Greg Crisp

You can’t always enhance your skills the way you want in the work you’re being paid to do on a daily basis.  Specific technology may not be compatible with your primary employer’s business need, IT strategy or the job role you presently hold there.

You should have a personal project, otherwise known as a Side Project.  It lets you work with those things that strike your fancy, and leave the stuff that’s not relevant to your present employer at home.  

Side projects also help future employment.  Most of the prospects I’ve met are willing to accept skills learned on side projects as relevant experience, provided you have something to show for it in the end, and have approached the work with the same discipline and eye for quality as in your day job.  All of the artists I know have a portfolio of their work.  Technologists should too.

Resume Building: The practice of choosing technology for a project because you wish to have that skill on your resume, not because of its relevance to the problem at hand.

If you want to do web services, EJB, pontificate about technology, etc, and you are working at a job that doesn’t support that during the business day, you should do that stuff on your own, after hours, on your own time.  You shouldn’t try to force fit a square peg into a round hole, and you shouldn’t try to apply skills in situations where they don’t belong.  You will only annoy your team mates, and probably your employers as well.  They may begin to believe you are putting your personal whims above their business need, which tends to make those who pay you unhappy.

If there’s a skill that you wish to master, you should find a way to master it.   But not on your employer’s time.  Not if they don’t need that skill.

You must understand that your employer is paying you to do a job.   They are paying you to execute their vision, not yours.  If you desire to practice something that is not in that vision, you should not be wasting their time nor money practicing it.

If you are compelled to learn a new technology, do so, but in your off hours.  Contribute to an Open Source project (or start your own).  Make a product and market it.  Start a blog like this one.  Sell custom coffee mugs.  Whatever.  But don’t waste everyone’s time at work pushing your own agenda.

I recently had a conversation where a guy asked if I liked working for [x].  I answered, “A good job is one that pays on time.”  He was a bit incredulous, and couldn’t seem to understand this as my primary criteria in evaluating the quality of a job, but it really is. 

If you’ve ever had an Accounts Receivable balance in the 5 figures range, and had that client go belly-up, and nearly lost your house as a result, you quickly come to realize the value of a client who pays promptly, vs. a client that has “cool stuff to work on”.

Most of the good technology folk I know have specific interests they wish to explore.  A side project provides an outlet, with the added benefit that it’s your copyright, and you’re free to demo and talk about it in the open, as your own work.  A side project is your vision, not someone else’s, and is good for building a well-rounded portfolio as a technologist.

side note: ”Greg”, you say “, the above doesn’t seem to have anything to do with IDE’s.  What happened to that article, and where have you been all these weeks?”  The IDE article is still in the pipeline, but hasn’t congealed sufficiently yet to publish.  And, I’ve been very busy recently, both working for employers that pay on time, and enjoying my off hours doing stuff I would rather do with my summer, so my publishing has taken a back seat.  But fear not!  I’ve got many pages of raw notes and ramblings to edit, some of which may find its way here in some form to be determined later.  Stay tuned.