Is this the one?

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/12/the-stack-big-board/

Perfect, yes, thanks!

I couldn't help think: "New? It's over 20 years old...". By this logic, we should still be giving Nirvana awards for "Nevermind".

That is exactly what I found interesting. Reading hn one might be tempted to think that only three latest new thing matters. Think Trello : they use only post 2012 technologies and everyone says wow.

But in reality it takes 20 years our more for a "real" technology to mature and get serious recognition. The OP should remind us about this fact when we get too hot about something too new.

Wow, this article couldn't have come at a better time for me. Recently, I jumped from being a lead developer to being an architect and manager. Benjamin articulates exactly what I'm going through. Unfortunately, I don't think going backwards is an option for me.

I actually did enjoy being a team lead for awhile (once I got the hang of it). If you're a people person, it can be tremendously rewarding to see your team thrive at delivering piles of awesome. I just reached a point where I wasn't learning anything anymore (Fog Creek's just not that big; you do pretty much run out of novel managey things after awhile) and wanted to do more coding again. So I guess I'd tell you to grasp on really tightly to the idea of hanging your success on your team's success, and knowing that if they're doing their job well, you're probably doing the right thing.

Great advice. Similar to you, the main vexation has been "what comes next". Being a developer, you can scale your knowledge vertically and horizontally, constantly improving yourself and growing. Being a "shit umbrella", though, doesn't seem to lend itself to such growth opportunities.

I wrote a post the other day about how to think about career trajectory/growth. In my experience people generally think about it wrong.

TL;DR: Don't think about your career as a ballistic trajectory, but more as a series of interplanetary missions.

http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/04/08/you-are-thinking-of-your...

Thanks for sharing. I really like your perspective (not to mention the analogy). Would you agree, though, that part of the problem is with company's views on their own employee's trajectories?

I was fortunate enough to work at one company for 21 years (MS) that supported this model. I suspect, given my personality, passions, and style, if MS had not supported me in this way I would have just done it across many companies.

So, at my core, I believe it is up to the employee. If you are stuck, GET OUT.

Has anybody heard of or personally experienced a company actually doing this?

I haven't tried this myself but it definitely sounds like a great idea. Very similar to the purposes of Quicksilver, Alfred, or Launchy. Only instead of searching for applications, you're searching for functions within an application.

I've used Foursquare for about a year now and I have to say that I agree with his statements.

However, I feel that if anybody is going to eliminate Foursquare, it would be the credit card companies. Reason being, my credit card statement can give you a more accurate picture of where I spend my time and money. And that information is what is important to the "real" customers of Foursquare (i.e. businesses and cities).

We're already seeing this start to happen with American Express. They've partnered with Foursquare and have people link their AmEx card with their Foursquare account to get special deals on certain check-ins.

"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell.

Completely changed the way I think about success and my future.

I think the problem with finding a one true path is that computer science, as a concentration, has many different avenues.

You could focus on developing for the web and work with tools that make dealing with the challenges of the internet easier.

You could focus on developing for a computer system, writing in low-level languages that help you take advantage of a system's hardware.

You could even focus on developing for an integrated circuit that doesn't even qualify as a full "computer" to most people.

Each of these avenues will lead you to different languages, tools, and paradigms.

So, the (rhetorical) question is, what are you trying to accomplish?

It's hard to think that the answer to all of our platforms and languages is yet another platform and language.

Java set out to solve a very similar problem (write once, run everywhere) and the issues it ran into didn't involve the language itself but the platform specific framework/libraries.

Furthermore, let's remember that a developer can build C code on virtually all major operating systems using various compilers without being encumbered by licensing issues.

Therein is the fundamental difference. This isn't "write once, run everywhere". Nor is it a new platform. It is a method for bringing one code base to many platforms.

"If you want a truly righteous hack..."

I was so hoping for a "you should score one of those Gibsons."