For a good portion of my IT career I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects outside my regular full time job. It’s been a great privilege and I attribute much of the success in my career to these side projects. I believe everyone working in any kind of tech industry can benefit from them as well.

I know the major objection will be that of time constraints, particularly for those of you with jobs that already make you work long hours. I hear it from developers and designers all the time. Though that may be the case, its important to look beyond the now, and look to your future. Your current employer may not always be there. Work situations in IT can change overnight and its up to you to be prepared. Working on a side project will not only help for your next job, but also better enable you to perform your current one. Here’s four reasons why you should start or get involved with a project on the side.

Creative Outlet
Whether you are a designer or a developer, an employee or a contractor, most of us have to answer to someone when working on a web related project. In most cases, unless you are the one funding the project, those you report to can override your ideas and your vision, limit your creative input and take the project in a very different direction. Often times in the corporate work place particularly, creativity can be stifled in the name of red tape, the bottom line, and ‘because we’ve always done it that way’.Though it’s important to find a way to balance our creative desires with the need to make our bosses, clients, founders and investors happy, it can be a difficult, and unrewarding effort. Working on a side project can provide another outlet for your creativity, even if its working for someone else on a side project, it won’t be under as much stress since its not your main source of income, and you have more freedom to express your opinions without fear of finding yourself in the unemployment line. But do be sure to select your side projects carefully. You don’t want to find yourself in another restrictive situation. Find one where you can be involved in the creative side, and have a voice at least in the part of the project where you are contributing.

Think Outside Your Daily Box
For me, this is the most important reason. Often times our day jobs revolve around a certain unchangeable set of problems we must solve, with a limited set of solutions we can choose from. Even if within the scope of the project we find ourselves wearing many different hats, we are still limited to the time constraints, chosen technologies, and the industry of our day jobs. We are also often limited by those managing us with the ways in which we can solve problems.

I find that time and time again, an issue arises at work that I just recently solved on a side project. It’s ironic, but at least in my experience, my side projects tend to solve more problems for my day job than the other way around. But, I think this is because on side projects we get to tackle new and unusual problems, again due to our ability to stretch ourselves creatively.

Over my 15+ years of IT experience, I have found that those I’ve worked with who work on side projects are generally more helpful than those who don’t, in terms of thinking outside the box and solving problems, from using new technologies, to improved process, helpful tools, etc. This is reason enough to step outside your daily full time job box and experience a new challenge. It will not only prepare you for the day you may lose your job, but will also strengthen you for your current job, in ways you have probably not yet imagined.

Note to employers, encourage your tech employees to pursue projects on the side. Ensure they have the time to do so by not working them 80 hrs a week. In the end, your employees will be happier, more experienced, and bring a deeper perspective to your projects. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

Working with Different People
In the previous section I discussed the benefits of working with different technologies, different tools, different problems and thus different solutions. Working with different people brings the same benefits. Even if we find ourselves working with the best, brightest most experienced in our industry, working with various sorts of people from varied backgrounds and with varied skills can help us expand our experiences, our knowledge, and our methods of creative problem solving. It also helps us widen our network, and establish friendships with a deeper array of people in our field.

Eggs in One Basket
As obvious as this one is, its important nonetheless. Even if a side project isn’t bringing in money, its a far better starting point to have should we lose our day jobs and suddenly have no income, than if we were involved in nothing else when the situation occurs. It’s even better if the side project(s) can provide you with another source of income. Multiple streams of income are always better than relying on just one. As well, if you find yourself waiting to find a new job, you can continue to work on a project, expanding your skills, using your creativity, networking, and, using the side project to demonstrate your skills and experience to prospective employers.

I’m sure there are many more reasons why a side project is beneficial, but hopefully just these four have convinced you of the benefits. If you don’t have an idea for something you can do on your own, announce your availability online and in your local meetups, or consider joining work on an existing open source project. If you are in design, you could consider redesigning the site or marketing material for your favorite charity, or look for a local group of developers who might be working on a great project idea but are in need of some design talent. Whatever your situation, there are always opportunities to expand your horizons and practice your skill sets, and doing so can help improve your futures and the futures of those effected by the projects you participate in.

Despite unemployment rates increasing across the country to the highest point in five years, IT unemployment is unchanged and is as low as it was in 2000/2001, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics as referenced here (and shown on a nice graph.)

In the past IT was seen as a supplemental skill set. When income was high, business would invest in IT by hiring more IT employees, giving raises and bonuses, and spending money on more training, software and hardware. When low, the opposite occurs. However, many more companies today rely on IT for the entire business as compared with the past when IT was there to assist and create internal reports and other “nice-to-haves”. Now more corporations than ever actually make money from the work of their IT professionals and because of this they cannot cut them as easily as in the past.

As for Rails developers specifically, some feel the hurting economy will help Rails developers. As companies need more IT work, but have less operating income and less venture capital, they may look for shorter development cycles and outsourcing as opposed to funding large internal Enterprise applications often based on more time consuming and less agile coding frameworks.

Recently the FiveRuns blog shared their opinion:

Rails shops are built to do more with less. It’s part of our DNA to be more agile, more nimble, and more productive than developers using “legacy” tools.

They provide other reasons for Rails opportunities being on the rise, including the lower cost to deploy and host Rails applications.

eWeek.com reported David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails, as saying:

I think Rails developers are much better positioned to weather the storm as they generally stand for delivering more with less faster. It’s the traditional mainstream environments that are going to see much more pressure to deliver.

Lance Walley, CEO of Engine Yard, added:

A slowing economy will likely lead to constrained IT budgets. There’s a good chance this will have a positive impact on the uptake of open-source options, such as Linux, Ruby and Rails.

Read the linked to articles from above for more opinions on why Rails developers should continue to see lots of opportunities. At the recent Tampa Brigade Ruby meetup it certainly sounded as though there was more opportunity than there were developers, and I’ve heard the same thing from several Tampa Bay recruiters now. Let’s hope it stays that way.

What has your experience been so far?

I’m about a month overdue on this, but I have to take a moment and outline the many changes I’ve made in the last month. First, I changed jobs. For the last two years I worked with Jeevan Nomula over at GCA in New Tampa, FL. We were a group of about 10 contractors working for Intercontinental Hotels based out of Atlanta. I served as a Team Lead and Designer for a Java ESB for the company’s reservation and availability apis. It was a great team to work with and Jeevan was a fantastic boss. But as you may know from following my blog, I have really fallen in love with Rails over the last year, and I really wanted to spend some time working in that full time, so I took a new position with Interactive Media Marketing. They are based five minutes from my house and develop Miley Cyrus’s official web site and fan club.

Read More »

For years I’ve questioned the stubbornness with which companies cling to the Industrial Age’s workplace environment and management strategies. In an age of new technology, new work skills, and a new desire by employees for an opportunity to go beyond being simple workers, to creative influences with input and ownership of their projects, so many companies and managers continue to treat their employees like expendable resources that can be burned down to ash and simply replaced with a new job posting. As well, work environments are stale, don’t inspire creativity, and fail to treat the workers as responsible adults (which, by the way, inspires them to trust you and perform at a higher level).

Two articles were published this week on these topics. First, from Robert Dempsey of Rails for All and Atlantic Dominion Solutions, with his article The Changing Role of Managers, in which he discusses how his role as Project Manager has evolved through trial and error, and describes his main role as PM with these words:

The main role of the scrum master [project manager] is to remove impediments that hold back the development team from being productive. Impediments might be lack of tools or clients taking a long time to respond. The scrum master also ensures that there is as little outside interference as possible.

He goes on to say that the manager’s role is that of leader, and that trust is a major element in team success. He provides a list of books he read as well on the topic.

In the second article, from Jason at 37signals, titled, Workplace Experiments, he discusses some of the new benefits they are experimenting with to keep their team fresh and happy, and thus in the end, far more productive than the teams that work away their lives (not to mention cutting down on the high hidden cost of employee turnover). 37signals is experimenting with:

• four day work weeks
• helping pay for their employees to learn new things and expand themselves; everything from learning to fly to learning to cook
• credit cards for discretionary spending (books, conferences, software)

Not all experiments may work, nor be affordable forever, but I loudly applaud the effort to shake things up, treat the employees like you really value, respect and trust them, and make an effort to look for new ways to enrich their lives and help them fulfill their passions.

Remember:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
~ Annie Dillard

The Simple Dollar has posted an article titled, “15 Things You Can Do Right Now To Help Your Career”. My favorites from the list are:

Make a list of all of the things you did today/this week/this month to help your organization, and file them away.
I started this several months ago, with a private WordPress blog. I keep a record of my work accomplishments for the week, which I can later use to update my resume. I also keep track of my personal daily accomplishments, which I update at the end of each day. It’s a great way to look back at the day, and be reminded of success, as opposed to looking at the unfinished items still on your task list, which tends to have the reverse effect.

Design some classy business cards
I planned to do this for a long time, and ironically, I just sent the design to the printer last night for my cards.

Send a thank-you note
I’ve done this before after interviews, but it’s an interesting idea for around the office thanks. The article suggests that the handwritten thank-you note implies you put more time and thought into it, than the pre-printed or emailed note.

Now that my business cards are at the printer, I plan to do a note card that matches the style, that I can use as a thank you card.

Work on your writing skills
Keeping a personal journal, as mentioned above, can also help you work on your writing skills. Since I started my personal journal a few months ago, I’ve written over 90 posts. They aren’t necessarily as well thought out as they would be if they were for public consumption, but a few of them have already gone from my personal journal to being posted on one of my blogs.

Send a quick contact email
I like the idea suggested here. It’s difficult to know what to say when contacting someone like this, but the suggestion is to simply update the recipient on what you have been up to since the last contact, and ask what they have been up to.

Note: 37 signals has just launched a new application, called Highrise which is designed to help you manage your contacts.

Clean your work area
I did this at work recently. I spent some time and money to decorate my cube (I’ll post some pictures soon), including some matted pictures, plants, etc. It looks cleaner, and more like I care, and is much more comfortable to work in.

Make yourself more presentable
I like the suggestion to wash your face again in the afternoon, and brush your teeth after lunch, if not only for hygiene, but just as important for that fresh feeling, which might help you get through a long, tiring afternoon.

Also, along with this is to dress nicely too. Even if you don’t have to dress up for work, but prefer tshirts and jeans. Ensure your jeans are good quality, ironed, and your shoes are new looking, etc. You can dress down and still look like you care.

The full article, and the other eight suggestions, can be found at the Simple Dollar.