Dr. Dobb's Journal January 2008
Employer: Eyefinity
Job: Principal Engineer
DDJ: Where do you work?
JB: Eyefinity Inc. We are the software and e-commerce subsidiary of VSP, serving the eye-care industry.
DDJ: What do you do there?
JB: Principal Engineer. Also referred to as a software architect. I work closely with the business and development teams to chart and implement the software services and solutions for our enterprise.
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
JB: Providing useful solutions. Many times, a coagulated project idea is sent my way from the business or marketing teams. The project idea usually lacks true definition and certainly lacks design, but as principal engineer I get to help define the problem, design the solution, and implement the ultimate project.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
JB: Keeping abreast of the "technology du jour." Our software code runs the gamut from home-grown methodologies written nearly 10 years ago to the latest J2EE open-source web-application frameworks available today. Knowing which tool is the right tool for each project, and then making decisions to employ those tools knowing the legacy it will create, is a challenge found in many development shops.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
JB: Honest people in the development community. Discounting the occasional software zealot, I find that most folks involved with software development are fundamentally the same. We all share our knowledge and information with each other, we can all relate to each other's war stories, and we all want to produce solid and useful applications.
Employer: Microsoft
Job: Manages the XNA Developer Connection
DDJ: Where do you work?
PI: I manage the XNA Developer Connection (XDC), a team of game performance engineers and game developer support experts at Microsoft.
DDJ: What's your job there?
PI: The XNA Developer Connection helps game developers get the most out of systems like XBox 360 and Windows Vista. We're technical experts, including dedicated hardware specialists with deep understanding of the XBox 360 CPU and GPU, software specialists who live and breathe DirectX, and network specialists who understand the XBox LIVE and the Games for Windows LIVE service. My job is to ensure we utilize our collective expertise to provide performance insight and technical illumination to developers working on game titles.
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
PI: I love educating other developers so they can do their jobs more effectively. The areas that I find most fascinating are usually performance related. For instance, I like to explore how the same C++ source code can exhibit very different performance characteristics on different hardware platforms. By giving game developers insight into performance differences, we help their games to look great and to play great.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
PI: Hiring great people. It's easy to hire people who are "good enough," and it's really hard to pass on qualified candidates, but experience has shown that waiting for the right candidate is worth the short-term pain.
Employer: FreshSand Ventures
Job: CTO
DDJ: What is FreshSand Ventures?
MB: A startup, the creators of EasyBrandingTools.com. We offer an easy branding solution for people thinking about starting a business, community group, or organization.
DDJ: You're a founder as well as the CTO. What's your job like?
MB: I get my hands dirty in a variety of areas from sales and marketing to technical design and implementation of our core product, EasyBrandingTools.com. I manage the interaction between our product and other companies that we need to interact with. Using web services, we outsource to other companies for things like credit-card processing, domain registration, and e-mail hosting. I'm also responsible for the majority of the user-visible portions of the site. Pretty much anything you can see at EasyBrandingTools.com is my responsibility.
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
MB: I love the technical variety. We firmly believe in using the right tool for the job so we use Ruby where Ruby makes sense and Java where Java makes sense and other technologies as they make sense. This results in a fairly eclectic mix of technologies, but one that works really well together.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
MB: I've got a tremendous network of people I can rely on for help and for information. If there's some new technology on the horizon or some better way to solve a problem, someone in my network is likely already trying it. Sometimes, I'm the first one on a given technology and then my network relies on me for the same information. There are far too many technologies out there for any one person to keep up on them all. These aren't people all in one place — they're working in different places, on different kinds of projects around the world. They're people I've met at conferences or events of some kind and who I've kept in touch with over instant messaging or e-mail or a social networking site like Facebook.