If I was a developer

I was in California a couple weeks ago for a 3-day Roots Reggae festival with my new wife and I met a fellow headhunter who plays heavily in the same software stacks. Very nice gentleman, we had a good time talking about this crazy hot market and how the demand for good dev talent means solid engineers have the world at their feet as far as opportunity goes. We then had some fun imagining what OUR lives would be like as developers, and the pictures painted were pretty sweet so I thought I’d share on this fabulous Friday.

At Headstorm all our devs are either full stack already or aggressively pursuing full stack capability. But not your boy! To quote Stifler from American Pie, “Sounds like a lot of work.” I would be a UI Developer. I would wear Bonobos that are too short with no socks and Ferragamos, maybe some Cole Haan if I was slumming it. I would read about new SPA frameworks from Bay area blogs and immediately champion them for no real legitimate reason while crap talking every other framework that has been out for more than 6 months as legacy. My desk would be made of organic sun dried beechwood hand crafted by Tibetan monks. I would wear a scarf…all the time.

One of the main reasons our engineers dig working at Headstorm is they get to work in multiple industries on a diversity of projects with an accelerated team. End result? A great portfolio of work you would never be able to accumulate in the same time frame outside of consulting. Whole lotta nope for me! I would be at a Product company siphoning up domain knowledge until my only real value was serving one niche industry I would never leave. That know it all person with deep but limited expertise you can’t get rid of because they understand the inner workings even though you can’t really stand them? This guy. What will really help me in this goal is my borderline unusable spaghetti code only I will be able to navigate since I’ll be using Paintbrush 3D for all documentation. If I see one more person in this office with a plastic straw I will shove it up your nose DOES NOBODY CARE ABOUT SEA TURTLES?!?! Next time you get a whack from my Wacom tablet.

To be a top consulting company you not only need technical expertise, you need architected business workflow that marries excellent delivery to high quality code. The only way this is possible is a highly collaborative environment where nobody is afraid to truly rely on each other. We really crush this at Headstorm. But my new life as a dev? No way. Non techies are just…ewww. Other UI devs? Why, I’m the best one. My only friend would be a back end engineer so I can build full stack stuff without doing a bunch of real work, let’s name her Pam. Pam would wear brown Merrels, cargo pants with a nylon belt, obviously there would be a huge, rooted Android phone clipped to it. Her collection of wolf and dragon t-shirts would be second to none and her only passions would be Linux, axe throwing and single malt scotch. For a side project we would build a robot that autonomously walks around DFW smacking any children (Padded cartoon like robot hand, don’t @ me parents) attempting Fortnite dances in public. And you KNOW I’m using SparklDonkeyJS for this project. Haven’t heard of it? Losers.

Happy Friday to all my recruiter brothers and sisters and every coder out there! Whatever side of the API you’re on! Excited about a big job change I’ll be making Monday so stay tuned for that too!