Andy's Mind

I wrote recently that I think we’ll see less funding for startups in the near future – it seemed pretty obvious. Now the New York Times is reporting that this is exactly what’s happening.

First to disappear are so called “angels” – small private investors that were giving initial funding to startups in their very early phases of growth. Angels became an almost indispensable part of the startup game helping young companies become interesting enough for venture capitalists to look at. Funding their provided was much easier to get (if you knew right people in the US) than VCs and helped startups put together initial business plans, teams and mockups/demos of products/sites/etc.

But, as the crisis unfolds and economy corrects the mistakes in resource allocation to consuming (2/3rds of US economy is – or rather was – consumer based) angels face same problems as everyone. Some of them even used to invest money that was in fact credit against the value of their real estate or stock holding from past successful ventures. As value of both falls down so does their capacity to invest. Plus, with all the pessimism in the media people are even less willing to take any risks with their money looking rather for safety and savings.

But there is an upside to all of this, which I have pointed out in my New Year’s article: all that means better quality. Yes, less startups will get money, but those who will get funded will be those with better teams, better business plans and better, more innovative ideas.

Quantity will go down, so the quality will go up. This is good news, even if that means we won’t get another dozen of new, “unique” social networking sites.

It is now almost evident that 2009 will be a year of recession and crisis. All indicators are down for the US economy and world’s economy is falling with it. Mainstream media presents governments’ actions as a heroic struggle to keep things running, while in fact things they do – mass bailouts, aid packages, 0% interest rates, printing dollars (and other currencies) – just make the problem worse.

This situation has a broad & long term impact but in this article I want to focus on what it all means for our industry – the IT and especially software development.

Recessions and crises are a time of test. When markets contract only the best will stay, the rest will fail. In other words – those who swim faster and adapt better will survive the storm, those not moving quickly enough or in a wrong direction will go down. It’s not nice, but it is the way things are.

However, IT in general has many things going for it that make it, I think, less vulnerable and having better chances of going through this storm in good shape.

First, it has always been fiercely competitive and thus is more fit than others. IT is widely unregulated by governments, did not receive any protection or intervention and has been largely union-free. It has been therefore much more exposed to the free market than banks or heavy industries. Furthermore, we did go through our own, “local” bust – the “dot.com” bubble burst of about 8 years ago. So IT companies in general should be better prepared to cope with tough times.

But even more importantly as our clients will be squeezed by the same market dynamics of bust and recession they will have to get more effective in order to survive. And to do that they will need more technology, more IT systems to support their processes, more automation and more data analysis to stay on top of things. In short they will need more of what we deliver, not less.

This time, though, with forecasting the future more difficult than ever those systems will have to help companies cope with changing business environment – and that will be reflected also in approach to projects. So companies will look to develop lighter systems and do it as flexibly as possible. That means less willingness to commit to long-term projects and fixed contracts – plus less use of work-heavy technologies.

Startups are distinctly different from established businesses but for us at Code Sprinters they are an important part of our client base. In the coming year and onwards they will have a much harder time finding angels and VCs willing to invest in them. But that means only the best business plans will get funded – and that with this funding an additional pressure for good execution will come. Good will even more than before mean: fast, with good quality and elasticity.

So common theme here for all client groups depending on IT will be more effectiveness, better value and above all flexibility to cope with hard to predict changes.

Luckily for us all the IT did come up with a way to approach things exactly that way: light technologies like web applications, frameworks, open source components etc. keep costs down and make building systems easier. The whole family of agile methods gives much higher productivity plus flexibility to cope with change easier. In fact methods like Scrum and simple T&M contracts will shine in those times.

So the coming storm will be a huge opportunity for companies that – just like us here at Code Sprinters – offer agile approach to build web applications.

I know of course how this kind of argument is perceived: yet another marketer trying to sell his method/product/service by trying to link it to what’s in fashion. Crisis is in fashion now – just turn on a TV – so let’s sell agile as a the magic cure for the crisis. But I honestly believe this is the case and here is some substatantion to my claims:

• agile means cutting down on BS, so less overhead – and who would like to pay for unnecessary documents, work and meetings at the time when every dollar is turned twice before it is spent?
  
• agile teams are open to change – every sprint (2-4 weeks) client can change the project direction, which is a clear advantage at the time of instability when any predictions can be only very general and anyway uncertain,
  
• agile T&M contracts can be cancelled at any time – much more security at a time when budget given to the project today might be taken away few months from now,
  
• plus with an agile team even if you cancel the project you get code that does something, is complete to some extent – which means that even if cancelled early the project has high chance of brining value,
  
• agile teams are focused on highly important, high value items first meaning getting quicker to the point of system being usable,

• good agile teams do good software – that is well tested, well designed, so that it a) will continue on working and b) could be extended further by other team with manageable learning curve.

If we look at web applications we also see clear benefits, especially lower cost and faster development of specialized business systems, both internal and client-facing. I won’t go into details here, because web technologies have been the primary choice for new custom business systems for a few years now.

To sum it all up: IT in general is here to stay, as in these troubled times companies will need more computer-powered muscle than ever, they will need it for less and delivered in a more flexible way. Luckily, the IT industry – unlike, say, banks or car manufacturers – is up to delivering just that. Well, maybe not the whole IT industry, but sizable enough part of it to keep us going. Which is fundamentally good news to open the New Year 2009 with.

So – Happy New Year!

(All the points above assume you know how agile methods, Scrum in particular, deliver those benefits – if you don’t see our Scrum Resources page to get started. Next this month – Prophets of Doom.)

A few weeks ago I met with Dave Prior from the PMI IT&Telecom SIG and he videotaped part of our conversation. Now those videos are on-line and I’m posting them here for your viewing convenience.

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Over the last three months we have been looking for more developers to join our team. Because of that within the last few weeks I had about 15 interviews. Overall I’m disappointed with the level of candidates that came to talk to us, especially computer science graduates. None of the interviewed got employed, only one was interesting but he lacks time to work being a student. So to make it clear who we are looking for and thus save everyone else (and us) the trouble of interviews I’m writing this post.

Basically, there are two ways to get employed by Code Sprinters as a developer: either you are an über-geek passionate software developer with projects to prove it or you want to become one and have what it takes (above all: a good mind).

If you claim to be first we don’t expect you to have any certificates or diplomas. Don’t even bother bringing any paperwork with you – we might look at it, but it doesn’t matter. What we expect you to have is projects. If you didn’t work professionally in the field (read: didn’t code for money yet) those can be open source projects or even your own projects done just for fun or learning that you are proud of and can show. Expect us to dwell on this during the interview and ask tricky questions re. languages, methods and tools that you used to make sure what your understanding is.

Few other bits here: if you claim you are passionate about a language or just interested in it expect questions about it on the interview. And nothing disappoints us more than someone who claims to love, say, Erlang, but can’t explain why nor say anything about it. And it so happens that our developers (who participate in the interviews) happen to have wide interests in the field and usually they know much more about exotic languages & technologies than you might expect. So don’t think you can claim you’re passionate about something if you aren’t – and get away with it.

One other point about being passionate: just doing your homework at the university won’t do. People passionate about software usually feel a need to code and enjoy coding more than what is required to get a passing grade on their studies. If you claim you’re passionate about, say, Ruby on Rails but all you did was a homework assignment with a friend in the “web applications” course are you really expecting us to believe you?

Now, you can view programming as just a job for the paycheck and you might feel doing it properly within hours is o.k. Nothing wrong with that in principle, but please be honest with us and don’t say it is your passion. Passion doesn’t just switch off at 4pm.

To be fair: all I wrote doesn’t mean that you can’t climb mountains, sail seas, play saxophone or have a life but just code 24/7 in a basement. In fact sailing and photography are the most popular hobbies in our team, but still each of us did code for fun. And I hope all of us still think coding is fun.

It all boils down to that little bit, I think. If you don’t know why coding is fun – don’t waste ours and yours time. I’d even say: don’t waste your life on something you don’t like, find something you love to do and try to get paid for doing it. You’ll be way happier.

But, as I have mentioned above, there is another way to become part of our team: have a willing mind. Again, just say so – and then we won’t expect you to have tons of projects under your belt or be fluent in Ruby, Python and SQL. However, prepare then for a ruthless check of your intellectual ability. You have to convince us you really want to become a good coder plus you have what it takes to actually do it. So this invitation is extended to those genuinely interested in programming and languages and web applications, just lacking work experience. It is not an invitation to all those that don’t know what to do with their lives and any paycheck is what they are after.

This might sound harsh – and it is. But sorry, reality is harsh and we have projects to complete and clients to satisfy. If we are to take someone on board with little or no experience to show we have to get convinced you have the brilliant mind we look for. Also because you will be most likely thrown into the water and told to swim with little assistance. Colleagues will answer your questions and will be willing to discuss stuff you’re stuck with, but apart from our well stocked library and the initial kickoff week expect little structured guidance. If that doesn’t scare you – click here. 🙂

Finally, there is one more thing. All I wrote applies to developers that are the core of our team. But we also look for a graphic/UI designer and a tester. In both cases all I wrote applies, it is just not centered on software. Maybe I’ll write about it at length another time.