LEAD Backend Developer
Joined Endertech in May 2007
9+ years of professional web development experience
B.S. in Computer Engineering, Cal Poly Pomona, 2006
Creative problem solving, pair programming, TDD, BDD
Linux, PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Symfony, PHPUnit, Behat, Jenkins
Hello @all ! This week’s topic is “Master Your Craft”
I read a good quote on the topic of mastering your craft: “You can love what you do not master, but you cannot master what you do not love.”
I think it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of our work, focusing on what we need to get done by the end of today, by tomorrow, by the end of the week.
This kind of humdrum, nose-to-the-grindstone work is key to getting better at what we do, and is the reality of even the most seemingly glamorous profession. But it’s also important to take a step back once in a while, look at the big picture, and most importantly, evaluate our feelings.
If you don’t love what you do, then it’s just a skill, and I don’t think you can ever truly master it. But if you love what you do, then it’s a craft, and you can master it, even if it takes a lifetime.
Of course, loving what you do doesn’t mean only ever experiencing good feelings. Mastering a craft isn’t easy, and there are no shortcuts you can take.
That’s precisely why loving what you do is crucial. It gives you the patience and tenacity to grind through the tedium and frustration, and it makes incremental successes all the more satisfying. Before you know it, all those little successes begin to add up to something approaching mastery.
“This one is pretty fitting for me because as most of you probably know, i’m constantly researching, studying, learning, and so on. mainly because I just enjoy learning new things, but secretly I’m also hoping for a gem of an idea to manifest itself as I find a potentially civilization-advancing connection between ideas or subjects.
Along those same lines is to always stay on the forefront of technology so that we as a team don’t become stale in our ways (which is much different than honing our ways to be highly efficient). But also so that we’re providing our clients the best possible solution all the time.
Of course that may not be possible 100% of the time, but you can’t rationally reach 100% without shooting for it. For me personally though, I just don’t enjoy spending my time doing something an inefficient way when there’s other things I’d like to spend my time-saved on. Plus I enjoy the “wow” feeling a client demonstrates when we can demo an idea or implementation of tech they haven’t even thought of before.
I think overall, the way I think of “master your craft” is better phrased as “remain viable” — with how fast tech moves there’s just so much to keep learning, new efficiencies to be gained, new ways to apply our knowledge, that it’s exciting, and when something is exciting to me it’s difficult to not make it part of my daily habits.
Thanks for listening everyone! Please comment or ask questions if you’d like.
