The Public Nature of Modern Programming

Then

When I got my first programming job, way back in 1987, it was a quite a private and solitary occupation. The Design Authority for my project gave me a detailed design for a procedure, including explicit definitions of the interfaces that I would use to interact with the rest of the system. I would then write the code for the procedure, test it locally and check it into version control. If I didn't need any clarification, I wouldn't speak to anyone as part of this process. I'd chat to my colleagues that I shared an office with, but in terms of doing my work it would be me and a screen. 

My code wouldn't be looked at by anyone else unless there was an issue when the next build took place, which there always was, as there were hundreds of new procedures that had never been slammed together before. The build team would take the first stab at fixing the issues, and if they were successful then I wouldn't know anything about this. If they were unsuccessful we would then enter a period of confusion as they typically wanted help with their fix rather than the underlying problem, and I would wonder where this code they were talking about had come from. 

My working life was spent solving problems that others were probably spending time solving, but it would never have occurred to me to share information about what I was doing, nor would I have had the first clue about how to go about sharing it. 

Outside of work, I would almost never talk to anyone about programming unless I was catching up with someone I'd been at college with, but it would be very superficial and typically about which languages and business areas we were working in, before getting down to the serious business of talking about sport. I'd also rarely do any programming outside of work. I might fiddle around a bit with some Basic, Pascal or 6502 assembler on my BBC Model B, but nothing serious. And certainly nothing that I'd consider telling anyone else about.  Some people wrote games and sent the source into magazines that might print it, but as a professional programmer I already got paid to write code so didn't need this outlet. 

Programming was a job like any other - I went to an office, worked there for a set number of hours a day, then went home and did whatever else I was interested in at the time. Unless you were a close friend or family member, you wouldn't have known that I programmed computers for a living, and unless you were a programmer yourself, it was hard for me to communicate exactly what I did every day.

The stereotype of a programmer was someone sitting in a darkened basement, being fed written requirements, and spending their days staring at a screen and typing. Which was pretty accurate.

Now

Programming in 2021 has changed beyond all recognition. It's now a collaborative and very public occupation. Requirements are rarely written down, and if they are it is often the programmers doing that after speaking to "the business" to find out exactly what is needed. Outside of integrating with external systems, integrating with the rest of the code in the project involves collaboration with the other programmers and the interfaces change when it becomes apparent they need to. Code is reviewed before being added to version control and continuous integration flags up problems as soon as they occur. The idea that a team of humans would need to kick off a build and triage the problems seems quaint and incredibly inefficient now. 

For me, the biggest change is that programmers expect, and are expected, to have a public profile. 

When we solve a problem, we write a blog post about it, redacting any detail that might expose which customer this impacted. We cross post on Substack and Medium. There might be a Github repository with the sample code for the blog post - there will almost certainly be other Github repositories to showcase our work, sometimes complete applications that anyone is welcome to copy. 

We also perform for audiences now, as we share what we've been doing at meet ups, conferences (both community and vendor organised), podcasts, webinars and recorded sessions. I'm pretty sure for the first 5-10 years of my career I didn't even show a customer what I'd built for them, it just got rolled into demos and training carried out by others. Now I show complete strangers from around the world and it seems perfectly normal.

Which is Better?

From the point of view of solving problems and producing solutions, it's almost unrecognisable now. If you hit a problem with anything other than bleeding edge technology, it's incredibly likely that someone else has already hit it and fixed it. And blogged about the fix. And spoken at a conference about it. And maybe created a Github repository with all the code you could possibly need going forward. 

The flip side is that programming is now more of a lifestyle choice than a job. There is an expectation that you will be working on side projects, writing posts and presenting at conferences. Often this will be on top of your actual job, which means that your social life is merely an extension of your professional life and often indistinguishable. Going to the office and working a set number of hours is typically only part of the programmer life these days, which can bring a lot of pressure, especially if you don't see it as a calling.  It can also be a full time job keeping up with the latest developments - frameworks rise and fall, platforms come in and out of favour, or the baddies get a new CEO and become the goodies so you grudgingly have to skill up on their products.

Personally I find it a lot better now that it was when I started, but very I'm lucky in that (a) I enjoy what I do, and (b) I can dedicate large chunks of my own time to all the extra-curricular activities without making my personal life difficult. I'm sure nobody wants to go back to the days when the helpful information was silo'd or didn't exist, but I'd imagine there are some out there who would quite like a return to the days when programming was something you did in private.

Follow @bob_buzzard

Avoiding Returnaggedon

How a company has treated its staff over the last 18 months, and how they treat them over the next few months as traditional workplaces open up, will have a huge impact on their future. Forcing teams back into the office is likely to result in Returnaggedon, where they come back just long enough to hand in their notice.

Now that most legal restrictions in the UK around COVID-19 have been lifted, thoughts are inevitably turning to what happens next in terms of remote work. Many of us are drifting back in for the odd day here and there for meetings, while some CEOs seem determined to revert back to how things were before. Apparently working from home doesn't work for those who want to hustle, and if you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come to the office. Although most of the time, the impending switch back to the old normal was immediately pushed back as the delta variant proved to be no respecter of desires or plans - a couple of days ago Amazon were the latest to push back from a September 2021 to January 2022.

Expecting everything to go back to how it was because that's how you liked it seems rather short sighted to me. While many reasons may be given for why everyone needs to be in the same physical location to get their work done, a lot of this will come down to trust, or lack thereof. The pandemic forced many managers to trust that their people were working even when they couldn't stand over them and, while they paid lip service to how well it was all going, that trust really wasn't there. Hence some can't wait to get everyone back in the office where their every move can be watched. Trust begets trust, however, and many employees report not trusting their leadership to manage the return to work safely - last September a survey found only 14% trusted their CEOs and senior leaders to make the correct call, which is pretty shocking. 

It's not just about safety though. People have adjusted to the benefits of part or full time remote working and are reluctant to put the genie back in the bottle.  No commute and saving money are the main reasons that most people want to stay remote, and they won't give that up easily, especially if they can avoid it by simply changing jobs. And people are changing jobs. A lot. So much that it's being called the Great Resignation. A Microsoft survey of 30,000 workers around the world found that 41% of them were considering quitting or changing profession. Imagine losing 41% of your workforce - it's hard to see that as anything other than catastrophic, given how long it takes to fully onboard new employees. While most executives say they don't want things to go back to how they are, around 70% of them want people in the office 3+ days a week, so it's clear that many want it to look an awful lot like it did before, with a few bones thrown to pretend they embrace remote work.

In Salesforce world, the competition for talent has always been intense, and somehow gets hotter every year. Companies need to offer people what they are looking for, or they will miss out to those that do. A survey of 1,000 US office workers in May said 39% would consider quitting if their employer didn't show flex. If you add in to that how easily people can walk into another Salesforce job, it's clear that if employees want to continue with this way of working, an accommodation must be found.  If plans aren't in place to offer remote/hybrid working going forward, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

Follow @bob_buzzard

Working remotely (and locally)

Work has changed

Work is no longer somewhere you go - it’s something you do

It's something you do from pretty much anywhere, if you can and your team/employer can manage the timezones. The COVID-19 outbreak has compressed 5-10 years worth of gradual working practice changes into a couple of quarters. It’s been 6 months for us in the UK and bar, a short government push to get people back to the office, there’s been very little sign of a return to how things were. The last round of advice suggested we are looking at another 6 months, which feels like a number chosen because it’s the biggest we will quietly accept. 

It probably won't change back

If this is the shape of things to come, rather than a one off pandemic, it would be a brave company that maintains a huge office portfolio for on-again off-again occupation. It’s like the world’s worst Hokey Cokey at the moment – right team in, right team out, left team in, left team out, but with no idea of when you’ll be able to put your whole team back in for any length of time.

Working remotely affects other workers

The lack of commuters to cities is also having an impact on the service industry – coffee, sandwiches, food trucks, restaurants and bars. I used to work out of our London office one day a week and typically spent £10–20 each time on sundries (and maybe a pint after work). I know many who spent this amount every day! I haven’t been for 6 months now and that is not looking likely to change any time soon. 

That money won’t entirely go away as people continue to work from home, although it seems like people are still being cautious with spending, but a fair bit will likely end up being spent locally. This isn’t a bad thing – instead of someone making a 70 minute commute to serve me a coffee after my 70 minute commute, I’ll walk to my local café and be served by someone who also walked there. (Or I would if there were any cafés that I could walk to in under an hour without taking my life in my hands, but you get the idea). Of course there’s some irony that in the great enabler of remote working, the coffee shop, the last thing they now want is people working there all day. 

Many of the local outlets are suffering too, but for those that can survive, the changes to our habits forced on us by the pandemic might just give them a brighter future. And the cities will have to focus on the people that live there, rather than those that are transported in and out each day. 

Follow @bob_buzzard