tip #5 still applies to friends and extended family – though probably not at the same duration.

Tip #6: Stay Connected to your Tech Community

User groups mid-week in your home town are going to be hard to attend.  Make sure to use code camps or other weekend events to continue to stay connected and keep those networks intact.  One of the worst things you could do is take up travel, and then find that nobody remembers you 8 months later!

Tip #7: Use Travel to Expand Your Network

Find the local user group in the location where you are staying, and find a way to attend, or even better, contribute.  Travel, all things being equal, should be a net positive with regard to your network.

Tip #8: Airplane Time = Book Time, not Work Time or Internet Time

One of the worst developments I can possibly think of, at least for me personally, is the “GoGo Internet Service” that has been invading American Airlines planes.  Not that I am not thankful for innovation or what have you – but I use that time to take in materials that, well, take a long time to take in.  Whether it be books I have been wanting to read that require a good deal of concentration to successfully grok, or anything else that requires not being around distractions, leveraging airplane time to get those things done is one of the best ways to take advantage of that “temporary captivity”.

Tip #9: Spend at Least One Day On Location Doing “Touristy” Stuff

During my first four years as a road warrior, I visited places from Sydney to Madrid to New York and many places in-between.  Yet – I have never been to the Statue of Liberty, the Louvre, or other places I have perhaps walked by, but never really took in.  It took many years to remember that when being out here, I ought to use the opportunity to actually see a museum or do some of the things that, at the very least, give you interesting conversation fodder.  Getting to travel the world, and then promptly choosing to simply work on some 9th draft of a proposal in your room rather than experience some wonder of the world is, well dumb.  I know.  I have done it, and I still regret it!

Tip #10: Stay Healthy

Work out.  Eat healthy.  Read a balanced diet.  Don’t overwork.  Take care of yourself.  I know far too many people that burn out with this stuff because they forget that, even if you are on the road, you still have to take care of yourself.  Just because your employer is sending you somewhere does not mean they own you every hour of every day.  A burnt out consultant who goes through zombie like motions for a client isn’t terribly valuable to anyone, consulting firm, client, or themselves.

Happy Road-Warrioring!

Sorry for lack of posting, but true to my moniker as a “Nomadic Developer”, I have been in China off and on (mostly on) for 5 weeks, working with a team on a project that we are doing at our ThoughtWorks office in Beijing.

Some thoughts so far. The first thought is how awestruck I am by the dynamism of China as a country. You always hear about it, but it is amazing to actually get to see it in person. Every time I go on a walk in Beijing, I am awestruck at just how vast of a city it is. Imagine something like the Chicago Loop, but it just keeps going and going, in all directions, for miles. That is basically what Beijing feels like to me.

However, the second thing I have observed – or really more just confirmed – is that China is really coming along as a place for software development talent. We all knew it would happen, I am just not sure I knew it would happen with such speed. During my trip, I paired with several developers from our office on our project, and truth be told, I am certain I learned far more from them then they could have possibly learned from me.

One example – and perhaps this is a ThoughtWorks thing generally – or maybe specific to China, is that on that project we are constantly pushing what we can do in our editor forward. Every time we repeat some action – such as finding usages for symbol – or anything else – rather than just muddle through using a mouse, we find a way to make it a keyboard shortcut. Pairing with this group has probably helped me increase my own developer productivity 2x, just in being around people who are constantly molding and navigating a codebase through ReSharper keyboard shortcuts (if you are not a programmer, ReSharper is a tool that adds a ton of productivity to Visual Studio, the typical tool people use to do .NET development).

For anyone who has some notion that “offshore” developers are somehow “lesser”, I can be sure that you can disabuse yourself of that notion immediately. I never learned so much in 5 weeks.

What does this mean for consulting in general? Well – I am becoming more and more convinced that, beyond the boutique stage of a consultancy (<10M in 1 or a small handful of cities working purely on founder relationships), if you have no global story, you are going to face an uphill battle. There is simply too much talent overseas, and the barriers to trade are simply too low, for you to be cost competitive on a large project. So much so that, if you were to ask me what skill you need to learn to keep your software development career humming, it would not be a programming language – it would be the Mandarin language.

On InformIT.com, I have published a selection of jargon terms from my book.  Some of the terms many consultants will be very familar with, some perhaps not so.

I am also taking this opportunity to announce that the next article series on InformIT will be diving into the topic of “The Economics of Technical Debt”.  As an officially certified armchair economist*, it is my duty to offer up my own analogies between bad code and bad economics in this series that (3 articles in, soon to be published in short intervals) skewers the notion that you can write bad code and simply leave the consequences for someone else.  Especially in consulting, where presumably you are trying to gain clients for the long term (i.e. long enough such that you can’t just walk after leaving them with a mess).

In the previous post in this series, we explored the relationship between consulting and financial capital, and how the latter often is very harmful to the former, particularly in large amounts.

The real question, though, is what that implies.  Indeed, the chief reason given of why companies must always grow, is that:

1. Capital seeks the highest possible rate of return
2. Companies, who need financial capital, must compete for capital to expand
3. Expansion raises the rate of return, based on economies of scale
4. Higherrate of return attracts more capital
5. Go back to step 1.

This is, of course, why you and I are not as rich as the heirs to the Walmart fortune.  Traditionally under capitalism, more capital meant you were more competitive, and you would grow, edging out all your competitors until either a.) the anti-trust police get you (from Standard Oil to AT&T to IBM to Microsoft) or b.) you somehow screw up and lose all your customers (GM, Chrysler, PanAm, Arthur Andersen).

Of course, if you consider the size of financial capital as only a minor factor, then you would want to look for other factors that control how a consulting firm differentiates itself.  How might such a firm do that?

Well, that depends on the kind of business you are.  The success of a technology consulting organization is going to depend chiefly on:

• Relationship building capabilities of the consultants and demand generation teams
• Brand reputation – being known for solving hard problems
• Recruiting capabilities – ability to attract people who have both technical aptitude and relationship skills

So how does one increase those?  Especially if you can’t buy it directly?  Well – you have to become very good at attracting the best people, and once they are there, keeping them engaged.  If people matter most - you have to wonder how you attract and retain the people you want.

Can money buy people?  One approach to building a great consulting firm might be to offer to pay everyone $1 million us dollars per year.  People have done studies that indicate money does not, in fact, buy happiness.  If suspect what occurs in this scenario is you end up with a bunch of very rich, but very nervous, consultants who still will search for meaning in their work after a few months of “being rich”.  If anything, my experience with people who have sudden wealth is that they either become people you would rather not work with from sudden materialism, or people who suddenly retire and do something else to find more meaning once they have enough money to not worry about work.  I doubt you build a successful technology consulting firm that way.

On the other hand, my sense is that if you provide a real mission – not one of the fake mission statements that most companies have… but a real mission that matters, you will get levels of workplace engagement that exceed those workplaces where the mission is mercenary.

What happens when you have high levels of engagement?  You get more work out of people.  People row the boat harder.  They may work more hours, they may not (personally, I hope they don’t work more hours and burn out)… but you are highly likely to get more out of each hour from someone engaged in what she is doing than someone who is watching a clock.

So, if engagement is what helps you get the most from a given amount of human capital, and larger social goals and missions – beyond money drive engagement, it means that technology consulting companies must compete by persuing worthwhile social goals that drive engagement.  At scale, it also means these goals have to be near universal virtues (i.e. transcending religion, politics, etc.).

In the next post in the series, I will explore other businesses where this model is imporant, as well as types of businesses where frankly, this model does not work, due to dependence on attracting capital.

A shorter version of the essay I wrote in The Nomadic Developer: Consultopia, is up on InformIT.com.

Of all the things I wrote in my book, I think this essay was the most fun for me to write.  It is not every day that I get to yell out to the world that mission statements are basically BS pieces of marketing, or call out the inefficiencies of capitalism as it relates to pursuits that are more about intellectual capital than financial capital.

Go ahead – give it a read!.