Dr. Dobb's Journal December 2006
Employer: Entuity
Job: Product Strategist
DDJ: What's your job at Entuity?
JD: My title is Product Strategist, which allows me to spread my efforts over future product planning, network technology research, custom development, and technical sales presentation. I also maintain a regular level of customer interaction that helps to keep my feet on the ground.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
JD: Entuity's product, Eye of the Storm (EYE), offers feature-rich network management functionality out-of-the-box, as well as a foundation for additional unique network technology support. This inherent and flexible extensibility of the EYE technology makes it almost "too easy" to layer functionality that could compromise its ease of use. Balancing enhanced functionality with the core ease of use product philosophy makes for challenging design decision-making.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
JD: The EYE product lends itself to functional enhancement, frequently without the need for changes to the core executables. This allows me to develop prototypes and even production deliverables working remotely in New Jersey with the core development team operating out of London. I have access to highly knowledgeable colleagues, and close contacts with key customers. These all serve to keep development cycles tight, focused, and—I admit it—fun!
Employer: Century 21 Mike Bowman in Dallas/Fort Worth
Job: Software Developer
DDJ: What's your job there?
MO: I primarily do software development. I'm also in charge of network and systems administration. I get to wear a lot of hats. We are a small operation—about four people.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
MO: As I said, we're pretty small. We have a lot to support, new things to develop, and only so many people with which to do so. There is continually new software coming out and new ways of doing things that help you do more with less. The problem is just keeping up with it all.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
MO: We rely heavily on open-source software. Linux, Subversion, GCC, Ruby, lighttpd, SQLite, etc. are very important. It's not because it's free. It's well made, it's open, and it's flexible. There are communities that stand behind the software, who provide a lot of expertise and help. We like to do things ourselves. We can modify this software to fit our needs and use it however we like, even incorporate it into our own applications. As a result, we get software that fits better, works more reliably, and provides us with the flexibility we need to adapt to new demands.
Employer: SmugMug
Job: CEO and Chief Geek
DDJ: What is SmugMug, and what do you do there?
DA: The world's best photo sharing site! I wear a lot of hats: cofounder, Chairman, CEO. By far, though, the "Chief Geek" title is my favorite. I get to play with all sorts of technology, and then apply what I learn to improving our customer experience. The technical things I work on span the entire range, from low-level networking to user-interface, and everything in between—back-end programming, server architecture, and database administration. From playing with new hardware to new software, it's all a blast!
DDJ: What is challenging about your job?
DA: One of the things we pride ourselves on is building a tight, intimate relationship with our customers. They feel like they can tell us exactly what they want and that there's a good chance we'll actually build it for them. This is both true and wonderful—except when it's not. With hundreds of thousands of customers, there are a lot of feature requests! Given that we can't do everything all the time, some of the features have to take a back seat to more pressing ones. That sucks. I wish we could just build every feature for every customer and have it all work.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
DA: Open-source software is easily number one. I don't know what we'd do without the ability to tap into the massive amount of community knowledge to fix something in our software stack. We've made small contributions back to the community already, but I can't wait until we're large enough that we can start making meaningful contributions to say thanks for all of the wonderful things we've received. Having the most loyal customers on earth helps, too. When we do have to put their stuff on the back burner, they're remarkably patient—which lets us focus on the task at hand so we can get back to those on-hold features more quickly.