reoriginalize

Termie’s Talent Agency, Take 2

termie — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:11:44 +0000

Lately the amount of people asking me for friends who code to work on their projects has been increasing so I think it is time to revive Termie’s Talent Agency, and add a little twist. Here’s the breakdown:

Developers, Designers

If you think that you could at some point in the future be interested in working on cool projects — and I’m not going to point you at stuff I think is stupid — shoot off an email to termietalent at gmail and please include the following:

whether you would like to travel or move, I hear about things in both Europe and the U.S.
what kinds of things you are actually enthusiastic about, if you code but are really into journalism I want to hear about; describe your dream job.
where I can dig up more info on you, like a blog or something
a recipe for one of your favorite dishes (i like food) or one of your favorite paragraphs from a book

Companies ^new!

If you are looking for great talent that will never hit a job board because they already have jobs and could find new ones every day — the kind that hate headhunters because they always represent horrible boring corporations — then send an email to termietalent at gmail and please include the following:

where you are located and if you need somebody to be located physical nearby
the size of the team our hero will be working with
a passionate description of your project that will instill a renewed sense of vitality and enthusiasm to any kindred spirit who reads it
a brief description (longer if you use illustrative metaphors) of what kind of hero you are looking for to fill out your squad
a recipe for one of your favorite dishes (i like food) or one of your favorite paragraphs from a book

Everybody

None of this information will be posted anywhere, it is for my own private use as a matchmaker extraordinaire, but should from aught a spark take light ‘tween brave souls I shall send both parties an intro email.

And hey, if you’ve got other crazy ideas about arrangements send ‘em in also, I’ve heard things like design for code barters (keeps the tax man away) and even dating requests.

–snip–

I had a great time doing this before, but at some point the server that handled that email got moved and DNS was in somebody else’s hands and everything sort of fell apart.

Likewise, if you’ve sent stuff in before, please send it again to refresh my memory and so that I’ll have it on record.

Stealth Mode

termie — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:40:11 +0000

Received an email today asking me to evaluate the feasibility of an idea, this was my response to it:

Subject: Re: Question

Body:

| In a nutshell, I would like to create something - like [XXX] - that is geared more towards the [XXX] community.

| Is that enough information?

Obviously not.

| I don’t want to go to in depth because it may be a “very” good idea and I would like to know I could trust the person - hearing the whole presentation - to not disqualify it to me and then go on to develop it for their own personal gain.

That is in almost all cases a very flawed path to follow. Ideas aren’t worth much of anything, I assure you somebody else has had your idea and most likely many other people, the fewer people you tell your idea to the more likely it is that you will build yourself into a hole without input, fail to see things from other perspectives, fail to find out that your idea has already been done before you waste the time trying to build it, and in almost all cases simply fail. “Stealth Mode” is a worn out and useless concept perpetuated by people who expect to get something for nothing, what makes things happen is (1) actually fleshing out the idea through constant interaction with other people more knowledgeable than yourself, giving you additional reasons and urgency to actually build it, and (2) actually building it. The difference between the successful and the unsuccessful entrepreneur often has much more to do with how well that person can actually organize the people around her into making their dreams a reality than about an idea.

Good luck.

–andy

Things I Won’t Do

termie — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:49:19 +0000

Anybody who’s spent much time with me knows I’m neither the kind of guy to take no for an answer nor the kind to say something isn’t possible, rather I am the kind who feels like he can be great at everything and be everything to everyone. It’s a fault but I do well enough most of the time that I can skate by.

Today on the bus ride to work while finishing reading the play “Copenhagen” I came to the sudden realization that I would never make a significant contribution to mathematics. It wasn’t ever something I specifically strove for, nor anything I put any sort of commitment towards, but somewhere in the back of my mind I’m sure I hoped, as I do with an outrageous number of things, to wind up in a position where it would be possible and that by sheer force of character I could make it happen.

Even now, after tossing the thought around all day, I can’t quite bring myself to accept the word never in the paragraph above. It feels like a challenge. Even after deciding that I will not commit myself to the level of study and research it would take, even with the generally held statistic that most great contributions to mathematics happen by the time the contributor is 25, even after accepting the overall lunacy of the idea that I might be in some way qualified, never is still a tough pill to swallow.

To All Those “Coachella’s Line Up Sucks This Year” People

termie — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:56:36 +0000

Andy wouldn’t mind seeing:

- Friday -
The Verve
Tegan and Sara
The Breeders
Goldfrapp
Slightly Stoopid
Battles
Aesop Rock
Vampire Weekend
- Saturday -
Kraftwerk (Zombienaaation)
Rilo Kiley
MIA
Animal Collective
Flogging Molly
Islands
Man Man (!!)
AkronFamily
Minus The Bear
Yelle
- Sunday -
My Morning Jacket
Justice
Metric
Simian Mobile Disco
Autolux
Sia
Holy Fuck
Grand Ole Party

And there are a lot of other names that sound familiar/good:

- Friday -
Les Savy Fav
The Bees
- Saturday -
DeVotchka
Blonde Do Role
Kavinsky
The Bird and the Bee
120 Days
- Sunday -
The Field
Sons & Daughters
Austin TV
Shout Out Louds
Plasticines

Excess

termie — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:42:36 +0000

Social social social social.

I think I’d like to work a bit now.

My Performance Self-Review

termie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:38:30 +0000

So, at big companies like this it appears you get to do these “performance review things,” anyway I ended up spending far longer working on it than I wanted to when I should have been rapidly typing things like api.channel_post or request.user but I figured I could make up for some of that by posting a good chunk of it here.

Overall Performance

Just getting moving, between integrating myself with the company and pushing for support for Jaiku I feel these first months were certainly my slowest, but with a solid plan and commitment to it I feel that this is just the beginning.

Accomplishments

Oh em gee super sekret.
Biking to work about once a week.

Strengths

Contributing energy, excitement and enthusiasm / pleasant to work withness / constructive feedback and helpful suggestions is always one of my main strengths.
Code-wise, I feel I do a good job of contributing well-thought-out, simple, useful designs, generating great new ideas and staying abreast of new developments in the industry, a close connection to open source developers.
I move quite fast and make a lot of progress when the path is clear, tends to be very helpful for people wanting to experiment with an idea.
I’d like to think I cultivate relationships between engineering groups, I definitely feel that will be a strong point of mine once I’ve had a chance to interact with more groups.

Areas for Development

I feel I could always test much better and do better at keeping design docs up to date, I end up running ahead of those far too often, I feel this will improve greatly as I am exposed to more great testers via code reviews, nothing drives me forward as well as working with bright people.
I would love to teach and mentor others more, I feel I frequently skimp on this due to the feeling of lacking time or for getting frustrated with people who are still learning, I think I can improve this by beginning to write more documentation for projects, documentation for APIs and things like that.
Complete projects that I started is a big one for me, I’ve noticed myself dropping out of projects here at Google once the meetings become about what I feel is just large company red tape, I’d like to improve this by learning enough of what the issues people are facing are that I can solve them before my interest dies completely. Additionally, simply having the stamina to get through the boring parts long enough to be a useful contributor again.
Providing leadership, I’m quite used to running my own projects but at a company of this size and nature it requires much more to be a leader that can contribute, I plan to improve this by working with great leaders and taking on larger and larger responsibilities.

Career Development Objectives

My past objectives in career development have always been related to starting projects that bring together small groups of bright individuals in a way that allows them to thrive and produce free products that move towards making the world a better place and in the process learn greatly by being surrounded by these people and working with them.

So moving here felt like quite a departure at first, but I feel I’ve found the right niches to dive into where I can again contribute and progress towards those goals.

My plans are to bring about environments within the company that breed the kind of passion and excitement that I’ve always taken for granted at smaller companies and smaller projects, and through working in those environments implement and launch innovative products that assist other developers both internally and externally in bringing that same passion and excitement to their environments.

Having a platform like Jaiku on which to rapidly develop new tools is one way in which I intend to begin accomplishing, and working with some of the more interesting developer-facing projects internally and externally is another. Along the way I intend to re-acclimatize myself with C++ and Java so that I will be more quick to contribute to those projects that are based on those languages.

Meet My New Bike

termie — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:50:41 +0000

My new bike - Photo copyright Mission Bicycles - CC BY-NC

The glamour shots are out and Joi just blogged his. The picture above isn’t actually the final configuration for mine (but it is such a pretty picture), I ended up swapping the grip tape and seat for black because the pinks weren’t totally matching. It’s name is trotz. They’re taking orders, so go grab your own

First Official Chill Evening

termie — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:13:11 +0000

Yay! Last night after a bunch of hard work by Lindsay and Travis to clean up the house in preparation for the thanksgiving party we decided we would crack the seal on the projector and watch a not-mind-intensive movie (Spiderman 3) on our couches. I had picked up Anni to join the festivities and shortly after we started Mika, Teemu and Emma all arrived. Ample couch space for all seven of us and some cozy blankets / reindeer skins later it was a damn fine way to wind down an evening.

It’s starting to feel like a real house ‘n stuff. -cozy- Still looking for a roommate or two for downstairs.

First Official Sunday

termie — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:55:41 +0000

Woke up, wandered downstairs without a shirt on, turned on the pac, made some cereal and sat my ass on the couch to read the internet. Word.

Lonely House

termie — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:05:42 +0000

My house feels pretty lonely without my housemates here.