Do or Do Not.

I recently sought out suggestions on subjects I could write about that I don’t normally, and my friend Kate suggested I should write more about tiny slice-of-life sorts of things — which I think is a fine idea, and one I shall try to implement — but also noted that I don’t much talk about my work. She’s right, and I find it funny that I don’t, given how much of my time is spent here and thinking about my job and my career. So Kate, thanks for the suggestion! Here, have a blog post…

What do I love about my work?

Honestly, I love the where I am more than the what I do right now. I’m feeling fairly seriously burnt out on the what — I’ve been doing essentially the same thing (though with increasing degrees of competence and difficulty) for the last decade, and I’d like to expand into something new. I have to fight though boredom (even when really busy) more often than I might like.

But I love working for Harmonix an awful damn lot. Not only does the corporate culture agree with me and not only do I really like the people, but the benefits are the best I’ve ever had. The people who work here are almost without exception phenomenally talented at what they do. And I have a platform for the work I do far, far beyond anything I’ve ever had before — the stuff I work on gets seen by anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of people per month (even if none of them know I had anything to do with what they’re looking at).

There’s a lot of pressure to be excellent working here. We have high standards — Harmonix doesn’t release crap, and our team holds itself to those same standards of quality that the game teams do, even if the company as a whole doesn’t always recognize it. Well, didn’t recognize it; I think the Webby win really raised our profile with everyone else here.

So I realize that most of what I just said is what I love about my job. What about my work, then? What do I actually love about what is I do?

I love problem-solving, figuring out how to do some pretty complex stuff with websites. I love building things, knowing that sites exist and people can do things with those sites because of work I have done. I love manipulating code — I’m completely anal when it comes to my code. I love learning new technologies and new techniques and new ways to do the things I already do better. I love reworking other people’s substandard code and making it work better and more efficiently (and making the code itself prettier). I even (sometimes) love fixing bugs, especially when doing so actually makes my site more usable.

I love that I work somewhere with enough name recognition to get nominated for — and ultimately win — a Webby.

What bugs me about my work?

As I sort of alluded to above, the actual day-to-day of what I do isn’t thrilling me right now. I’m burning out on building web applications, even somewhere as phenomenal as Harmonix. I don’t have a good answer for what to do instead; I’m not sure what else I could do which would be as interesting (when I’m not feeling quite so burnt out) and pay me as much. [1]

I don’t like feeling looked-down-on by the “real” (read: non-web) programmers. That’s a problem I’ve been facing for years and I don’t expect that’s going to be solved anytime soon (though I will say I believe it’s gotten better over the last few months, as the other web software developer and I have gotten more visibility).

I don’t like crunch, but that’s just part of the industry and we on the web team don’t usually have it as bad as the game teams do, so I can’t complain too much.

But really, those are some pretty minor negatives compared to the amount of love I have for my job right now. Nowhere’s going to be perfect, but Harmonix is as close as I’ve found yet.

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[1] It’s not always about the pay, but at this stage in my life as the primary bread-winner for a family of five, it is about the pay, at least in large part.