12 Jan 2011
freelance, working
Web Developers going AWOL is a surprisingly common problem
A company will have a site built, and perhaps a backend management system setup, and then they want some amends or tweaks but they cannot contact their web developer. I think this happens because many developers are used to working through an agency and have an agency mentality – “job done, get paid, end of story” – and they don’t think of ongoing support for existing customers.
Reasonable enough if you’re a contractor, and you do work via an agency, but not so great if you are the sole technical support for a small company. I’ve had work (and some nice work) from panicked customers who just cannot get in touch with their regular guy. In one case the programmer had gone on a cruise to the Carribean and not told anyone, but my favourite missing-in-action is:
“Our web developer went to the Burning Man Festival and he never came back”
Yes, you are allowed holidays and breaks, but give your customers plenty of notice and at the very least setup an email responder so people know what’s going on – don’t disappear on them just as they’re trying to ramp up for Christmas. And if you’re going off to live in a yurt, help them find a replacement developer.
11 Jan 2011
event, php
I’m about to head off to the PHP West Midlands get-together for January.
The group meets the second Tuesday of every month, and it alternates between social and technical meets. This month – “What’s new in Zend Framework 2.0” by Rob Allen
Dave has arranged for a new venue and we’re now meeting in the Birmingham Science Park. I’m not exactly a regular, but will be going more frequently this year – my Tuesdays are a little more open for socialising and php-ing. Most of the group activity is on the mailing list and that’s always useful source of advice / suggestions.
And at the end of next month, we have the PHPUK11 – a one day event arranged by the London PHP group. The talks are good, but as always it’s the chat over coffee with other developers which really makes it worthwhile. I usually work as a solo developer, so bumping heads with other people in the same field matters. Too much possibility of stagnating otherwise.
7 Jan 2011
email, productivity, time management
Towards the tag end of last year I was talking to someone about email and productivity, and he was describing his methodology and how he organised emails at work. It was interesting. We were tramping along a muddy canal bank at the time we had this conversation, so I couldn’t ask for a demonstration.
My acquaintance has a desktop folder for each project he is involved in, and wants to store the emails with the project files. So he:
- prints out the email
- scans it with his desktop scanner
- saves the scanned image as a pdf
- puts the pdf into the appropriate project folder
- is happy
I didn’t try to argue or explain or know better in any way; I just said “Oh, that’s really interesting and well organised” and we carried on down the canal path. I’ll say now that this is a man who is in his late thirties, is a qualified civil engineer, is reasonably competent, does his job well and is not noticeably maladjusted. And I am pretty sure that I did not misunderstand him in any way.
Truly amazing what people will do with technology.