Made of Everything You're Not

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that my writing seems to say I’m against money; as if I don’t appreciate profit or something. To be clear; I’m not against money. I love money. If left alone with money… well you get the idea

I just think the accumulation of it needs to be done responsibly and with the consumer in mind. Rarely does this happen and, to date, I haven’t really wanted to try and monetize this blog. Then I lost my job and while I’m not poor or anything I do make all my money directly off of me and my work. Keep in mind, I don’t have a day job and I’m not going to get one.

Amazon Tour

At the moment, I don’t believe that advertising is a good fit for me or this blog. Personally, I always lose a little respect for an author when I’ve never heard of them and their site is littered with ads all over the place. Nope. There’s no way I’m doing that right now. There are other ways to make a little, very, very, little scratch on a blog though. Every little bit helps. Right? Right?

One such option I’m exploring is the Amazon Associate Program.  According to the Get Started Tour (which is actually worthwhile to take a read through):

Amazon Associates is one of the first online affiliate marketing programs and was launched in 1996. The Amazon Associates program has a more than 12 year track record of developing solutions to help website owners, Web developers, and Amazon sellers make money by advertising millions of new and used products from Amazon.com and Endless.com. When website owners and bloggers who are Associates create links and customers click through those links and buy products from Amazon.com or Endless.com, they earn referral fees. It’s free to join and easy to use.

There are quite a few options to start earning a commission on referrals but the only one that’s personally appealing to me, insofar as a blog goes, are the text links. The text links work for me because they can be placed in posts when referencing relevant material. Basically, if I’m linking to Amazon anyway why not earn a commission? Obviously, it’d be a mistake to abuse this by placing links inappropriately but staying honest is easy

I especially don’t approve of those widgets that are all over certain sites. I’m willing to bet you can think of a site that does that right now. The problem is that, frankly, they’re ghastly and really take away from the experience. Nothing screams amateur desperation with suspect motives than a site with those little warts on it. Seriously, stay away from those boogers.

Amazon states that it’s possible to make up to 15% on referrals if a transaction takes place. As always, it’s a good idea to take a read through their Operating Agreement to get an idea of what you’re really in for. If you do you’ll see that it’s not quite so black and white. Not to take away from the program or anything it’s just that like everything it’s all in the fine print.

I am encouraged by the recent “success” Stack Overflow has had with the program (with success meaning people clicked on the links):

But in the meantime, since we had our fancy-shmancy Amazon Affiliates account set up, we might as well put it to good use. Even way back in the original Stack Overflow beta, people were proposing that we convert any Amazon book links to Stack Overflow amazon affiliate book links. I was hesitant to do this at the time, but given our failure, I was licking my wounds. I was willing to give it a try. Particularly since the community seemed totally OK with the concept.

So, onward to plan B: we now auto-insert Stack Overflow affiliate info into any amazon book links posted on Stack Overflow. Oh yeah, and here’s the kicker. These silly little rewritten text links work 200%-300% better than our custom amazon book ads!

Go figure.

Obviously, I don’t have anywhere near the penetration and exposure that Stack Overflow does; not what I’m saying. But I do think their success indicates 2 things; a higher acceptance of Amazon links compared to the run of the mill advertising and a more engaging intrusion to the experience among their, primarily, developer audience (which is my target audience).

I’m always happiest when I can make a buck and not compromise my integrity.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a fan of social networks. Frankly, I find participating in social networks to be a false representation of social behavior;  a farce I just don’t have the desire to humor. Not to get too preachy here but, well, this is my blog so na-na-nana-na:

Mea Culpa Twiter. Mea Culpa...

The way I look at social networks is as time sinks with little practical use compared to the maintenance and care required for the account. Not that I find them useless though. I had spent the last 4 years (around) working for a social marketing agency and have personally witnessed the benefits of social networks in building brand awareness and loyalty. But the work required entailed a dedicated, college educated, person and a couple student interns working 40 hours a week each to accomplish.

Me? I have shit to do thankyouverymuch. I want to spend my time producing ideas, projects and programs. I don’t want to spend any time tending to a social network profile with ephemeral friendships and connections. But apparently Twitter is different. Michael Lop sums it up nicely:

Twitter is a social network, yes, but it’s a social network without the superpoke scrabtaculous zombie noise and, for that, I’m thankful, because I’ve got work to do. Yes, I could spend days tidying my profile and scrubbing my friends list, but to what end? I want to know more people, and sure, it’s interesting to see what they’re up to, but what I really want to know is what is going on inside their heads with a minimum of fuss.

So once again I’m late to a party acting like they’re lucky to have me. I have finally, finally, begun to see the usefulness and benefits of Twitter. It’s weird because I’ve been working so closely with Twitter for the last year interacting with their API and I never “got” it until recently. I’m actually a little embarrassed about this. So many of my personal friends are on Twitter along with my peers online and I was a little pompous about the whole thing. My Bad.

What ended up turning  my perspective around was the realization that Twitter didn’t take any real effort. Outside of the marketing and announcement use (blog posts/updates, code release, project release, etc) all other status updates Twitter needs can be completely random thoughts along the lines of  a friendly conversation.

One key difference between Twitter and this blog is that this blog, and the discussion in it, are not in any way personal towards me or anyone else. But with Twitter, well, that can be, and probably should be, personal and a little intimate. Not completely understand, but the conversation appears to need to be a little more random and personal.

When I ask myself why I have this blog (and really why I think anyone has a blog), and if there’s a requirement of complete honesty, career is definitely at the top of the list. Yes there’s a love of writing and the conversation. But after that, career and ambition are what really motivates me to write and drives this site. (And yes ego has a little to do with it too but that’s a whole other discussion )

So, we’re really talking about a tool of promotion and marketing. I can understand that a little better for some reason.

So yes. I am on Twitter now and I actually like it. It’s liberating to be so open (which doesn’t make much sense to me at all… but there it is). If you’re a fan of this blog (hell, even if you hate me and think I’m an idiot) you might want to follow me .

When I was a kid I remember McDonald’s as having some of the best food and providing the best experience ever. Just the thought of going there was exciting. Breakfast, lunch and dinner; it didn’t matter what meal it was. They went out of their way to, at least try, to make the experience fun for the kids. Yes, this was part of a plan to get the kids hooked to bring in the family (which it did in spades) but it was one of those rare strategies that was win-win for both the customer and company.

Welcome to The McDonaldification of Web Development

Fast forward 20 years (sigh…) and McDonalds and it’s ilk are the lowest of the low when it comes to quality of service and product. It’s been years since any fast food restaurant has provided me with an experience worthy of my money; the food is always horrible processed shit, and the service (even at the most basic of basic levels) is completely nonexistent. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I was given ketchup with fries without having to ask for it…

Having worked in web development professionally for the last eight years I’m starting to notice a similar pattern in this industry. What was once an industry ruled by high profits for a job performed by professionals (mostly anyway) has quickly become an industry full of amateurs and scammers (mostly) trying to make as much money with as little thought to quality as quickly as possible. I’ve spoken before about the lack of quality I find in a lot of programmers I work with, and while I’m not saying it’s the complete cause, I do think there’s a link.

Oddly, I’m in the minority here. In my, limited, exposure to other programmers I can say definitively that the majority just plain suck; mostly because they refuse to grow and learn.

I’ve heard all the arguments before, “My weekends are mine”, “I work hard enough; I don’t have the energy”, and the best ever, “My employer should pay for this like Google does. Whah!!”. (I know Google doesn’t, in fact, do this but people still say it.) All just pure crap excuses for maintaining a level of competence just high enough to not get fired.

Bottom line: working 8 hours a day is just not enough to matter. If you think you’re a programmer and you don’t spend time improving your skills you’ll quickly, really quickly, become obsolete. It just doesn’t matter if .Net is going to be around forever and your employer won’t ever upgrade from 1.1; you’re a hack (and not in a good way).

Now that I’m an active freelancer I’m really, really, starting to see the differences. Time and time again I end up taking a meeting with someone who has just been worked over by others in this field. The stories some of these companies and people have are just appalling and I’ve heard some doozies. Worst of all, behavior like this tends to skew their perspective and they view all freelancers as suspect.  Too much of my time is spent building confidence in me as a professional it’s really starting to become laughable.

It was all really quite the mystery until I recently reached out on craigslist to find a designer for a WordPress theme (I need to update this site BAD). I was pretty explicit that all I was looking for was a PSD file that I would personally turn into a WordPress theme but 4 out of 5 responses to the ad indicated that the respondent hadn’t even read the post. Frankly, it was irritating wading through the crap and, obviously, automated responses.

This is troubling for a couple reasons. For one thing it basically indicates, to me anyways, that the person (company, freelancer, whatever) had very little regard for what I wanted, instead opting for a fastest gun approach. The number of emails I received immediately after posting my ad was around 20 and after reviewing each one it was obvious they were automated. I pity the individual or company who entertains these people.

The long term harm this can cause for other programmers (much less themselves) is completely short sighted. Crappy work begets a crappy experience for the client. Simple.

Working in IT requires balls; you have to make some really tough choices with very real consequences. It’s not really a problem for programmers; very few of us work on projects that has the potential to destroy lives or break companies apart. On the other hand, in IT, you’re dealing with the backbone of an organization. Make a mistake here and: You. Are. In. Trouble.

Don’t Be A Pussy

Not to worry though; try as hard as you want to not fuck up and it’s just going to happen that much sooner.

I can say with absolute certainty that there’s going to come a time in your career when you fuck up. Big. Like really BIG. The type of mistake that has the potential to sink the company or client you’re working for/with. When it happens it’s going to be bad. So bad that you’ll have the fear of Dad in you. You remember that right? When Dad was coming home and you knew he knew what you did and you knew your life was over. If you didn’t have a Dad; think shear panic mixed with absolute paranoia and terror. Yeah, that’s the stuff.

What you did/will do isn’t important. What is important is how you deal with it. You’re going to have options when it  comes to dealing with the issue(s) and how you act is going to determine how your colleagues and peers look at you for the next few months. Make the wrong call and you’re in for some real uncomfortable silences and some really awkward sidelong glances.

If this has already happened to you; congratulations. Just know it probably won’t be the last. On the other hand if it hasn’t happened yet get ready; it will. You’re going to make some stupid mistakes in your career; mistakes so idiotic and so demoralizing your confidence will shatter and you’ll have a hard time getting back on the horse.

Like I said above, I have absolutely no idea what you do or what you can do to fuck it up so, as anecdotal examples only, I’m going to rely on my personal experience. I can honestly say, with absolute pride, that I have done the following:

• Deleted a database and couldn’t restore the data
• Deleted all the rows in a table and didn’t have a backup
• Deleted a user account and all the email and files associated with it.
• Changed every users password to “password” in a database
• Sent an internal cost analysis report for a client project to the client

And that’s only what was off the top of my head; I’m sure I’ve blocked out some of the worse things. The one constant between the above list (aside from the stupidity involved) was that I owned the mistake. You have to immediately handle the situation whatever that means (it’ll depend on the situation).

After that though a funny thing will happen; it’s very likely your confidence will be shot. This is important because you need confidence (read: balls) to work in IT. There are too many things, that you just don’t know how to do, that you’re going to have to do, and that requires the confidence to know you can do these things. It’s why we make the big bucks.

In my experience the only thing you can do in these situations is get back on the horse ASAP. The sooner you do something, anything, that has consequences the better. You can’t wallow in the past and getting hung up isn’t the answer.

BTW: After reviewing the above I have to say:

Thank fucking God I don’t work in IT anymore.

I have a problem; ever since I started freelancing my phone bill has exploded. When I was working I didn’t use  it all that much during the day; having a day job an all. Now that my days are open, and I have to do the majority of my client interactions on my phone, I’ve had to deal with HUGE bills ($700) for both text messaging and minute overages.

Google Voice

To the credit of AT&T they credited my account and I wasn’t out any cash. But don’t forget the fact that the phone companies are essentially gouging customers with their rates on text messaging; the $20 a month for unlimited text messages is just a drop in the bucket compared to that.

BTW, there’s no such thing as unlimited text messages. Check the terms of service for your provider; a lot of them actually limit the total amount and you’ll face a ginormous bill if you go over.

It’s pretty infuriating. Thankfully, once again, Google has come to the rescue with Google Voice. Google Voice is a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more.

According to the official page for Google Voice includes a crapload of features:

One number for all your calls and SMS

• Call screening – Announce and screen callers
• Listen in – Listen before taking a call
• Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
• SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
• Place calls – Call free within the continental US and to Canada
• Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
• Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring

Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts

• Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says
• Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone
• Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS
• Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller
• Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails

More cool things you can do with Google Voice

• Conference calling – Join people into a single call
• Call record – Record calls and store them online
• Call switch – Switch phones during a call
• Mobile apps – Try our apps for Blackberry and Android phones
• Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile
• GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance
• Manage groups – Set preferences by group

All of that’s pretty compelling; but it’s not the most important piece. Nope, the best part is that Google Voice operates on your phones data plan so, if I ever get invited to the service, I’m planning on lowering my minute plan, killing unlimited text messaging and saving around $100 a month.

The key is that I use a Blackberry; there’s already a Blackberry app that allows for the system to flow. Oddly, if you use an iPhone you’re out of luck; Apple pretty much screwed the pooch on that. But, not to fear, you can even access Google Voice through a web browser.

I can’t wait to say, “Fuck you” to AT&T. Just got to get that invite first…