Future Tense

Lately, I've been thinking about the future, mostly about what I want to do, as a job. As I watch people at work and elsewhere, I see different personalities. In the computer industry, there's generally pressure to figure out new things, and the best companies have people who seem fearless in their ability to get stuff to work.

I was just reading Spolsky's book on hiring the best talent. In a nutshell, the book is about its title Smart and Gets Things Done, which Joel notes is not really correlated.

There are people who are smart, and don't get things done. Joel notes Ph.Ds often fall in this category. They tend to work on whatever they want to work on, whether it is pragmatic or not, and even if nothing gets done, they can be happy if they learn something interesting out of it. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration. Many Ph.D's at the very least, worry about papers and conferences, at least until tenure.

The other type, those that get things done, but are not smart typically do things a bit incorrectly, and produce a lot of buggy code, which means they are a net loss to the company.

I'm probably a person that's not smart and doesn't get things done, which puts me in the worse of both worlds (well, perhaps better than the not smart, and gets things done).

Anyway, it's times like these that I ponder whether I should look at something different. I know a former co-worker who also had a fit issue, and he's also contemplating what he wants. I have a better sense of what I would like, but no clear path that would make it happen. Much of what I'm looking for is informed by having been a teacher, but so far as I know, no company works the way I'm thinking.

In the meanwhile, given that this is unlikely, there's looking for something more realistic.

And that's tough to figure out.