Dec 27: Book Review: The Nomadic Developer Part Three
The third part of my review of the book The Nomadic Developer: Surviving and Thriving in the World of Technology Consulting
continues on from my second post but focuses on the chapter that talks about what you need to ask before you join a firm. It may seem weird, but there are actually many reasons you might not want to join an organization. The obvious ones are related to pay and benefits but I found some of the questions were insightful for determining not only the enjoyment that I could experience working there but also the strength of the company for ensuring that I enjoy a long term contract before before having to hunt for another gig.
One of the key issues I find with my current employer is that they are not very transparent with their sales process. I am not sure if it is because they miss so many sales bids or if they are too busy to update everyone but I definitely think that there is a serious lack of information flowing from sales to the rest of the organization. This makes it hard to stay on top of the vision of the company. By knowing what projects a company is pitching for, you know where you should focus your learning efforts to stay on the cutting edge projects in your company. Two of the best questions they recommend you ask in my opinion were "Does the delivery organization work with sales to make sure estimates are realistic?" This is an important one to ask because knowing that you are going to miss your deadline before you even create your first source file is a very stressful situation. Having a sales team estimate blindly can be a real recipe for disaster. The other important question for me was in two parts "How are leads generated? What happens if a lead is generated by a consultant?" No brainer. Without solid leads your contractor butt is history. That being said, if you generate a lead it would be nice to get more than a free lunch and a pat on the back.
continues on from my second post but focuses on the chapter that talks about what you need to ask before you join a firm. It may seem weird, but there are actually many reasons you might not want to join an organization. The obvious ones are related to pay and benefits but I found some of the questions were insightful for determining not only the enjoyment that I could experience working there but also the strength of the company for ensuring that I enjoy a long term contract before before having to hunt for another gig.One of the key issues I find with my current employer is that they are not very transparent with their sales process. I am not sure if it is because they miss so many sales bids or if they are too busy to update everyone but I definitely think that there is a serious lack of information flowing from sales to the rest of the organization. This makes it hard to stay on top of the vision of the company. By knowing what projects a company is pitching for, you know where you should focus your learning efforts to stay on the cutting edge projects in your company. Two of the best questions they recommend you ask in my opinion were "Does the delivery organization work with sales to make sure estimates are realistic?" This is an important one to ask because knowing that you are going to miss your deadline before you even create your first source file is a very stressful situation. Having a sales team estimate blindly can be a real recipe for disaster. The other important question for me was in two parts "How are leads generated? What happens if a lead is generated by a consultant?" No brainer. Without solid leads your contractor butt is history. That being said, if you generate a lead it would be nice to get more than a free lunch and a pat on the back.
Some of the other important questions I found where "What happens if we need non-standard development tools?" This is a real sore point for me. I once needed Visual Studio to do some work on a project, but when I put in the request for it I was answered by the new resourcing mantra: "We don't do that for contractors". I was especially appalled by the fact that the company has a site license for the software and letting me install a copy of it would not cost them anything more than they had already spent. This kind of situation will put a serious damper on your experience with a development firm.
Another super-important question to help save your sanity is "How does the organization learn from delivery mistakes?" This one is tough to get a straight answer for I think. I would hope that the company does postmortems for failed projects at the very least, but just because everyone on the project sits in a room and plays the blame-game does not mean that any lessons will be learned and applied to future projects. Determining how these lessons are learned should be the focus of your questions.
Make you take full advantage of the interview in order to determine whether joining the development firm is good enough for you to spend the next significant chunk of your life at. It's important.
Another super-important question to help save your sanity is "How does the organization learn from delivery mistakes?" This one is tough to get a straight answer for I think. I would hope that the company does postmortems for failed projects at the very least, but just because everyone on the project sits in a room and plays the blame-game does not mean that any lessons will be learned and applied to future projects. Determining how these lessons are learned should be the focus of your questions.
Make you take full advantage of the interview in order to determine whether joining the development firm is good enough for you to spend the next significant chunk of your life at. It's important.
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