Who do you think you are? Me? Kill joy. ;) Yeh, the post is a bit more towards cf-jobs-talk but if we can talk sql, we can talk this stuff.
That being said, I'll answer publicly. 1. Have you found this to be the case? not really. Both company types have shown me projects that were constrained by budgets that got in the way of doing it right, clean, tight, whatever. Both company types have had (in my experience) both fun and dead boring tasks. I think your spectrum is missing some dimensions. 2. How to get the best of both worlds? You don't. You do the job, get paid, and while doing the job you do the best you can. Large or small, interesting or not. To paraphrase Harlan Ellison "Writing is my job. I don't have time for writers block or anything else that will get in the way of me doing my job during work time." I'd love to work for a large, stable company no matter what work they have. If it isn't engaging or gratifying, I just have to remember I'm getting paid and the money can go to an ipad with all of my books and lynda videos on it so I can learn, read, or whatever to become gratified (when not at home - home gratification is another story totally :)). 3. In regards to development, How do you retain the brightest and how to filter out those who are the clock punchers or demotivators? If someone is bright, they'll be excited about something new or proud of something done in 'right'. When I find a sweet piece of anti-bot security, I'm excited. When I spend 15 minutes to find out why it works and how to bypass it, I'm equally excited. When I write a bot using that uses the bypass as part of a bot to do serial downloading of images to create comic archives, I'm proud of my code. If someone is proud of their code and is willing to explain it and show why they are proud, then you probably have someone you want to keep. If someone is willing to teach what they've done to others, then they also fall under the bright. A clock puncher fits the "work and only work" profile from item 2 without the personal excitement that comes from doing something right, innovative, or the like. They see the work as drudgery. Go in, do it to spec, don't do more than is needed, go out. A good way of finding these type of people is by their comments. Do they have any? Do they explain what's going on and why? In many cases you can recognize the type of person who you're dealing with by the comments they leave. A demotivator is just a killjoy who brings others down and should probably be shot. Best way to answer the question is to get the developers to teach something they know once a week at a pizza lunch sponsored by the company. The bright will teach varying subjects and (usually) show their excitement. The clock punchers will probably do 'standard' talks and will usually not pull in their own work for examples. The demotivators will be the ones against the whole thing. Look at the term technical debt and use that as a measuring stick in all of the cases you asked about. Is the company interested in 'paying off' their technical debt? Is the programmer interested in paying it off. Have they mentioned it? Noted or documented it? Technical debt is an excellent way of seeing the relative value that is placed on an application (or parts of it). http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html I'd suggest this book in general just for the 2 pages that talk about technical debt: 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596809484?ie=UTF8&tag=houseoffusion&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0596809484 That's another way to separate those you want to keep and those you don't. Keepers want to grow, expand, get better. They're willing to learn new things and will make the effort to research and investigate new things to learn. Clock punchers don't go the same distance. For the cost of a few hundred dollars for a physical library, you have an excellent detector of employee value. Who suggests books? Who reads them? Who takes them home? Yes, you can have a digital library, but a physical one can give you more information by how people act around it. But I'm babbling. Muffins HO! (get your mind out of the gutter) -- Michael Dinowitz On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Maureen <mamamaur...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Sorry didn't mean to seem like I was dissing you. Muffins, parody, > music and a whole bunch of politics are the order of the day on > CF-Community. The more serious stuff goes to CF-Talk for technical and > CF-Jobs-Talk for employment stuff. > > To answer your question in a more sedate manner, I'd rather have a > brilliant rogue than a mundane plodder. > > On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Brian Thornton <vegasthorn...@gmail.com> > wrote: >> >> well im glad you thought that was worth sharing with the group... Your >> valuable feedback was very worthy of a followup. >> >> On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Maureen <mamamaur...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Yep. I need at least three muffins to make through to the end of his >>> message. >>> >>> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:37 PM, Erika L. Rich <elr...@ruwebby.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> /me tilts head quizzically ... scratches behind ear .... scrunches up nose >>>> .... >>>> >>>> Hmmmmm yesh. Are muffins in order > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? 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