Author: Radu

Finding meaningful work

As a developer it’s very likely that you receive at least once a week an email from a HR company regarding some jobs. This week was no different, but instead of writing the same response as always, I asked myself: What would happen if I responded with my thoughts about meaningful work?

This was a little bit difficult, because the first two feelings that flooded me were excitement and fear. Excitement because this was the first time that I would say something like that and fear because saying those things automatically made me ineligible for most the jobs that are on the market. I took e deep breath and I did it.

The response came…

I really appreciate your comments regarding an ideal role and a company. To be absolutely honest, you are not the first candidate I have spoken to, who has mentioned this subject in a conversation. Just a few weeks ago, I had a really good chat with an engineer, who was looking for a new role. He told me that he was literally inundated with proposals from companies operating within the financial services sector (banks, spread-betting companies etc), that he was kindly but firmly rejecting one by one. It simply wasn’t the space he wanted to focus his creative energies on. It was a matter of principles as well for him.

It turns out that I’m not the only loony in the world.

And as a bonus, I believe that I have tripped over the Holly Grail of finding meaningful work. Unfortunately for developers, not all jobs posted are in the IT field, but at least there are some.

ReWork.jobs

You complete your profile, pick the areas you would like to work in and wait for them to contact you with job opportunities that fit your profile. Unfortunately, this site is only for jobs in the US (to bad for us).

BUT – and that’s a big but (giggles) – the great thing is that they have connections with all kinds of other organizations and sites that want to do good.

After you create your profile, you will find 4 categories in the Career Resources section.

  • CAREER STRATEGY FOR MEANINGFUL WORK. An overview of how they recommend approaching your career development.
  • PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Resources for gaining skills, building your network, and becoming a top-performer in your field.
  • JOB BOARDS. Find non-ReWork job opportunities from the top job boards in Impact.
  • OTHER RESOURCES

Man, I love their vision:

We believe that no one should have to choose between making money and making a difference. We believe that organizations working day and night to improve people’s lives deserve the most talented, committed, and passionate professionals out there to support their efforts.

[…]

This generation of leaders and innovators will not settle to work for companies that can’t see beyond business-as-usual, or refuse to do their part.

I hope you are as excited as I am. If you tried some of the resources from this site, please share your experience in the comments below.

Software that does good [Part 1]

In my first blog post I talked about making a difference in the real world with your programming skills by building useful products. Some people told me that all software makes a difference, and in a broader sense, it does. If you make just a little bug fix in a JavaScript library you impacted at least the lives of developers using it, not to mention the people using their software.

But lets stop for a minute and think not only about software that makes a difference, but software that does good. What is software that does good? Software whose main goal is to benefit the lives of others, not necessarily excluding profit.

I talked to my friends about this and most of them said that …

  1. I’m naive
  2. I can do this in my spare time
  3. I should start my own business
  4. There is no money in doing that

I don’t know which one is true, maybe all of them. All I know for sure is that I found some NGOs/companies that reached my goal and showed me that this is possible. Sure, maybe there is not a lot of money in doing this kind of work, but I think most developers don’t try to get rich, they just want a normal life.

I think that software is a tool that helps implementing ideas. Software would be nothing without ideas. Ideas are the base of a great project. In that note, let’s start our list (man, I do love lists).

Kiva.org

About

Have you ever donated money without really knowing the impact of your donation? With Kiva, that’s not the case anymore. Not only you can help a lot of people directly, you don’t need to give money, you just have to lend it.

There are more de 1.3 million lenders, almost 1.7 million people helped by loans and they have almost 735 million US dollars in loans (more on metrics).

Starting point

Kiva was founded my Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley. Here’s Jessica Jackley on a TED talk.

Ways they make money

All your money goes directly to the chosen person, Kiva doesn’t take any commission at all. They’re sustained only by sponsors, companies, grants and direct donations.

Instructables.com

About

I’ve always wanted to be a handy guy, but I’m not. I tried building stuff several times and even the simplest things take me more than I estimate. Maybe I’m just inexperienced, but never mind that. Even if you’re a wannabe DIY guy/gal or an experienced handyman, this site is for you.

You can find detailed instructions about building all sorts of things, from knifes to robots. You can join interest groups or you can participate to contests.

Starting point

These guys started from MIT Media Lab and formed Squid Labs which at first started with a blog that gave instructions about creating windsurfing gear.

Ways they make money

From what I found their income comes from advertising and pro membership fees. They were also acquired in 2011 by Autodesk, that little company that has Autocad, 3ds Max, Maya etc.

MiraRehab.com

About

As you’ve seen from their video, MiraRehab si about physical recovery through games. Most of the patients give up on recovery exercises after a short period of time, but this type of recovery keeps them engaged. Maybe as an adult you see the benefits of physical exercises for your recovery, but some kids don’t understand that concept and that’s why this software along with the Kinect is a great thing for humanity.

Starting point

The four founders (Team Simplex) won the Microsoft ImagineCup contest in 2013 with their project.

Ways they make money

MiraRehab has collaborations with clinics from UK and Romania and I think it won’t be long until they reach other countries. Until the autumn of 2015 the software is available only for clinics, but after that anyone can buy the software and a Kinect camera and hook them up to a PC.

 

If you know other software products that do this kind of work, please feel free to share.

Should your kid start coding?

Not long ago, most people though that programming is only for geeks that weren’t good at sports, but nowadays if you can code, you’re a rock star.

It’s fascinating to me that coding gains more ground at the same time as trends as #YOLO and #SWAG. But if I think about it, in all human history there were people at both ends of the spectrum, so it’s not something strange, but it still fascinates me.

Jeff Atwood wrote an article that talks about the fact that programming is becoming mainstream.

Look, I love programming. I also believe programming is important … in the right context, for some people. But so are a lot of skills. I would no more urge everyone to learn programming than I would urge everyone to learn plumbing. That’d be ridiculous, right?

[…]

Please don’t advocate learning to code just for the sake of learning how to code. Or worse, because of the fat paychecks. Instead, I humbly suggest that we spend our time learning how to …

  • Research voraciously, and understand how the things around us work at a basic level.
  • Communicate effectively with other human beings.

Erik Dietrich takes it a step further and he says that we should learn to recognize a process that can be automated.

Learn at least to recognize which parts of your job are a poor use of your time. After that, perhaps learn to use your ingenuity and creativity to automate using the tools that you know (such as googling for solutions, leveraging apps, etc). And, if you’ve come that far, maybe it’s time to roll up your sleeves and take the plunge into learning to code a little bit to help you along.

I agree with both of them (otherwise I wouldn’t have quoted them), but I think Erik has covered only a niche of the programming world. Sure, automation is important and to recognize when you should use it is vital, but if I were to build a game, I wouldn’t go through a lot of repetitive tasks. Automation would not be essential.

I am not a teacher, but I like working with kids and when I discovered code.org I started telling every kid I knew about this course. For a year and a half, I tried the 20 hour intro course with about a dozen of kids. Some thought it was great, some thought it was too hard and some thought it was too easy. I figured that at the end, not a lot of them would stick with programming, but my surprise was when even the ones that loved the course, told me that they had better things to do or they didn’t have the time.

For a moment I forgot how I was when I was their age. Easily enthusiastic about a lot of things and easily distracted by others. Of course, there is a big possibility that I didn’t know how to inspire them or how to share my enthusiasm.

I only hope that my efforts started a little fire in at least one kid and that some day he would embrace this awesome passion.

To sum it all up, if you don’t know if programming is for you or your kids, ask yourself/the kids the following statements:

  1. Do you understand simple logic? – “If I’m hungry, I should eat.”
  2. Are you curious about how things work and do you try to understand them?
  3. Do you get that computers are “stupid” and you should tell them exactly what to do?
    • Me: “Computer, give a an example about how you should be very specific when asking a computer to do stuff.”
    • Computer: “??? Here are the latest videos with funny cats.”
  4. Do you want to build stuff? – “I want to build an app that notifies me every time my hamster is out of food.”

What do you guys think? Are there any questions I should add on my list?