From xoa

In my work and open source life, I have three main goals:

• I bring people together
• I help developers become better at their craft
• I help people be happy in what they do

Bring people together

The world is amazingly large, and amazingly small. The ability to form relationships with ease with people across a wide expanse, both literal and figurative, is the #1 social benefit of the Internet. Creating those connections is both personally satisfying and good for business.

My mind thinks in terms of cost/benefit. I look at everything like an accountant perusing a balance sheet. This doesn't mean I'm focused on money. Perhaps the currency being considered is time spent with one's children, or the enjoyment of one's house, or the number of people brought in to an open source project.

Given my cost/benefit view of the world, it's easy to see why I want to increase connections with others. More contacts with more people means more possibilities for more improvements. It is the height of arrogance to believe that one person or one group of people has the answer, or the best answer, to any given problem.

Part of my mindset is also as a matchmaker, thinking of how I can match up problems and solutions, skills and needs. People come to me asking "Andy, do you know anyone who..." I often do, or know someone who does.

The reason I joined Socialtext is to meet and work with new, fascinating people who could teach me.

Help software developers become better at their craft

I love developing software. The joy of creating solutions to a problem surpasses anything else I've known, short of being a husband and father. I've been programming for over 25 years, and I'm good at it. Along the way, I've learned a lot, and had a lot of problems.

Programs that don't work and projects that fail are not joyful. I want to pass along some of the joy I've had programming to others, by helping them to get things working better and faster.

That's why I write tools like ack and prove and hwd. That's why I teach at user groups and conferences. That's why I spread the gospel of automated testing. That's why I'm writing Pragmatic Job Hunting. I want people to learn, to increase their joy in this wonderful craft.

The reason I joined Socialtext is that they are working the way I think at least 25% of programming will be done in the next 5-10 years, and I'm not talking about offshoring to India. Companies with physically disparate work teams working asynchronously will become more accepted. Wikis are going to be a key part of that revolution.

Help people be happy in what they do

I'm 39, halfway to the grave. I'm think every day about how short life is, and about how I need to make the most of it. Life's too short to be spent in a crappy job, or with an abusive spouse, or in a city you hate.

I work as best I can to help people get where they want to be. Maybe that's helping them find a new job. Maybe that's finding ways to revitalize the work that they're already doing. Maybe that's helping someone find the joy inside them that they didn't know was already there. It's an overarching concern of what I'm writing for PJH.

The reason I joined Socialtext is that I was no longer pushed, challenged, excited in my craft. I could have cruised through life as a middle manager, but that would have been just adequate. I needed to get happy again.

...

I know my goals may not be as lofty as others. I don't have a goal like "to spread knowledge in the world." They're also more localized.

They're also hedonistic, and I make no apologies. If life, and life's work, isn't fun, if it's not full of joy, why bother?