Watching a documentary from the Ferrari factory who makes the body for the FF model I notice something interesting. When they craft the aluminum parts for the body the narrator says: “each part is welded together by craftsmen”. That quote implies that repetitive tasks performed day in and day out are indeed something that requires a genuine craftsman. Now compare that to how the software industry tends to portray a craftsman coder.

Back in 2009 I held my first ever talk at a conference. My only motivation was to get in for free at the Smidig conference. I worked for a startup which meant little cash for conferences. Since then ove talked at numerous conferences and enjoyed every minute of it. The adrenaline rush of doing something that scares the shit out of you is just addictive. This year I’ve held no talks.

I’ve been wanting to create stuff on a computer ever since my dad got us our first PC back in the late eighties. Every year spent in school was one year keeping me from what I really wanted to do, program all the time. When I landed my first job at Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK) I was on top of the world, programming shit for a living! I am not a very intelligent person and I’m an average coder.

Our list of demands I am working on a rewrite of the web tier at work. We’ve set this up as a “dugnad” where we do a section at a time with the team responsible for that part of our service. This effort is called the Strap-on Project and each section should take max 3 weeks (which is our release cycle). When we bring in people (max 2) we have a list of demands in order to make things work:

In Silicon Valley you’d quit and start a competitor I was bitching about something I thought we where doing at my gig which was in my opinion stupid. The quote is what Luke Wroblewski said would be the customary thing to to do in the Valley. He also said that staying in a job for more than two years means you lack initiative and you’re basically someone you wouldn’t hire.