Today I did some working from home and it was the first time I got to seriously work in my new study, with it’s nice clean desk and window with at least some sky for me to gaze at.

My New Study - Still clean and full of computers

I actually prefer the smaller space, when you’re working quite intently at a computer screen having some walls close by is comforting.

I am however coming to the sad realization that if I have to do any significant amount of writing at a computer that I’m a desktop man not a laptop boy which is a bit sad considering how many laptops we have floating about.

Both my main home and work computers are laptops, and despite one running shiny windows 7 and being vastly superior to anything else, I almost always find myself sitting at the creaking windows XP machine typing g away – and enjoying it.

I don’t know if it’s the keyboard comfort or the mouse over the touch pad (i suspect a bit of both) or indeed the big old monitor. but it just seems easier some how – even the thinking about what words to type bit.

What stuck me is that i never talk about what has happened since, I’ve gone very quite on the Job front, and I’m not entirely sure why – probably because I was worried people would find me out to be a nutter – well that ship has sailed so lets talk about my current job.

Kevin Jump – Technical Director, LDL Web Services

Gosh I must be bought in - it's the LDL Logo

Now that’s a grand job title isn’t it? it’s not quite as good as the one I like to pretend I have ‘Chief Digital Overlord’ but it will do – So what’s the job about, well it’s not a million miles away from what wikipedia says it’s about I provide direct technical strategy and stuff for web things.

I would like to be a thought of a bit broader than just Web. I’m currently on a bit of a crusade to drop Web from the team name – but we can’t just be called services can we?

On the staffing side, the bit of the service i look after has 15 people in it – I directly manage five of them with three of them managing the rest (look you’re not getting the org chart – just a summary!) – I use to manage loads more, but we split it up – the theory being i get more time to actually do strategy and less holidays and sickness.

So yes I’ve left my developer roots behind, I honestly can’t remember the last time I opened visual studio in vain, but I have poked about in other things but only to cover not as a day job. I don’t look at lines of code anymore I stand back away from the screen and say “there’s two much blue” or “it looks a bit to indenty for me” but mainly people just close the windows down before I get to their desks.

The more observant amongst you will have noticed that when i left JMU I didn’t go for a technical director job, I came to a Web Developer Job, so how did I get here?

Kevin Jump – (Senior) Web Developer – 6 months

I started with the web developer role, writing code – and boy did I churn some out, mainly back end managementy stuff – but there was lots – it was quite a culture shock to be honest – It turns out I had been coasting at JMU getting quick lax deadlines – floating about for a bit then cramming to hit the deadline – at LDL there was a lot less floating and a lot more cramming. then my then boss left – which meant there was a Development Manager role going – Now cunnigly just before that I had got myself on the Leadership course, so I was being groomed – and when the job came up I went for it – and did rather well at interview I thought.

Kevin Jump – Web Development Manager – 12 months

The Development manager job was a bit of a baptism of fire – the team had been growing, we had lots of projects that where handed to us from other departments with pre-set deadlines, oh and after three months in the job the head of service left (did do a month of being head of service for a while) ! It took a while and left not fool ourselves I still work for a large organisation so change wasn’t quick. but I think we made life better.

Only problem by the end of it (with a new head of service – I wasn’t that ambitious!) I had 13 staff to manage which is way to many and I was getting bogged down with people management – so we introduced a new level so other people who could focus on it better could manage in the specialist areas – this meant we effectively created a development Manager post below me – so i needed a new job title and i bit of a better defined role.

So here we are – I direct things technically for web – if you need to know more – you can but ask.

The article is full of excitement over the amount of time that is wasted in schools, and how much more efficient this system seems to be, and thereby stands the problem.  The education system that we’ve evolved is, as we’ve discussed, in large part about childcare.  It’s concerned with keeping children out of the way of their economically productive adults, so they don’t prevent the economic productivity from going on.  Within that structure, there is no advantage in making education efficient.  Which is odd, because the text of the education act makes parents responsible for ensuring that their children receive an education that is both efficient and full-time (either by attendance at school or otherwise).  And I’m starting to wonder if an efficent education, is, by definition, not full-time at all.

It’s all reminscent of the days when we (well, not me, I wasn’t born) were told that technology would give us all free time.  We’d all be working three day weeks, or less, because the technology would get the necessary work done in a fraction the time, and we’d all be wondering how to fill our new leisure time.  Except it didn’t happen, did it?  For a while we had some people working as hard as ever, whilst the others couldn’t find jobs at all, and lived in poverty.  Then we had economic boom, in which we successfully invented work for everyone to do, most of which is completely unnecessary. We created call centres, and all forms of bureaucracy, essentially to keep us all busy.  And of course, the childcare industry, which is built on the need to cover all the time we spend doing non-work.  Heaven forfend that we could earn a living wage in three days, and take the rest of the time off.

If I’m ever in a position to do so, I shall run a three-days-a-week business.  One where part time work is the norm, and where people can go home when they’ve finished what they were asked to do.  In the war, when people were asked to contribute to the war effort by working seven days a week, productivity actually went down.  And in the seventies, when the power went out, and businesses went to three day weeks, it didn’t. We’re all working far too hard.  It’s not necessary.  But for as long as you’re all doing it, it is necessary, because the the amount of time you work, and the amount of money you earn doing it, is what sets the cost of all the things I need to live – house prices, and food, and petrol, and clothes, and all the rest of it, are set based on how much money you have to spend on them.  The harder we work, collectively, the more expensive things get.  We don’t get any advantage from it.  So, I’m saying, let’s stop.  It’s not necessary, and if we all stop together, we don’t have to starve to bring about the change.

So, yes, let kids study GCSEs in three days.  If that’s how long it actually takes, then let them do that, and then stop.  Have fun. Spend time with their families. Learn things that they want to learn, from a position of having the time and energy to do it. But the idea of a generation of children with time on their hands is a terrifying prospect to the powers that be, and I’m guessing they will strain every nerve to avoid it happening.  Look out, Monkseaton High School.  This isn’t a revolution that you’re going to be allowed to start.

a cup of tea

When I worked at the university, we always had a little rule for when things broke : the number of things you broke = the number of cups of tea you had to make. It was a good rule of thumb that maybe did a little to motivate you into not breaking 3,000 pcs – I doubt google have the same rule, and i can bet the person who broke the entire google search today is glad - google doing funny things for 40 minutes is a lot of tea.

Then again It never was a hard and fast rule, I once misplaced a ; in an win.ini file and killed around 1,500 computers overnight – to compound it all I was on holiday the day after when they had to clean it all up.

Still, we’ve discussed the most likely location of the nearest cow, whether it’s too simplistic to say flat land is arable and hills are for livestock, and whether JMU Tower was really a death trap that would have killed us both if we’d stayed. So, not an unproductive night.

A bit sad that I can’t sleep, and the kids will be up soon, though.

I can sit at my nice big desk, with the windows wide open, and almost no disruption. We’ve got a bit of a resourcing issue at work at the moment; namely we have loads to do, and not enough people to do it. So it’s drastic action time as I am coding – hence the whole at homeness of it all.

One thing about working from home is you can get into the zone. I’m sure you all have your different zones, with programming it is said it takes 15 minutes to get into the zone and only 10seconds to get pulled out of it again, So sitting alone is a good way to go if you want to get something done; it’s a lousy way to go if you want to talk to anyone, or not get a bad back.

That’s why today I made sure I took lunch. If I was in work, i reasoned, I would take a break and go for a walk to clear some space in my head. It’s just when you are home it’s a much nicer walk – I went to greenbank park, and I took my camera.

I did get quite a lot of work done too. mainly through the process of ignoring my email. I’m a bit scared to look actually.

Then came Tenders: We’ve just finished doing a rather large Tender in work, and I was glad to see everybody was the same as me. “I can’t really do the work unless I have a really tight deadline”.

It all gets quite stressful. you think, “can I go back to that, simple life of just writing code?”. it’s all over (for) now. So the rest of the team have had to put up with two days of floaty light management. coming out of the tunnel and distracting anyone who will listen.

next week I will look at my mountain of email – the 75 projects I said i would start this finical year, and maybe even sorting out those bits of the office that we haven’t finished yet. like Hanging the clock.

I am so close to becoming one of ‘those’ people, it’s scary – I have lots to do and somebody stole a day out of my week, and that was before somebody trapped me in a room for three hours and then somebody else required a 2 hour email response.

The problem is I want to lead by example, and working stupid hours all night isn’t the example i want to set.  Yes I want people to do work, but I also want them to have a life, and not get burned out and all stressed on me, in the long run that’s much much harder to deal with, then a missed deadline or two.

anyway procrastination rules, lets just search flickr for photos and maybe play a bit of scrabulous.

Why don’t you come work with me?

Web Support Developer – bit of a job title, but we did somersaults to get officer out of it.

It’s loads of fun, you get to work with a talented bunch of people, and I’ll even take you out for coffee to talk philosophy.

And yes before you ask… I wrote the bit about falling asleep, In-fact I wrote it all. One of the first next things we are doing? getting rid of that awful website.

In my last job. PDRs where seen as a chore, the boss didn’t like doing them, and he let you know it. some of them would go on for hours and you could see through his office window, he was squirming. you would go in, talk about the same things as you did last time, and get the same responses, often with a sense of resignation. once i got.

“well after being here five years I would expect you to leave” (i did)

they weren’t exactly inspiring.

Looking at them as I do know from the other side. I wonder if he ever did get anything from them? because I get lots.

It has to be said I do them quite differently, for a start they are in a coffee shop (get out the office, people will talk!), and I ask people how they are, what they think, just what is happening… We ramble off subject and talk about tea, children, football, philosophy, art, the west wing, and occasionally work. Yes sometimes they last for two hours – but I get to know people more (i like to think i do talk to people outside of these and I do know them a bit already), and genuine ideas come out of them.

From the last set of PDRs I went away and restructured the team, thats worked really well, from this set it looks like we are going to sort out our strategic direction (I had one, it just needed fine tuning and then we’re going to run with it). It all reinforces my getting to where you want to be by not looking directly at it thing. Which is why I sent all the designers of to an art gallery, and when i get the bottle to do it. all the developers will be off somewhere getting inspiration too.

I don’t know what my staff think, I hope they see them as useful to, I am careful to try and remember what it was like… tell people they are valuable to the team (fortunately they all are!), give people hope.. and try to inspire. It all sounds terribly fluffy doesn’t it.. maybe I am a bit of a floaty in the clouds manager.

*one point I am confused on is PDR or PR&D. It turns out I have no idea which one it is anymore…