A New Look at Development

One thing on my mind more and more recently was the idea of getting a job in what I do during my part time. While working at Westgate much of my spare time at home I’d been slowly learning Ruby on Rails, and liking the core concepts as well as the Ruby language in general. After running into Peter Wright at BarCampOrlando, the idea seemed even more exciting. So I applied, interviewed and was happy to be added to the IZEA team starting last week! That’s the short story of how I ended up here . Prior to starting at IZEA, most of my exposure had been through PayPerPost, Techcrunch and Rockstartup which don’t show much in the way of life for a developer, or the group as a whole. It’s a dedicated, passionate bunch across the organization though, and with SocialSpark just launching into beta in April there’s a lot to do. Between their company blog, forums, twitter, videos, social networks like ning, flickr and other sites they’re really taking advantage of the Social Web to get the word out. It’s exciting being a place that’s embracing that on so many fronts, and open to trying things out. The idea of developing professionally in something new (but that you enjoy doing) might seem a little daunting if it’s you’re not at a high level at it. When it comes to programming though, what matters is problem solving, core programming concepts and most of all passion . While staying up to date with what interests you may not be hard , most would agree it’s incredibly time consuming. If you’re staying up to date in ColdFusion, Ruby, Rails, Java, Air and Flex- – chances are you’re not spending much time getting things done! I think that was a gap that I feel into a few months back. Clear out your RSS reader of those feeds you’re not interested in (or that just post too often)! Read the headlines of areas you’re interested in, while reading in depth articles for the things you’re passionate about will probably leave you happier. If you honestly don’t see yourself going forward in an area don’t feel like you have to follow it as aggressively. Trim it down to the cream of the crop and you’ll get all the information you need. I felt a little guilty doing this at first, but it was just too much reading. What matters more is finding your own sweet spot in terms of how much information you want from every interest, and constant re-evaluating it. If your interests change, your news intake should change. Don’t rule out changing jobs- – it’s all about finding what you enjoy after all!