Yes, I could technically come up with something I don’t do on the computer, but “going to bars and seeing if I can find someone interesting to talk to when I’m lonely and all my friends are busy” doesn’t exactly scream “definitely a team player who would benefit the company.”

Even hobbies that are remotely related to the job (“I love learning about cool new things to do with jQuery!”) seem like a pathetic attempt to suck up. (see also: “My biggest weakness? I work way too much.”)

What this question needs — demands – is a solid, official, work-safe, and productive Hobby with a capital “H.” Fly-fishing, golfing, pottery, competitive quilting, marathon running — these are all fantastic responses. I’ve just never been dedicated enough to ever have a hobby UNTIL NOW.

This is what I do when I get off the computer.

No, no, I’m not making meth. Promise. I’m making that OTHER drug we all know and love — alcohol. And this is a hobby that demonstrates my love for booze, but offers an air of productivity and industry in a way that “going to bars and drinking” doesn’t! Win win!

In all seriousness though, I really think that “what do you do for fun” is one of the questions where major points can be won, but most often aren’t. Even a slightly-tailored answer (Your interviewer has his dog in a Facebook profile photo? Mention that it’s unfortunate your apartment has a no pets policy, but you’ve since replaced your love of dogs with competitive fish breeding.) can lead to a real connection with your interviewer, or at least give you the freedom to throw in a joke and show a different side of your personality.

And, if you’re curious about the best way to make a bitchin’ hopped mead (yes, yes, it’s mead with hops!), just ask

It’s like the old MIT adage about “work, play, and sleep” — choose any two. Obviously, this diagram isn’t exhaustive, but at least one representative CMS is in each category. Feel free to ping me at ryan.e.mitchell@gmail.com with proposed additions!

2. Limit Drinks to 3/day or fewer, no more than 10/week
I don’t recall a single morning after a party where I’ve woken up and said “I wish I had been drunker last night.” Although the US is less than understanding about the need for women to have more than one drink a day (According to Wikipedia), other countries take a slightly more lenient view. The UK, for instance, declares that up to 2-3 drinks/day, and 14 drink/week maximum is perfectly healthy.
Interestingly enough, a study that recently made the news rounds shows that moderate drinkers have a longer life span, and those who abstain from alcohol tend to die youngest.
No more than 3/day and no more than 10/week seems like a great rule of thumb, while not impacting my social life or enjoyment of great beer.

3. Make friends and influence people
A lifelong problem of mine has been to understand and empathize with people who screw something up to my detriment. This isn’t so great on teams — if someone forgets to complete an assignment, or misunderstands the problem, one of the worst things you can do get upset and alienate the person.
But many great leaders, business people, and other successful individuals have been able to empathize with, help, and leverage people who had faulted them in the past.

Although it seems like common sense to work on this, I’ve found that, in engineering especially, it seems like a point of pride to be horrible at these types of skills. Stories like “I was right the whole time, and showed that guy up in the meeting – boy was his face red!” are far more prevalent than “Although my way would have been better, I conceded the point, although I think the manager is really interested in exploring other possibilities after this project’s over.”

This is going to be more difficult to quantify than the other two goals, although there are a great number of books on the subject (besides the obvious one). Reading a few books over the course of the year, and working to integrate them into daily practice would be an excellent start.

I Wish I Were Prime

“I wish I were prime,” said number 9
“instead of divisible by three.
It must be heaven, for 3, 5, and 7,
but the pattern stops with me!

11 and 13 can be disconcerting,
if in the odd primes you delve,
you will soon find many of their kind,
divisible by one and themselves.”

“Don’t be too keen,” said 15
“on becoming what you’re not –
sure it’s fine to be an odd prime,
but look at what you’ve got!

None can compare, you’re a perfect square,
those are very few!
And as for me, 5 by 3,
instead of one prime, I’ve two!”

At this point, I’d like to drop the obligatory, and geographically appropriate, Good Will Hunting quote:

“See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don’t do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library”

While a person with a little intelligence, determination, and internet access, may now be able to get a great education for free or little cost, the question remains: What will employers think of all of this, and how does it change the traditional college experience, if at all?

At some point in my sophomore year, I found myself ranting to one of the wisest people I know, about the incredible unfairness, administrative conspiracy, bureaucracy, and pointless rulings against the students at Olin College. This person nodded, smiled, listened, provided insight based on his own experiences at the University of Utah in the late 60′s and early 70′s, and said something to the effect of: “College isn’t just about showing that you know calculus and physics, it’s about showing that you can cope with the stress, regulation, and environment for four years without quitting”

There’s a large amount of truth to this. With US six year graduation rates (the percent of students who graduate from a four year bachelors program within six years) at about 55%, and three year associates rates at 29%, surviving a program certainly says something. Marine basic training wouldn’t quite be the same as an exercise regimen you could complete at home on your own schedule.

Forget graduation even — matriculating at many institutions alone may give employers pause. I suspect that the ability to demonstrate achievement, aptitude, and passion at age 17 is strongly correlated with the ability to succeed in the workforce at age 27.

But the irreplaceability of college as a character-building life experience, and demonstration of self-worth and integrity is a conveniently “Cambridge ivory tower” way of looking at things. The 30 year old taking computing classes at the local community college to buff up her resume doesn’t give a rodent’s bum about lifelong friends and memories of his two evenings a week alma mater, and his employer probably cares as much about the brandname “ACME Community College” on a CV. A prime candidate for free online certificates, and a great example of where this sort of thing could be great.

On the flip side, a 16 year old student in a rural or suburban area may not have access to some of the advanced subjects needed to get a leg up in the admissions process. The existence of OpenCourseWare may not stop him from going to college, but its non-existence might.

Using online certificate programs and courses as a supplement or preparation for college, rather than as a “college replacement,” will likely be the main use of these programs. Although I don’t have access to any of the data, I would wager that most of the viewers of these lectures have, or are working towards, a college degree. MIT itself uses OpenCourseWare as a supplementary tool for classes — part of the main motivating factor for its creation.

There is no doubt that OpenCourseWare certificates will increase the amount of knowledge and education circulating around in the world, and the credibility of online programs in general (after all, “MIT” sounds somehow more legit than “University of Phoenix”), but this will likely be in supplement to traditional colleges, or in lieu of shorter programs / individual classes / resume-building activities, that might have been done at a traditional college.

Honestly though, some small part of me is really looking forward to getting proven wrong

I am not here to argue that none of these are useful. In fact, I was recently given the opportunity to relearn C, and was more than happy to do so. Long live the address-manipulaters and the machine code compilers! But, contrary to CS programs around the country, “programming” is no longer limited to algorithms, processor architecture, or even objects. In fact, I would say that this new programming is so fundamentally different from the traditional view of the subject as to warrant a new label altogether.

“New Programming” is libraries. New Programming is experimental. New Programming is collaboration — between developers, between users, between software, and between machines. New Programming is connecting what has already been done. New Programming is knowing how to find the best tool, and not just how to write it.

It is undeniable that academia is dealing with one end of a rapidly growing subject and completely ignoring the other. From the point of view of a project requiring New Programming, the course catalogs for major CS programs look like a pointless exercise at best, and counter-productive at worst.

So what happens when employers, administrators, even professors and programmers themselves don’t know the difference? When a business needs a developer for a user login feature, the recent Course 6* graduate from MIT, who learned about RSA from Rivest** himself can look tempting. But while he’s sketching out the optimal database architecture, he might have spent the time better by researching content management systems with robust user management capabilities, and modifying the code from there as needed.

One argument for the lack of New Programming in schools is that it is “Googlable-as-needed” and constantly-changing, whereas “Old Programming” (for lack of a better term, not to imply that it’s outdated) is based on mathematics and engineering that must be taught in a rigorous way. Not only is the premise of this argument untrue, but if it were, subjects such as marketing, photography, and history might never be taught either!

The lack of degree programs with a focus on subjects like content management systems, scalability, apps, interface design, user-oriented design, or server-side/client-side scripting, means that many of the tens of thousands of CS graduates every year were not studying what they would ultimately be doing. Not only this but they may not even realize it after landing the job, imbued by the confidence of “computer science” written on their diploma.

A slightly different approach to programming education would, not only produce programmers better-suited to their field, but would ultimately produce better applications, better websites, better software, and a better quality of life for both the users and the programmers.

Modern developers often lean heavily towards one package or language, often based on what they read once, or what they’ve always used. Why not teach them the pros and cons of every major package? Why can’t they be fluent in PHP, Ruby, and ASP.NET? Why does Javascript have to be something you pick up over the weekend? An entire course could be taught on jQuery and its major extensions alone!

As the field grows, the need for differentiation and adaptation increases. Computer science degrees are becoming increasingly good at producing computer science professors, and others who stumble around in the dark for a few years, very slowly writing elegant code that has been written before, just as elegantly. Those who make it out of the dark often emerge with bad habits and a narrow understanding of their new field.

Although academia will eventually change, without a strong push this change will too slow to keep up with New Programming, or NEW New Programming, or the many additions, permutations, convolutions, and revolutions that are likely to happen to the field in the coming years. This push must come from industry, from academia, from the students, and even from the users. With a strong, continuous push, the advancement of computer science will increasingly continue to cause waves in every field in the world.***

*Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
**The “R” in RSA
***This metaphor involves a second-order differential equation. Um, yes, I am an engineer. Why do you ask?

Prospective employees should be excited about the job and the company before they even reach the interview.

In job searches, the burden of excellence is generally placed on the prospective employee. Countless articles have been written about acing the interview, writing a perfect resume, and cleaning up your online presence, but what about the recruiters, hiring managers, and business owners that want to hire candidates that are more sought-after than the position they have to offer?

Often, hirers function in a vacuum of feedback. Those looking for jobs often tread cautiously, and, once they have the job, there’s little point in giving a review to the hiring manager or recruiter who handled them.

Social media is a two-way street

You know how easy it is to post job information through a variety of different channels in order to reach the maximum number of potential candidates. Employees are doing exactly the same thing. A Monster.com resume often accompanies a personal website, LinkedIn profile with professional summary, Facebook profile photos (surprisingly useful — I’ve occasionally received calls from recruiters who are surprised I’m female!) The initial contact is like a cover letter to a prospective employee — you need to show knowledge and understanding of their needs, just like you’d expect them to research your company beforehand. You may find out that they’re not the right fit for your position, but you’ve saved yourself from ruining a valuable potential contact in the future. This leads me to my second point…

“Qualified and Looking” doesn’t mean they want the job

They have three years of Ruby on Rails experience, and are publicly advertising for employment — perfect fit for your 6 month contract for a rails developer, right? If you’ve researched them a little, you might find out that their LinkedIn profile, as well as their personal website states that they’re looking for front end web development, particularly with jQuery.

I received an email from a recruiter about six months ago, that stated upfront that she had read my website and LinkedIn profile, mentioned a few details about what I was looking for (not what she was looking for) and expressed disappointment that I was happy with my full time job, and that she didn’t have any part-time consulting projects to offer, that I could do on the side. She did think my background was great, however, and wanted to connect on LinkedIn, stay in touch, and asked that I pass around the position she was looking to fill if I had any friends who might be interested.

This is classic “How to Win Friends and Influence People” stuff — flattery, interest, and a real or perceived desire to fill the other person’s needs will get you everywhere. In a few months, when I came back on the job market, this recruiter was one of the first people I contacted, to let her know that I was looking.

Be upfront with job information

On several occasions, I’ve been asked to pass on vague opportunities with even vaguer job titles and little or no descriptions from “well-known” (but unnamed) Boston-area companies. For whatever reason, I didn’t immediately leap to my feet, saying: “Great scott! I’ve got to tell all my friends about this Rails developer position!” Not being upfront about the details (exact job functions/description, employer, hours, salary range, etc.) will eventually waste the prospective employee’s time, your time, and cost you valuable potential leads.

Be Honest About Your Requirements

It’s pretty common to see very low-level web development jobs “requiring” 5+ years of work history with multiple programming languages, on top of a degree in computer science, or some similar experience. I used to think that these sorts of positions were some sort of weird anomaly, or a case of HR not quite knowing what they wanted. However, after I started getting contacted for positions like these, I realized what it really was — a game between HR and the applicants, where applicants would often try to pad their accomplishments to skirt under the experience bar, while HR raised the job requirements level to compensate.

The problem is, that this tends to eliminate a lot of very good, honest, applicants from the pool, while only the over-qualified and severe resume-padders remain. The experience level can easily be re-iterated in the job description (“3+ years of web development experience — and we’re serious about this one!”) and it only takes a quick glance at a resume to weed out the relatively inexperienced.