Anger and Programming

I have been thinking about this for a while now. I haven't been performing up to my usual standards lately and I think now I know why. I'm too damn happy!

It seems that I'm able to develop applications and websites better when I'm angry about something. It lets me focus better somehow. If my insides are roiling in anger about an IT-related topic, it spurs me to code faster. Now, I've been hearing all over media how anger is bad for you and I have analyzed that to death.

See, anger has always been my driver. When I needed to do better in school, I just thought of all the injustices that I had to suffer through to get to Canada and to a better life. When I got my first professional job, I had been angry at my college for feeding me propaganda. I was also angry at myself for falling for the propaganda.

After completing this program, you will gain a job in the industry within 6 months.

Our programs are superior to other colleges.....They also have the advantage over university courses, because they offer practical training, rather than theoretical.

I believed that, believe it or not. I had to at the time. My world had been turned upside down, since I always assumed that I'd go to a university. I didn't, and this college looked like the next best thing. Maybe I will elaborate that in another post.

So, after finishing college with top marks and being in the 95th percentile of my class, I languished as a Best Buy salesman for 11 months. That, in itself, is enough to send someone over the edge. Combine it with the college propaganda and, as you can imagine, I was very angry.

That anger carried me through my first job, a contract opportunity with Environment Canada. A VB 6 job, but I didn't care. Something, anything was better than Best Buy. I optimized their existing apps to run much faster. Once I understood their processes, I started seeing opportunities for improvement. For example, the data downloads from remote stations were going through a third party FTP server that was frequently down. This resulted in loss of that day's data, which was barely, if at all, acceptable. So, a bit of process re-engineering, a bit of ingenuity and the use of PHP's RPC functionality and the data download process was much more reliable.

Once the contract was up, I got a job with a consulting firm of sorts. They were interested in me, because of the Environment Canada job. I was interested in them, because of their focus on cutting-edge technology. I squeaked through their very ASP.NET-specific interview test. I wondered why anyone would be interested in whether I knew a specific line of code in ADO.NET. I mean, if I needed it, I could just look it up. That's what reference books are for, right? Looking back, that should have tipped me off that something was wrong with this company.

Anyway, back to the anger piece. Since I was pretty happy about the fact that I got the job, you might wonder where the anger would come from. Well, it turns out that this "company" was run by bunch of morons. That might sound a bit strong without any context, so let me give you some.

The sales guy would promise our customers applications that were not written yet. That's right, not features, APPLICATIONS. If that were not bad enough, my immediate supervisor had no managerial experience. This meant that he would not back up the developers, but rather leave them in front of the firing squad. The project manager and the owner were constantly interrupting development work. As much as I hate the interruption, I hated more the fact that both of them would put higher priority on cosmetic bugs and features, since "It will take you only a few minutes".

Right.

Oh, and remember that very ASP.NET-specific interview test, one that no interviewee has been able to pass? Well, it turned out that NONE of it is actually used in the environment. The ADO.NET piece has been supplanted with an ORM (Object Relational Mapping) system. So, NO knowledge of ADO.NET is required for the job, but it's actually tested and the candidates are evaluated on it. How would you feel if you found that out?

The point of this mini-rant is that the anger, once again, was in an abundant supply. The work hours were determined by the "upper management". So, if they wanted me to work through the night, that was what was expected of me. However, I excelled at my position, simply because I was so damn angry. I could vent my anger through the keyboard or I could go and get arrested for punching someone out.

If you have managed to stay with me this far, you will be rewarded with my point. My current job offers none of the above challenges. I am not angry about my college lying to me anymore, because now I have enough experience to be very marketable and getting a job is not an almost impossible task. Also, the people here are awesome, so I can't be angry about their personalities, nor how they run the development group I'm in.

So, my productivity is currently suffering. I am not able to scrounge up enough anger to work fast. I am also, so far anyway, unable to find another source of motivation. My marriage is great, my wife is to die for, I've got a house that is in an good condition. I also have started a side-business in my off-hours, one that I hope will be successful enough for me to work on it full-time. I do need a partner or two to really make it fly, but that's another subject for another time.

All of this makes me HAPPY. I can't work fast while I'm happy. I need to be angry. I need to feel the anger boiling inside of me. Or do I? I don't know. Hmm, they do use (relatively) old technology at my current job. And, they don't seem to be knowledgable about technology itself. Maybe that will let me get angry.

Maybe.