Slash and learn
One thing I’ve noticed in all of my Web jobs (four so far) is that my job title does not even begin to capture what I actually do. I imagine this sort of thing is somewhat universal and definitely not limited to Web work, but I’ll focus on that since it’s what I know.
So what do I mean by “slash and learn”? Let me illustrate by example. My official job title is Web developer. A far more accurate job title would be the following:
Web developer / database administrator / search engine optimizer / social media marketer / Linux administrator / database designer / information architect / project manager / vendor whisperer / wannabe Web designer / JavaScript ninja-in-training / young grasshopper in a dozen other areas
See all those slashes? Some people would recoil in horror at a list that long, but I actually enjoy the mix of responsibilities. I love to pick up a book or tinker with a new technology to add another slash to my unofficial job title. Slash and learn, baby! I suppose it’s no accident that I’ve gravitated toward smaller shops where I can take on a lot of different challenges. Constant learning is a plus in my book and so I love what I do.
There is a downside of course. Most notably I don’t consider myself a true expert at anything that I do. Some of this is probably due to relentless self-deprecation and being my own worst critic (aren’t we all?), but I really think there’s some truth to it. The good thing is that whenever I reach the limits of my current knowledge of some topic, I usually know somebody who can take the baton (or at least point me in the right direction).
If I worked at a large company, I would probably end up specializing more than I like. However, I appreciate the people who do work at those large companies because they’re usually the specialists I turn to when I get stuck. All my friends at McClatchy Interactive certainly come to mind.
So what’s your official job title and what would be the unabridged version?
Sphere: Related ContentThoughts on the double bottom line
Before I begin, check out the entry for double bottom line on Wikipedia. In a nutshell, a double bottom line consists of two parallel means of measuring one’s performance. One is typically financial while the other is more for the greater good. Got it? All right.
For me personally, I have noticed a similar trend in my ever-evolving career. Reading about the concept mentioned above just brought my vague thoughts into much clearer focus. The simple fact is that I have a double bottom line and have had one for quite some time. This helps to explain why working at traditional for-profit companies has never really appealed to me in the way it does for most people. Sure I’ve worked for a couple of them, but something was missing from the equation.
In the physics of my career development, the double bottom line has played the role of gravity. It’s a constant force exerting influence over my professional decisions. From time to time I’ve strayed, but it has always pulled me back. This past spring was an excellent example of this. When we were looking to move away from the Seattle area, I considered a lot of different jobs. I applied for most of them even if they didn’t seem like they would be a good fit. Many of them were corporate jobs for Fortune 500 companies or regular consulting gigs for large corporations. Quite a few of the opportunities sounded really great on the surface and would have certainly been financially rewarding, but that was about it.
It’s hard to know if it was serendipity, fate, or just my own personal career “gravity” taking over, but I knew immediately that the job of Web developer at the Statesman newspaper was where I was supposed to be. It’s not a glamorous position by any means. The online team generally toils in obscurity until somebody needs something (or something breaks). And I could definitely make more money elsewhere with the skills I have. However, there is an element of public service to the job that makes it more than worthwhile. Bringing local news and information to people around the clock and providing opportunities for them to interact with each other as well as with our news staff is more than a job, it’s a calling.
Okay, I’ll stop there before this gets sappy. Suffice it to say that I enjoy my current job on many levels despite the challenges of being in what many consider to be a dying industry. The opportunity for innovation is virtually unlimited and the work that we are doing is definitely important.
So will I work here for thirty years and retire with a gold watch and a pension? I honestly can’t say for sure, but I really doubt it. This job is great experience and a unique challenge, but I believe that it is preparing me for something bigger. What that will be and when it will happen, I have no idea. I just hope that I’m ready and willing when the time comes. I’m sure I will be. It’s not like gravity is suddenly going to stop working…
Sphere: Related ContentConfessions of an info junkie
All right, I admit it. I am without a doubt an information junkie. I’ve come to terms with this fact after a couple recent revelations about my feed consumption.
I subscribe to nearly 300 feeds in Google Reader and this is after pruning quite a few from my list. I actually feel guilty when I click “Mark all as read” on a feed that I can’t keep up with. Last week was kind of crazy at my newspaper (and that’s a completely different story), but one result of all the chaos and deadlines was that I fell way behind on monitoring all of our RSS feeds. This is a non-critical task, but one that I usually stay on top of and that does uncover small areas for improvement from time to time. And going through all our stories on a daily basis helps me to feel more connected to our reporters and what they are writing about. Usually I take a few minutes between tasks several times a day to read a few stories. Last week got away from me, however, so by the time I got around to this I had more than 400 unread stories. With a twinge of guilt, I clicked the heretofore forbidden link: “Mark all as read”. I immediately starting wondering what I was missing out on by doing that. Sheesh.
Then tonight I noticed that Google Reader has released a small update that enables it to count all the way to 1000 instead of just 100 (among other things). Feeds with lots of unread items used to just be labeled as “100+”, but now more than likely (unless one is really far behind) the actual number of unread items will be shown. I long ago organized all my feeds into about 25 very specific folders one of which is “blogging”. I had deluded myself into thinking that I could catch up and at least skim all the unread items in this most neglected of folders. After all, it just said 100+. How bad could it be? Well now I know that there are exactly 524 unread items in that folder!
Plowing through all that information would be borderline quixotic, but I still feel an odd compulsion to try. I’m not sure if this is due to my competitive nature (me vs. Google Reader) or a desire not to miss out on any important stuff. I’m leaning toward the latter. I don’t have a definite plan for resolving this situation, but I’m going to start by going through all the feeds one-by-one and deciding which ones are really worthwhile. I’ll let you know how that goes.
In doing that, I can’t help but wonder if I would unsubscribe from this blog if I wasn’t me. In other words, is my own blog worthy of subscribers? At this point, I’m not sure but 27 people seem to think that it is worthy (according to FeedBurner). For their sake and mine, I am resolved to bring this ramshackle blog back up to snuff… just as soon as I finish reading these 524 posts…
Sphere: Related ContentMy three circles of work
I’d like to share a conceptualization I developed over the past few days to describe the confusing nature of what I do from day to day. Many other people are in this same boat, so this may actually be useful to somebody else.
Basically I see each of my projects living in one of three concentric circles. The innermost circle is my day job at the newspaper and includes all of the various projects that we have going on (quite a few at the moment). It’s the core of my work life for the foreseeable future. Moving outward, the next circle contains my contract work. I have two current clients with a couple more waiting in the wings. And the outermost circle holds my pet projects that I plan to build and maintain on my own.
The relative sizes of these three circles vary over time, but the total area remains somewhat constant (depending on personal obligations) and represents the limit of what I can reasonably accomplish. As it stands now, the innermost (day job) circle is expanding, the second (moonlighting) circle is not giving any ground, and so the outermost (pie in the sky) circle is really getting squeezed. Most of my pet projects are just in the conceptual stage right now so this isn’t such a bad situation. Given enough time, the demands at work will ebb and I’ll be able to choose which of the other two circles should be expanded. I haven’t quite decided what to do when that occurs, but I’ll keep you posted…
Sphere: Related ContentDiversify your goals
Lately I’ve read a lot of great posts about goal setting and personal growth. People have been sharing their personal tips for setting realistic goals, tracking progress, and following through. I’ve also been reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. So I’ve been mulling over the notion of goals for several days now.
One aspect of goal setting that is addressed in GTD, but seems to be absent from a lot of the blogs is diversification. It’s natural to develop laser focus on career goals and financial goals, but there’s much more to life than work and money. I encourage you to consider some other categories:
- Fitness goals - Staying in shape makes everything easier and you’ll probably live longer too.
- Intellectual goals - Read some good books, do Sudoku, watch foreign films… The possibilities are endless.
- Social goals - Get connected, talk to people, write letters, pick up the phone… No man is an island.
- Travel goals - This may seem whimsical, but I like making lists of places I want to go in my lifetime.
Hopefully these new categories will get the wheels spinning in your head. Balance in life is very important. So go for the promotion and the big bank account, but don’t neglect the triathlon, foreign language learning, rekindling old friendships, and visiting Timbuktu. In forty years, you’ll thank me.
Sphere: Related ContentBrainstorming versus focusing
Greetings from Raleigh, North Carolina. I just arrived this afternoon and have four days of corporate training at McClatchy Interactive starting tomorrow morning. During one of the flights today, I was reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s an interesting book and probably a topic I will return to from time to time. What I want to write about today is what I see as the competing disciplines of brainstorming and focusing. This dichotomy should make sense shortly.
I’ve always been very good at brainstorming and generating new ideas. I think of new things in the shower, while exercising, during the morning commute, while washing dishes, and any number of other random times during a typical day. Sometimes it’s all I can do just to write them down before I forget anything. Brainstorming is not difficult for me at all. Where I tend to come up short is in moving one of my ideas from concept to reality. Part of the problem is that I keep adding other ideas in the meantime.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am very focused when it comes to my job and the work I do for clients. I know exactly what needs to be done and I do it well. It’s with my own ideas that I find myself in a different situation entirely. As of right now, I have great ideas for five websites, six WordPress plugins, and four Firefox extensions. The sheer number of ideas makes it difficult to triage them effectively. And they just keep rolling in!
So that in a nutshell is why I’m reading Getting Things Done in the first place. I don’t want to have to pick and choose among my ideas. I want to do them all and eventually I believe that I will. In the meantime, I think a little triage is in order. Stay tuned. Readers of this blog will be the first to know when I actually deliver on one of my ideas.
Sphere: Related ContentLinkedIn or LeftOut?
I started using LinkedIn about a month ago and so far I’m impressed. I’m even going to bring back a nearly forgotten category and name LinkedIn this week’s Website of the Week (yeah, giving that another go in ‘07).
So in a nutshell, LinkedIn is MySpace for business. Where MySpace is bursting at the seams with garish layouts, music, videos, photos, etc., LinkedIn has just two things: resumés and contacts. LinkedIn also has nine million members and counting. That’s obviously a small fraction of what MySpace has, but LinkedIn is actually useful (at least in theory). Some people are even saying things like, “If you’re not linked in, you’re left out.” I would say the jury is still out on that one. However, while I haven’t made any serious business connections yet, I have gotten back in touch with some people I lost contact with several years ago. In and of itself, that’s useful enough for me. Any professional benefit I happen to glean from the site will be icing on the cake.
A good starting point is to read an article on CNN called A MySpace for grown-ups. If you’re interest is piqued, read some of the other articles listed on LinkedIn’s media page. If you decide to go ahead and sign up, be sure to read Guy Kawasaki’s Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn. Finally, feel free to check out my LinkedIn profile. I could use some more connections…
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