Some time ago Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, the Pragmatic Programmers started stumping in their talks on software maintenance of the importance of not living with Broken Windows. Their premise is a seeming-no brainer truism that small problems grow into big problems left unattended and that multiple small problems in the same environment can be overwhelming.
As in life, so in software or perhaps the other way around. Yes, this is all true. Keeping a neat house increases your willingness to have people over into it, which makes for a healthy social life, which makes for a happier person. And the cycle can - NOT WILL, just CAN self propagate into other places in your life.
Right. Thanks, Karen. Can we have a point now? Well, my point is sorta shmarmy. My life, in lots of ways, is going admirably just now. And a good chunk of it is directly or indirectly attributable to the non-metaphorical repair of broken windows.
When the guys from Reed's construction company finish and they have nowhere to work for an hour or two, we've been sucking it up and paying them to fix the things that are broken in our house. Rotten caulking and woodwork around the hottub is being replaced, a pull down stair case was put in for access to attic storage. A HUGE mess of peeling paint in our back room was cleaned up and repainted. Our front stoop - which ARC is doing as a full scale project, it's no 3 hour once-a-blue-moon effort - is getting rebuilt into a real farm porch.
Sources of low level MY GOD I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS BUGGING ME SO MUCH stress are abated and surprisingly they leave bandwidth in their wake so I can deal with the other stuff that's going on in our life. I am considering leaving my current company and have spent some time doing some spade work on the question of what I actually want and expect out of a next employer. My base career isn't changing. I'm still a technology kind of girl, but the life of a state-and-local-grant-money-driven-contracts-government contractor is a tough one. I think I'm over it. My company is changing. I am changing. Depending on what we change into we may still have a relationship. But I'm thinking about it.
Anyhow, the point is: alleviating pressure in some parts of your life definitly makes room for other kinds of pressure to be more bearable. And to be dealt with more effectively.
Believe it or not, the "Karen's thinking about leaving her job" side note really is JUST a side note, something I'm considering as a meta problem, and about which I've consciously decided to be public now. If you happen to have interesting thoughts about how I should tackle the topic of finding the right programming shop to work in or on moving full force into management (I currently straddle the line), feel free to drop me a line. I'm not interested in just another job. I'm interested in making my life, and that of some company, better places to be. Fixing broken windows feels good. I'd like to be doing more of it.
Posted by karen at October 30, 2004 04:06 PM