Justin Carmony » fun

Joining a Startup – The Advantages

Justin Carmony — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:50:36 +0000

While going through my backlog of my RSS feeds. I stumbled on Keith Casey’s post on Joining a Startup. He wrote it as a “reality check” for people who are considering joining a startup as a developer. Here is a snip-it:

First, everyone does everything. Check your ego at the door. In the first startup I was with, I was in charge of adding reporting to the eCommerce application and taking the garbage out. Was it an effective use of my time? Not at all. Did it have to be done? Yes. Did we have the money to hire someone else? Nope. If your startup is renting office space, you probably won’t have to worry about this… but who signs for packages? Who re-orders coffee? On the flip side, you could be the one taking technical questions at the next investor pitch or invited to the big customer Christmas party.

I thought he hit the nail on the head with the article. Over the last few years I’ve worked with three startups, one of which was successfully bought by a large corporation. The other two have successfully gained some good revenue, but are still in the “Looking for More Money” phase, and I continue to do work for them on a contractual basis.

My only concern was that at the end of the article, he only mentions that he is still okay with working for a startup. He didn’t mention some of the biggest “perks” I consider working for a startup. So here are some of the items that, if you can handle the “draw backs”, are some great things. These are not “guaranteed”, as each startup is different, but typically you’ll find some of these.

Accelerated Learning – I’ve felt that I’ve learned at such a faster rate while working in a startup. In large development teams, you typically work on very specific things. Your team only works on one part of a larger project or product. However, with the startup, you typically have to do a lot more varied work. At Ambient, the company that was sold, I was a junior developer of a company of three developers. Here is the list of some of stuff I did in roughly one year:
- Company Website
- All Web Services
- All Web Designs
- Website Demos & Prototypes
- Data Mining Services
- Executive Dashboard
- Sales & Inventory Reporting Website
- Customizable Online DVD Rental System
Not only did I work almost exclusively on these projects, they integrated with the pieces the other two developers worked on. For three developers, we cranked out a lot of great software. Since I was the junior developer, when ever we had a tech support issue that was a little too complicated for our two tech support guys, I had to diagnose and solve a lot of complicated issues. I got experience with VPNs, LDAP and Active Directory, very large databases (100,000,000+ rows), VNC & RDP, and automated deployments across thousands of remote locations, to name a few.

If you enjoy getting your hands on a lot of different technologies, and do a lot more than in a normal company, you can really learn a lot at a startup.
Less Politics, More Work – While I know this doesn’t apply to all startups, the ones I’ve worked in seem to have a lot less politics than other companies. I believe its because, first of all, there are less people to have politics with. Second, there is way to much work to get done to spend time on playing politics. Everyone seems to just be focused on getting work done.
More Input, More Direction – While working in a startup, I’ve found that I have a lot more say in how we do things compared to other companies. Creativity isn’t just a bonus, it is a requirement. Many times you are working on an idea, not a detailed specification. Your creativity is required to make the idea fully functional and work properly. I’ve found many times my ideas are implemented, and while looking at the final product, I can see my influences all over the place.
Closer Team, Fewer Annoying Co-workers – Some may think this is a myth, however what I have experienced is startups don’t have time to put up with teams that don’t work well together. For the exception of one guy who was really nice, but a major pain to work with, I’ve enjoyed working with all my co-workers and (I hope they can say the same about me). Typically people who don’t enjoy the fast pace leave after a short while. If there is an employee who doesn’t get along with the others, typically they will go find work elsewhere because the stress of the pace and not getting along well with others compound out of control. Even if they don’t leave on their own, management will usually find some solution, because a team that doesn’t work well together won’t produce the needed products to make a success. Unlike a large corporation, there isn’t anywhere to hide bad workers. If you’re not carrying your own weight, you’re gone.
No Boredom, High Adrenaline - The pace can be stressful, but I found it most of the time exhilarating. There is never, ever a lack of work. Currently for the two startups I’m doing work for, there are years and years worth of work I can do. Sometimes the deadlines can be a killer, but meeting them is very rewarding. Its an awesome feeling when your team of two developers and one project manager create a product that out performs & demolishes competing products from large, well established companies.
High Levels of Satisfaction – I personally feel I get more out of working for a successful startup. Since developers will produce more code and applications than in other companies, there is more to be proud of. If you’re team is really tight, and a few of you create an amazing product, it is an amazing feeling.

So while startups are not for everyone, and they have their drawbacks, I believe certain types of developers can find rewarding work in them. I know I’ve been lucky to work on some excellent products, and I haven’t had an experience (yet) where I’ve gotten burned. Maybe the things I’ve mentioned aren’t as common as I think, but I truly believe startups offer opportunities for developers to really accelerate their learning and excel at rewards jobs.

My 2009 Technology Recap

Justin Carmony — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:55:31 +0000

Its been two years now that I’ve been a more or less “serious blogger.” I had using the term blogger, since when people hear about blogs, they think of people either detailing their entire lives, or pumping some angel. For me, blogging has just been a way to share information with people I know locally, and those I don’t even know who find my blog via searching. I’ve had a few spurts where I blogged quite frequently, but for the most part it was just here and there.

I’ve gone back and looked at this year of 2009, and the things I’ve blogged about, and I thought I’d give a little recap.

My CSS Conversion

At the beginning of the year I realized I had 100% percent to using CSS. I’m still a little in awe that being such a table junkie I finally did it. There were a few key things that I did to help me learn all the difficult things with CSS. I hope I can help some poor web developer out there understand their CSS a little better.

A Year of PHP IDEs

I really invested some time in trying out and experimenting with several PHP Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). I had been using Zend Studio for several years, however more and more I found myself frustrated with it’s quirks. However, I haven’t had time yet to blog about the new IDE I am using, NetBeans. I’ve made the switch from Zend Studio to NetBeans, and while I’m not completely sold, I’m still giving it some time. Maybe over christmas break I’ll blog some about it.

Interesting Challenges w/ MySQL

While I haven’t blogged about most of them, I have had some interesting challenges w/ MySQL over the last year. One was converting 40 Million rows from a MyISAM engine to an InnoDB Engine. I’ve been having some serious heart-to-heart conversations with MySQL (metaphorically of course) on how I’m going to scale it to millions and billions of rows. I think I’ve mapped out in my head how we’re going to handle it for Dating DNA. That will be one challenge I’ll be addressing in 2010.

New Blog Design

This year I got around to re-designing my blog using the Carrington Theme as a base. I kinda like it, but it still could use a little more polish. One day I’ll find time to give it that extra polish.

Memcached

This year I really got into the theory on how to design an application with Memcached. I’ve decreased the load on several websites by using it, and wrote an in-depth article on the theory of caching, and how to implement it effectively. I’ve been amazed at how well it works, and that I hadn’t used it before.

A Year of Presentations

I’ve given two presentations this year, my Memcached presentation at UPHPU, and my “Real Life Scaling” presentation at the Utah Open Source Conference. I got great feedback from both presentations, and I look forward to what I’ll present on this upcoming year. I’m thinking about putting together a presentation called “Being a Web Ninja with jQuery,” and showing of the dozen of awesome applications I’ve built using jQuery.

Utah Open Source Conference 2009

This year I helped organize and throw together the Utah Open Source Conference. I was made the Sponsorship Manager, and it was interesting trying to talk to companies in a recession about donating to a non-profit conference. I haven’t had a chance to blog about different techniques on how to professional ask for money for something like this, but hopefully in 2010 I’ll be able to share some insights.

Things I Didn’t Blog About

There were a lot of things I didn’t get around to blogging about this year. I’ll quickly touch on them here, and hopefully in 2010 I’ll be able to blog about them more.

Web Services – I’ve done a LOT of web service work. Web services provide a unique challenge, since many times its hard to debug them. At my old job, one of the biggest challenges is we really couldn’t debug our web services until all of the other pieces of the puzzle were done. Then we spent long hours with trial and error, debugging via dumping logs. I’ve learned a lot of tricks with PHP and web services. Hopefully I’ll be blog more about those soon.

Performance Tuning LAMP – I’ve had to do a lot of tuning to keep the Dating DNA website afloat. Because of the awesomeness of our iPhone apps, we’ve had a lot of load on our web servers. There are a lot of things you can do to get the LAMP stack to run well.

Alienware Arena – Here was a fun little project I was able to crank out for probably the largest client I’ve done work for: Dell. We made them a website for their Alienware brand called “Alienware Arena.”

There were a lot of challenges to this website, mainly timeline and budget. But we were able to walk away happy with our work, and the Dell / Alienware team were really happy. It was interesting going through and trying to copy / mimic the look and feel of the Alienware website. I’m really proud of what we made.

Never Ending iPhone App Store Saga – Anyone who knows me has heard of the bloody wars that my current employer has had with Apple, their iPhone, and the App Store. The ridiculous approval process, the extremely long wait periods, and Apple’s OCD when it comes to their phone. I won’t say much anything else on the topic, but boy it has been frustrating.

What to Expect with 2010

Boy, 2010 will be interesting. What to expect? I’ll be doing some pretty sick programming in jQuery, as I’ll be adding integrating chat to the Dating DNA website. What else? A lot more when it comes to integrating websites into other social network platforms.

From a business platform, 2010 will be a lot of work spent on taking some great ideas and trying to monetize them. While working on awesome stuff is great, its important to pay the bills with them. I will have an entire year to sign up Sponsors for the 2010 UTOS Conference instead of 2 short months.

Hopefully I’ll get in a better habit of documenting my discoveries and solutions here in my blog. Sharing information is the best way to help everyone out.

I hope everyone has a happy holiday and good luck in the new year! 2010, here we come!

Awesome Animated XKCD

Justin Carmony — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:07:17 +0000

This comic is awesome. If you haven’t heard of xkcd then you are missing out. It is tied with another comic for my favorite comic on the internet. They did a funny comic on making a spoof of the Discovery Channel commercials. Now someone has made an animated version of the xkcd comic, and it is just awesome. Enjoy

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Here is the original comic: