The Last Train

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” — Robert Southey

It occurred to me that once I stepped onto the train this morning it will be my last time for what will probably be quite a while. Moving to a new state at the end/beginning of a year really drives the point home. There is a definite feeling of closure and new opportunity.

That got me thinking about my journey ahead and how I ended up at this point. I’d like to thank the people around me that helped define who I am in my career path.

It pretty much started with myself and a pirated copy of Agile Web Development that led me to find others interested in Ruby programming. It was a tough time but that is when I stumbled into Ray Hightower leading a Ruby Meetup in a library meeting room. Thanks Ray, my involvement in ChicagoRuby, I feel, is what really moved my career into the fast path.

Next up is Dave Giunta, Courtney Braafhart, and Jim Hassan who believed in me enough to take a chance and give me my first full-time Ruby dev position. Thanks… I was crazy nervous trying to play it cool in my interview (with my pinstripe suit). This is also where I met Adam Walters, Chris Hallendy and Stephen Korecky. Who have become good friends and I’m always learning from each of them.

This is about where I attended an Obtiva TDD Bootcamp taught by one Dave Hoover. Dave must have been semi impressed with me cause he asked if I was interested in trying out for Obtiva shortly after that. Of course I jumped at the chance to work along side people I looked up to in the dev community. So thanks Dave Hoover, Kevin Taylor, Todd Webb and Kat Reid. That quadruple interview was intense and I know I bombed Kevin’s interview but again… thanks for believing in me.

I can say that once I started with Obtiva it was Noel Rappin, Joe Banks, and Chad Pry that really put up with me and taught me to become a half way decent dev.

Now my journey continues to Florida to join the Hashrocket family. It is my honor to be a small part of another great dev shop. So thank you, Hashrocket, for taking me on and letting me continue this crazy career path I’ve set myself on.

To all who were mentioned and those that were not… thanks for the friendship and experiences. They will not be forgotten.

We are Family

For those of you who regularly read, or at least know me, know that I work/ed for a software development shop in Chicago called Obtiva. And if you knew that then you almost certainly know that Obtiva was recently acquired by Groupon.

Obtiva has a weekly get-together back at homebase called Geekfest. This is where everyone piles into one spot for some food and, more importantly, discussion about new technology, programming principals, or anything else that we’re interested in. Yesterday marked what may be the last Geekfest in its current iteration. I’m sure it will live on in a new home but that is a discussion for a different day. It seemed the perfect time to have a retrospective of Obtiva as a whole. Many things were said… some old, some fresh and new, some enlightening, and almost all humbling.

This is where my story begins…

Out of all the things that were said, to me, they all tied to a singularity. And that to me that was family. So I’d like to share with you what I shared with others yesterday.

Something I want to carry forward into our new adventures is the idea of family. Not necessarily my own little personal family where work/life balance comes into play but the family that is Obtiva. If you are from a large family like me then you already know that there are members you are close to, some that are more distant, and some that you may not care to interact with. At times everyone of us in that room can fit into one of those categories.

There are things that we share with each other that go beyond a work relationship. We share our triumphs and failures. We’ve laughed, been stressed, and have cried together. I know you guys have had my back for many moments during my time at Obtiva and you should know that I’ve got yours. I am comfortable saying that everyone in that room is my family.

I am scared that something like that could get lost in translation with a move to a larger company. I figure that you can only scale family so much before it becomes a community of strangers and that would be a HUGE loss.

This attribute of Obtiva has set the bar for me when looking at any other company, development related or not. If/when my time with Grouptiva comes to an end, this is THE quality that will be looked for and will make or break opportunities.

My name is Matt Polito and I have a hypenated last name of obtiva

We are obtiva… we are family.

Step Into My Breadbox, A Tale of Money Lost and Knowledge Gained

Before starting with Obtiva a bit ago, I started a toy project called Breadbox. It was a project started mostly out of necessity. At the time I was freelancing and didn’t want to pay a monthly rate for invoicing software, so I did what software devs do… I built it. The project evolved slightly as it started moving toward a platform that I could sell as a service myself. I thought I really had something going because at the time there wasn’t many players in that space besides Blinksale & Freshbooks. Unfortunatly, while I was plugging away at building my very own piece of software as a service history… some new players came around. There were many but the ones closes to my work were Ballpark & Curdbee.

Curdbee, I felt, was my biggest contendor as at the time they were closest in featureset and had the same idea of free/very low priced options. Although Ballpark frustrated the crap out of me. They had design to drool over and many features I had ‘invented’ in my head. I guess there probably isn’t a lot reinvention going on in the simple invoicing space but I thought they were good ideas and Ballpark was already on their way to implementation. This was frustrating but and I wanted to give up many times but kept plugging away.

Breadbox served my purposes well and I ate my own dogfood right up until today. I’ve realized that I just don’t have the time to put into the project anymore and would like to make sure you all know there is a decent project out there to dive into.

There are many reasons i’m writing to you today. The two main reasons are as follows.

I want Breadbox to have a good home. It has been been open-sourced for a while but I don’t really advertise that. I feel there is a good codebase of clean code and also many pitfalls, but I learned A LOT along the way. I’m hoping that some developer hunting for a project to work on might take a look and give Breadbox a little love

I want to share my experience with anyone that will listen. There are so many stories of success but hardly any of failure, or at the very least, failure to launch. Even though I did not attain my goal of launching a service to make some extra cash with, I gained a wealth of knowledge that as I look back was invaluable. So on the surface it may appear a failure, for me, it was a huge success. Devs in general, but mostly the more green developer, out there need to understand that there will be sooooo many projects that you start and throw away… and that’s OK. Throw them away and then start all over again. The nice thing about code is that you can always write it again with your newly gained experience.

Tidly Bits of Knowledge, Shared by You

All right people, I’m going to share a little secret with you. Go ahead come a little closer so you can hear me, this is important. This may be somewhat of a shock to some of you but you’re smart. Yeah I said it, now deal with it. Oh, don’t give me the rolley eye. I know that you’re significant other along with your mother has been telling this to you for years. Go ahead and call them up now to thank them, they were right. (It’s ok, I can wait)

You back? Good.

To start off I’d like to reference a previous article from a while back. Don’t worry, I’m getting to the point. The beginning of this article may have seemed a little hand hold-ey… I’d like to think of it more like a virtual high five. That was all just to pump you up for this tidbit of information.

Like I was saying, you’re smart. If you’re like me you’re probably thinking that you’re not as smart as your peers or have as much to offer. This is not a bad thing… at least not for me. It’s what constantly drives me to become better. It turns out that you’ve already got the skills to offer your peers something.

I feel one of the best things you can do for yourself and your peers/community is to write down the tidbits of knowledge that are most likely trapped in your meat locker. This has been something that I try to keep up with and helps me CONSTANTLY. Also it’s an awesome tool for when you’re mind escapes for a shake break (SHAKE BREAK!). Just go ahead and search for that problem you’re having… Google and your past self probably got your back. Any blog you have will do just fine. I prefer Tumblr just due to me finding it easier to quickly get short form articles out there.

I’ve seen many benefits to this. You know what’s better than searching for a problem solution and finding that you’ve already wrote said solution? Your peers doing that same search and finding your solution. You just helped someone and that feels good. It’s even better when someone tells you they found your solution. Hey and sometimes there is a cherry on top… sometimes it’s someone that you look up to. Which brings us back to my rambling above about confidence.

There is something you know right now that the person doesn’t and quite possibly is having trouble with… RIGHT NOW.

• RIGHT NOW… you’re a smart dude/tte
• RIGHT NOW… someone is in need of knowledge
• RIGHT NOW… that person is next to you
• RIGHT NOW… that person is in another country
• RIGHT NOW… is harder than it looks
• RIGHT NOW… you have the solution

Whoops, how’d Van Halen get in here… I don’t apologize for that.

I do, however, apologize for my rambling thought process. Hopefully I will have motivated you in some way to get tidbits of YOUR knowledge out there. Remember this does not need to be anything long form. I found that as a turn off initially but found that quick problem/solution articles worked for me. As an example, one of my more popular articles is a solution for ruby-debug19/linecache19.

Presenting as a form of learning

I’ve done a bit of presenting for various reasons and have found that it’s one of the best ways for me to learn.  Also not just research, regurgitate, and forget.  We’re talking extended knowledge that will continue to be retained.

Presenting is not only for the realm of the knowledgeable.  Don’t wait for someone else to present on something you want to learn.  You don’t need to know anything about said subject.  Just the act of trying to put together some slides or a quick talk will force you to learn in a short amount of time.  Don’t forget the deadline, I feel that it’s key to success.

Your natural instinct to try and do the best you can will provide everything you need to learn and finish on time.  The first thing that comes to mind is that you’re inevitably going to make a fool out of yourself.  Worrying about that is most likely going to push you to give a fantastic talk.
I urge you all to go to volunteer to present as soon as you can at school or a local user group.  It’s something you’re interested in anyway, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be there.

So the next time you say “Hey it would be great if there was a presentation about {insert subject here}” and someone else says “That’s a great idea, thanks for volunteering”… don’t be scared.  I personally guarantee that you will really learn about what you wanted to know anyway and you get the satisfaction of helping others.

Now go out there and teach something you don’t know yet!

Knowledge is Underrated and Information is Power

Knowledge is underrated and information is power. My friends and family are always telling me how smart I am and that I underestimate myself.  Does this happen to you?  Come on, admit it, at least your mom does it!  Maybe it’s just me but at some point you have to start listening.  A realization came over me that I may not be the most educated or knowledgeable person about some things but we all have something in us that we are nearly specialists in.  In fact, you probably don’t feel that way because the information you possess inside you is so routine that it’s a no brainer.  To others who struggle or want to learn thirst for this knowledge and look up to you for it.  Does this sound familiar?  No… not what others think of you but what you think of the people you look up to.  You’re probably thinking right now, who the hell looks up to me?  Now flip this around and put yourself in the shoes of that person you look up to.  What is going through their mind when the idea that someone looks up to them comes through?

This is not meant to be a happy go lucky article but really… there is something inside us all that other people crave.  You just don’t know it.  Lets take my particular situation for example… programming.  I recently worked with an individual that I really felt was far more advanced than I.  Everyday at work I was asking questions and we worked back and forth through problems.  For me this was a really great dynamic because I felt like a dolt most of the time.  Later on I found out that even though I looked up to my programming partner, he learned a lot from me as well.  How is this possible?  In this situation it really was a great dynamic.  The knowledge I had complimented what he needed and vice versa.  How great is that?  I feel that I was very fortunate in that situation.

What I am trying to get at is for all of you reading this right now… go write something down that you know.  No matter how stupid or trivial you might think it is right now.  Hell, go make a blog post, podcast, screencast, video out of it.  Someone will find it useful.  There has been many times that I felt i’ve looked everywhere for solution to my problem only to find it was never shared because the answer was too simple to some.  As an example I want to give a plug to my friend Stephen Korecky.  He recently started a new blog called AdminNoob.  He’s taken all of the stuff that is actually pretty simple for most of us in the know but was all information that he had to figure out himself while acquiring a new skill.  He felt that there was no one place to find all of this ‘beginner’ info regarding server setup and random system administration… so he wrote it down.  Now the people in the community that I trot may not find this as useful because they probably already know most of it.  Again think of the person that stumbles upon this site when in need.  It’s like an intellectual gold mine to them!