go bold

I think I wrote something awhile back about good companies vs. good people – but what about good companies vs. good work? I just finished up a conversation with a friend who’s in the situation of being in love with the company he works at, but hates the tedious, somewhat degrading, but admittedly necessary work he actually does there. (Yes, he was an intern – but what an awful experience to have, and lesson to be taught!)

When should you sacrifice your own happiness / career development / intellectual stimulation for a product you’re excited about? Can you love the product and love the work? Or does loving the product just blind you to what you’re doing (and vice versa)?

I suppose it all boils down to how idealistic you are. Is this going to be the game-changer? Is there really nowhere else as, or almost as, exciting – but where you get to do interesting and challenging work? I usually think so – he may not. How does loyalty play into this – when are you obligated to stay with a company when you’re only being satisfied ideologically and not intellectually? (I say almost never – or that it’s only up to you to effect a change so that you are intellectually satisfied. But I’m only selectively idealistic, and incredibly selfish when it comes to my development.)

(p.s. – failed a bit with blogging once a week – but hopefully I can put something up soon about last weekend, which I spent at http://w2sf.startupweekend.org/ , and get back on track.)

I’ve been trying to be on my own case this summer. Last summer I was in San Francisco, I was very comfortable – I took the last shuttle home (at 7pm!) every day, couldn’t do work at home (no VPN access for interns!), so did a lot of relaxing, watching Alias, and cooking.

I’d had the goal of going out and “doing the SF tech thing,” which to me at the time meant going to tech meetups and talks and meeting all sorts of cool people, and learning all sorts of cool things. Clearly, it didn’t happen.

So this year I’m trying something different. I’ve been much more proactive about getting out and talking to people – an interesting union of MIT friends in and out of the startup world, acquaintances with interesting backgrounds and experiences, and now and then the occasional stranger whose blog I find fascinating. (I hate the term networking. I prefer “being-enriched-by-the-wisdom-of”.)

While the first category of dinner partners definitely keeps me from feeling like I’m becoming a hermit, it’s the second two categories that are really pushing this summer and myself forward. I walk out of each of these dinners excited about everything I can and want to do, and even more convinced of the importance of constant self-improvement.

So. In the interest of committing myself to a number of things to achieve this goal, here goes the list:

• Blog at least once a week. I’m going to set an alarm on my iCal and commit to posting something interesting I learned, or thought, or accomplished.
• Read 1 ‘improvement’ book for every fun book. I’m in the middle of reading the LOTR series (for the first time!), and once I finish The Two Towers, until I finish a programming- or startup- or productivity-related book, I won’t let myself read Return of the King. Sniff.
• Keep working a few nights a week on my side project (more later) – I feel like I need at least one or two non-school- or work-related projects under my belt before I can respect myself as a hacker. Or, as a lower standard, any sort of programmer.
• Along that line of thought – be more disciplined about said project! Don’t just sit down and start coding. Plan out the project a little more (what do I want it to do? How should it behave?) and use version control / repo management tools as well.

(Side note: am still probably far too awkward to be going around meeting people and making these first impressions. Need to work on that, too – for now, just sadface)

(Last note: tonight’s conversation was described as “covering a lot of ground, both philosophically and academically.” Last week’s was described as “spontaneously deep conversation with strangers.” Good nights, both. :))

What would you do if you had enough money to not have to work? I recently said I’d still pursue software development – it’s exciting and fulfilling and interesting and I’d still want to find a way to contribute intellectually to the tech world.

The person I responded to (let’s assume he/she is male for pronoun simplicity) was less than enthused with my answer – once given a means to support himself financially, he would wrap things up and go find a way to help people in a third-world / struggling country.

So here’s my question: is it selfish to want to pursue your own interests over some greater good / social responsibility? His goal in life is to work in order to prepare for retirement, after which he plans to find a way to help others. But the world needs people to also continue their own careers, advance their fields. So who decides who does what? Are you only allowed to be selfish and focus on your own career if you’re simply blind to all the suffering going on in the world?

I understand that everyone has some sort of obligation to better humanity – but who’s to say to what extent? Should everyone who is able and aware stop pursuing their dreams (additional point – can dreams be selfish? I suppose they can – but then why don’t we push social responsibility to kids as much as “dream big, you can achieve anything”?) to serve others? How do you decide who has to give up their dreams (to be the best X, to achieve Y) for the betterment of some other society? Or – is helping other people automatically going to trump the fulfillment of achieving any of the previously identified dreams?

I’m conflicted. Frankly, startups, new media, and technology rank much higher on my list of interests than poverty and hunger. Does that mean that, hands down, I’m a selfish person for not caring about others? Does that mean all interests are ranked – some interests are inherently better or less selfish than others? Does being concerned about poverty and racial issues mean that you’re a better person than those who care about the environment? Or gender issues? Or socioeconomic issues within the US, versus those outside?

At what point do we start drawing the line and saying, “you don’t care enough about X. You’re being selfish”? Isn’t this a slippery slope – creating these strict definitions for “caring about others” and judging people based on it? By these definitions, I can care extensively about and for others in my life to the extreme and still be considered selfish. Can you set bounds within which caring is irrelevant? If you always deliver soup to sick friends – must you also donate and be involved in Red Cross / Salvation Army work to be a good person?

I don’t know where to draw the line.

In tech and the startup world, there are tons of options – new startups spring up every day with “the next big thing” – or “the ____ killer,” or “____ for [insert platform here],” or “____ meets ____, AGGREGATED!!”

So when something really cool comes around – it seems to make sense to want to jump on board and share in their (or your expectation of their) success. But when you know little about the actual team you’d be working on, and conventional wisdom seems to put “the people” at the top of the list when considering school / workplaces / environments in general, how do things play out?

I like to think that good people want exciting projects. A good developer wants stimulating work, and once put in an environment with that stimulus taken away (either by a boring project or, for example, being bought out by a company which stifles the exciting parts), they’ll find a new place to play out their cool ideas.

So I think instead of worrying whether product.good > people.good or people.good > product.good… I’ll stick with product.good implies people.good (with the converse unfortunately not always being true, without good management / vision / etc). Here’s to the future.

I want to do everything. The reason people go to MIT and the curse of the Institution: exposing its students to so much of what is being used, worked on, developed — what has been done, and what can be done.

We’re all surrounded, constantly, by what seems like a neverending supply of incredibly ambitious and brilliant peers – how can we not get distracted?

I’d like to be really damn good at one thing – be it a thorough knowledge of each Javascript library and its pros and cons, or being able to quickly sketch out interfaces to complex multithreaded Java code, or being able to toss off 15 reasons I like Python more than PHP or why Ruby on Rails has saved the Internet. Maybe it’s just that everyone who’s been presented to me as someone to look up to has been really good at one thing, and I’m responding to that.

But I also want to do everything. I want to know everything, I want to mess around with Javascript and JQuery one minute, experiment with Django the next, poke around to see what procmail can do, hack together a visualizer for my scattered Adium logs… I want to drink everything in and there’s just not enough time.

How do people focus? How do you choose to focus – and how many people were forced to focus  on one thing, then lost track of the others?