Friday, August 12, 2011

Looking for work!

It's been a while since I've posted...

In the last couple of months the burnout feeling has somewhat subsided. I went on another little trip to Perth for a week, pottered around some more with Java/JEE, and then realised that not working is starting to feel a bit empty. So I refurbished the ol' resume last week, did some reading of Programming Interviews Exposed and started applying for work yesterday.

I think the main lesson learned from my entire burnout experience is essentially summed up by Drive. Although this book isn't about burnout specifically, the main point it makes is that separating intrinsic interest from extrinsic reward is psychologically very bad - almost guaranteed badness as a paradigm for motivating and rewarding knowledge workers. In many cases it just leads to low motivation and poor performance - in other cases (especially if it goes unchecked for too long) it can lead to burnout.

Another very important lesson I learned about burnout is how very very different individual people and their motivations are. Some thrive in situations which very quickly burn others out. So everything has to be taken with a big shake of salt.


MOVING FORWARD

When preparing for job seeking, I primarily thought about looking for contracting. The idea was to not get tied down into a routine which will make me feel stale eventually. Now that I've started looking and getting a taste of what's out there, I don't think the contracting vs permanent distinction is necessarily what makes it or breaks it.

The real trick is to find something that you'll have an intrinsic interest in. Either from the point of view of what the product is (feeling that you're working on a worthy cause), or an environment and technology stack that you just love working with.

Finally, it's important to know when to stop. This varies by personality type, but some (like myself) are quite prone to burnout once they get too comfortable and start going stale. NEVER EVER feel that you need to stay at a job once the signs of burnout hit. There is nothing short of outright starvation that makes it worthwhile.

(Note: This may be the final post of Burned Out Programmer for now. But I'll come back with more input if anything comes up! :))

Friday, June 10, 2011

Back to Java...

So I've finished working through my Ruby and Ruby on Rails books and I'm back on Java now. Working through Murach's Java Servlets and JSP.



I needed a refresher on JEE and this is a pretty good book. I've done JEE web development in a previous job, many years ago. At the time on that job - because it was highly abstracted by an in-house framework - I was largely doing cargo cult programming. Now, working through this book, JEE web stuff makes total sense. Trying out a new language and framework really does make you do a kind of "programmer's double take" and learn more about the ones you already know.

Why did I go back to Java? - I'm starting to approach the middle of the year now. I told myself that I would at least be looking into doing some work in the second half of the year (contracting or possibly freelancing). Java is really the only language/platform I can claim to know very well and have many years of commercial experience with. And let's face it - there are a lot of Java jobs out there.

One thing I've learned with the Ruby/Rails tryout is - Java web stuff doesn't suck anywhere as much as the Ruby crowd says. Sure, there is a fair bit of boilerplate in JEE, but it's not nearly as bad or unmanageable as it's made out to be. Also, I have to say that convention-over-configuration didn't really impress me all that much. I can see the benefits, but being a bit of a control freak, I actually like the idea of everything being spelled out in code (or config files) somewhere. When I get stuck, I like doing a Find In Files across the project source and seeing how everything connects - so this is mostly a matter of style and taste. It's disconcerting when I can't do that - because the framework has made assumptions for me which hide the flow from FIF.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Drive

I just finished reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Highly recommended reading! Or if you want to see the gist of it right now, this clip is a good summary. But I'd still recommend reading the book, as it goes into a lot more depth than the clip.


The book is about how traditional carrot and stick motivators don't work on most types of modern knowledge work - with programming being one of the strongest examples. Essentially, the problem with "extrinsic" motivators such as targeted money bonuses is that they stop people focusing on the work. Instead, people just focus on gaming the results to get more of the reward, and the work often suffers. A simplified (and very absurd) example would be paying programmers by the number of change request items that they resolve: obviously they'll just game the system by submitting lots of finer-grained (possibly even contrived) items, that they'll know how to get through quickly. They'll inevitably lose sight of the big picture and not be very productive.

A lot of it comes back to what I wrote a while back about "salary slavery". Modern 21st century knowledge work is still to a large extent being managed like 19th century factory work. The trouble is, carrot and stick motivators are great for simple mechanical tasks, but they don't work - and in many cases even demotivate - for creative knowledge work. The trick is essentially to hire good people, give them great tools and purpose, and then get out of their way. As soon as you feel like you need to control them, you've failed. The three pillars of this philosophy are Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Without going into a full analysis of this new motivation philosophy, I'll just focus now on how it relates to burnout: Essentially, people and organisations who go against it tend to not be very productive, and tend to burn out easily. Burnout itself wasn't discussed much in the book (though it was mentioned in a few places), but reading between the lines, it's obviously one of the possible consequences for individuals in the "demotivated situations".

People need to feel in control of their lives (Autonomy), feel that they're learning and getting better and better at something (Mastery) and work on something that has a higher meaning (Purpose). Working under a strict 19th century factory style hierarchy, doing relatively the same thing over and over and over, and working on some random boring business system - are the exact opposites of autonomy, mastery and purpose. However, this is exactly what most software - and most other modern "knowledge work" workplaces - are like.

With this book (and some discussions on forums along a similar vein recently) I'm starting to realise more and more that burnout isn't so much about the technical content of the work, but more about the motivational philosophy behind how the work is done. If there is autonomy, mastery and purpose, even jobs which seem relatively mind-numbing on paper can be made interesting. By contrast, a badly managed workplace can be hell even if the technology used is quite interesting. Or as I've read on a forum recently (paraphrased): "If you're working in some crappy outdated scripting language, but doing gene sequencing programming that's narrowing down a cure for pancreatic cancer, your work will have a lot more purpose than working with the latest technology on some boring bank software.". Truth. Purpose here makes all the difference.


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Almost four months

It's been almost four months since I quit and started my sabbatical...

Feeling a lot better, but still not quite ready to stress myself with fulltime programming work. I've been slowly learning Ruby and Rails, with another book in the mail at the moment. Otherwise "living it down" quietly.

From information gathered in all my research into burnout - it's said that it usually takes at least six months (often longer) to recover. For some reason I expected it to not take so long in my case, but around six months actually seems about right. There is no way I could be productive if I tried to work fulltime as a programmer right now, and I'd probably sink back into a fully blown burnout very quickly if I tried.

It reminds me of my hernia operation many years ago: it's like the scar is healing nicely, but going back to serious programming work right now would be like doing heavy lifting - it would inevitably re-open the wound and bring things back to square one.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Salary slavery and burnout

Browsing StackOverflow the other day, I came across this post. The meat of the post being this (added emphasis):

Regardless of the technology you work with, or the work you have to do, the thing that most makes a job suck or not suck, is these three things:

  • The people you deal with daily
  • The way in which the company rewards your success
  • Your ability to feel as if your contribution is worthwhile

This got me thinking about something that's a bit of an elephant in the room: Purpose. Or more accurately - personal perception of purpose.

Let's face it - most software development jobs out there are actually pretty boring. We do it to pay the bills. Not very many of us are in a specific job that we find so interesting that we'd still be doing it if we won the lottery tomorrow. In a word - a lot of the software work out there is corporate drudgery - maintaining some boring business systems that you really have no deep personal interest in. So purpose in the "personal fulfillment" sense is often shaky at best.

The other aspect of it is what I call the "salary slavery" feeling. Essentially - it's quite common for corporate software developers to have little to no say about what they're working on. We are often treated like factory workers - simply taking orders and cranking out the work, no questions asked. Almost all autonomy, creativity, and self-actualising purpose stifled. To add insult to injury: no extra reward tied to how well we perform the job, or how well the product sells. It's quite typical to get the same reward (salary) for working just hard enough not to get fired, versus being 10X more switched on, productive, and putting in very long hours. On the same grain: it's typical to get the same salary (with at most some token bonus) when the product you're working on makes it big, versus when it's breaking even or even making a loss. Psychologically, this feels little different to slavery. Obviously it's not really slavery, because by becoming an employee it's what you signed up for voluntarily - but subconsciously, viscerally - it's very hard to watch your hard work being turned into huge rewards for someone else, while you get the same reward as before, or token extra crumbs at best.

It's quite easy to see why this would eventually wear a person down and lead to burnout. The answer seems simple too - start your own thing (startup). It sounds like Programmers' Paradise: working on your own idea that you have a personal interest in, using technology you like, having full ownership and full reward if it makes it big, etc.

It's also quite easy to see why more of us don't do it. Running your own business is hard work. But I don't think this is the main issue - the main issue is that it's quite scary to have full freedom to fail. That "same salary no matter what" mentality above is actually quite comforting and safe by comparison. You might be a slave, but you're a well-fed slave. Escaping out into the World and going it alone leaves you vulnerable - there are no guarantees you'll be able to feed yourself at all.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Ruby!

So even though it isn't April yet, I decided to start learning Ruby this week, despite what I said in this post. April 1st is a Friday, and I've been feeling extremely antsy and unproductive, so starting a few days early made sense that way.

I've got a copy of Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional, and started working through it today.

First impressions: very interesting language. Definitely makes for a good breakaway from the C-derived languages. You can tell that it was developed from scratch in the 1990s and didn't have to be backwards compatible with any annoying legacy features from an older predecessor language. In fact, that was the Ruby design philosophy: take the best of what was around at the time, and create a cool new language from scratch.

I read on a forum once that Ruby is like durian - you either fall in love with it immediately, or you hate it. Maybe "immediately" was an exaggeration, because while I definitely find it really cool, I wouldn't say I love it, yet. Maybe what they meant to say was - "once you've got some decent working knowledge of it". At any rate, I'll see how I feel about it once I've thoroughly worked through the whole book.

There is one thing I do love about Ruby though: the switch statement doesn't fall through. :)


Thursday, March 24, 2011

Stress vs Burnout

I don't know why I didn't link this until now (it's one of the first Google search results on burnout, and I'd seen it before), but this is a great article describing burnout, and specifically, the difference between stress and burnout.


People who haven't been there often confuse burnout with stress. You can't blame them really. To an outside observer it looks pretty much the same. And the worst thing of all is: they will accuse you of being weak - of "not being able to cope" [with normal everyday stress of the job] - while what's happening to you is actually on a whole other level altogether.

This essentially sums it up:
"Stress, by and large, involves too much: too many pressures that demand too much of you physically and psychologically. Stressed people can still imagine, though, that if they can just get everything under control, they’ll feel better."
...
"Burnout, on the other hand, is about not enough. Being burned out means feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don’t see any hope of positive change in their situations."

With burnout, I got to the point where absolutely nothing seemed to matter anymore. It wasn't an "active", suicidal sort of depression and emptiness - but more like an extremely passive, detached, and disengaged state of mind. It got to the point where I had a dream that the world was ending: earthquakes were destroying my city, giant rifts were opening up in the ground, volcanoes were erupting, asteroids were crashing into the Earth, cataclysmic events were about to swallow up our world as we know it...and all I could think was: "YES! I won't have to go to work anymore!"

The important thing to take from this is exactly what the linked article says: burnout is about "not enough". With stress, a person is not able to cope. With burnout, a person is beyond caring about coping. They just want to somehow be knocked out of the situation that's causing it, no matter the cost. But by that time they are often so numb and disengaged that they're not able to be assertive and energetic enough to make any positive change happen.


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Feeling unproductive

I decided a few days ago that I'm going to take the rest of March off, and then get seriously stuck into very intensive new technology study in April - starting with Ruby.

So now there are over two weeks to go, and I'm starting to feel quite lazy and unproductive. All I do is play World of Warcraft, run basic errands, and go for a long-ish walk every day. This was actually part of the strategy - to get so bored and unproductive, that getting back into programming feels like a real blessing and a relief. In the last two days, I've been starting to feel like that - and like it would be!

We have some friends of the family coming over in a couple of days, so that should break the time up a bit more. It really feels like I should wait until April until it gets really overwhelming. Getting to the point where I'm borderline depressed from the boredom would be ideal I think - it almost feels like there is a switch that has to trip, and it hasn't tripped yet. But if I jump the gun and get back into programming beforehand, I won't be cured.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Post-Walkabout

So I got back from the walkabout a few days ago...

Feeling a bit more relaxed now, and more sure than ever that I really needed this. I've also decided that I'll take the rest of March off, and then move onto the next phase (the new technology learning phase) of the sabbatical in April.

I've decided to learn Ruby. I feel like I need to try something totally new and fresh, and Ruby is a very different language to what I'm used to - people tell me it'll stretch my programmer brain, and some have even said that learning Ruby actually cured their burnouts - so we'll see how that goes. :)

Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Walkabout

[The following was all written down in a Moleskine journal during my walkabout. Mostly copied down here word for word...]

Monday 7th Feb 2011

I woke up at 3am and couldn't sleep anymore. This often happens to me before big trips - or even the night before important engagements such as job interviews. It's not even that I'm nervous or stressed, I guess it's just the anticipation...

So I log onto the Internet and look up some TripAdvisor reviews of the budget hotel that I booked in Sydney (I was in a hurry and didn't look it up carefully earlier when I actually made the bookings). The news is not good: "Hotel from Hell!", "bed bugs", "Worst hotel in town!", etc. What did I get myself into?

I make my way to the train station, and it's a beautiful, cool summer morning. This is where it sinks in that I'll be sitting on a train for 12 hours today, so I pace around a bit and stretch my legs till the last moment before boarding and sitting down.

CountryLink trains are quite unremarkable. At first they seem like glorified commuter trains, and it's hard to imagine that they ply a good chunk of the east coast of the continent. When you first see the inside of one, you think it's just a local area commuter train. But once in motion, the service and culture that comes out is pretty good - and it starts to feel that you're on this thing for a long haul.

We arrive in Sydney on time at 8pm. I'm actually slightly nervous, and I don't know why. I guess it's a combination of a 12 hour train ride and those damn nasty hotel reviews. I make my way up to the block where the hotel is - and it looks super dodgy. Even benign businesses like hairdressers have bars on their windows here - and the general feel of the neighbourhood is a little spooky too - it feels like I'm in a David Lynch film. The whole block seems to be populated by weird-looking drifters and derelicts.

As soon as I register in the hotel and get to my room - I breathe a sigh of relief. The bad reviews were either extremely out of date or very exaggerated. Don't get me wrong, it was a BUDGET hotel all right - the rooms felt a bit like tiny, sparse, single-bed hospital rooms. But it was basically clean and decent.

So I go out and get a pub meal for dinner, have a couple of beers, and head back to the hotel to get some sleep.


Tuesday 8th Feb 2011

I'm meeting my friend DJ tonight. Let me tell you about DJ: him and me grew up together in Yugoslavia in the 1980s. The last time I saw him was in 1988, when my family and I moved to Australia. Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, DJ found me online a few months ago. He works as in IT consultant in Sydney at the moment, so this was a great chance to finally catch up. We decided to meet at dinnertime, when he gets off work - so I had a day to kill in Sydney.

So I took a ferry ride to Parramatta to finally see the full scale of the harbour, and to get an idea of what Parramatta is like. I was actually pleasantly surprised! Parramatta tends to have a reputation for being a bland outer industrial and business district - but it's actually a pretty vibrant, multicultural hub of mixed activity. Quite possibly more vibrant than the actual CBDs of smaller Aussie capitals. The highlight of the trip was watching a middle aged American couple trying to buy ferry tickets with American money - I know it's terrible - but I got a good laugh out of watching that!

Later on, DJ and I met at the gates of Chinatown, at 7:30pm. We walked around for a bit and decided that good places in Chinatown would probably be too noisy to have a quiet dinner conversation, so we headed down to Darling Harbour to find a quieter restaurant.

As you can imagine - a good portion of our conversation was shop talk! Having burned out with my fulltime job and considering contracting for my re-entry into the workforce - DJ was the perfect subject for my brain-picking. His specialisation is rather specific and niche, but I'm sure a lot of what was said applies to ANY kind of IT contracting - and there were a lot of interesting insights.

After dinner, we took a long walk around Darling Harbour - more shop talk, plus reminiscing about our childhoods. Since it was a work night (for DJ), we didn't go drinking, and instead split around 11pm.


Wednesday 9th Feb 2011

This was the laziest day I ever spent in Sydney. The weather wasn't great, so I took a ferry over to Manly and just hung out to kill some time. In the afternoon I headed back to the hotel and just rested and did some reading.

Pub dinner and a couple of beers in the evening, and an early night for my last day in Sydney.


Thursday 10th Feb 2011

Heading to the Blue Mountains today...

Truth be told, I was sort of glad to be checking out of that budget hotel. Not so much because it was especially bad or anything, but more because I knew how much more comfort I would have in Katoomba - I was booked into a boutique B&B. Also, I'd been itching to get away from the city and into the peace and quiet of nature.

So I get to my B&B and sure enough - it's awesome. On the southern edges of town right near the Three Sisters, and a very cozy little place. It had a reading lounge with a log fireplace too, which would be awesome for those freezing cold Blue Mountains winter nights.

I go for lunch at a Chinese restaurant in town - and am very impressed. For those who don't know - Chinese restaurants in Australian country towns don't tend to be all that good - at least not in an authentic way. They tend to serve up modified "Australian Chinese" fare - which often turns out to be too much like the sort of stuff you find in bad food courts. But this place was really good. About as good and authentic as anything you'd find in Chinatowns in Australian capital cities. The real giveaway that it's good and authentic is that all the mainland Chinese tour groups who come through Katoomba seem to be eating there - and mainland Chinese tourists are notorious for wanting real Chinese food and not being adventurous with eating local food when travelling.


Friday 11th Feb 2011

This being my only full day in the Blue Mountains, I decided to make the most of it - so I went for a big hike. And I mean, it was a Big Hike. Up at dawn, and then a solid 5 hours of walking before lunch - and this all on rough trails mostly marked "Hard", with only a few "Medium" stretches.

It was quite hot and humid too, so this kind of strenuous rainforest bushwalking was taking its toll. I was completely drenched by 1pm, and decided it was time to head back to town and grab some lunch. Naturally, I went to the same Chinese restaurant again!

Then back to some more hiking in the afternoon...


Saturday 12th Feb 2011

I woke up early to catch the train to Sydney - to meet a connection to Coffs Harbour at 11:30am.

The NSW central and north coasts were actually nicer than I expected. Actually, I didn't really know what to expect, but still - they were impressive. Green, hilly, fertile, pretty looking countryside.

I sat in the air conditioned train all day, so it was a bit of a rude shock getting off the train at Coffs Harbour - VERY warm, very humid, very sticky. And this was at 9pm at night.


Sunday 13th Feb 2011

This being my only full day in Coffs Harbour, I decided to make the most of it. The heat and humidity in the morning weren't as bad as the previous night, so I casually walked down into town. My motel was some distance from the main high street near the beach, so this was a half hour walk.

The sky was starting to look quite threatening by late morning, so I dropped into an Internet cafe to see what's going on - and heavy monsoonal rain is forecast for the area for the next 2 days - starting tonight around the Coffs Coast! So I head back towards my motel to be closer to home base - also knowing there is a pub nearby there where I can get some lunch.

It turns out that Sunday is Crab Racing Day at this pub! Here is how crab racing works: a bunch of crabs are put under an upside down bucket in the middle of a special table with raised edges - much like a pool table without the holes. The table also has a finish line drawn in a big circle all around the edges. So when the bucket is lifted, the race is on - and the first crabs over the line are the winners (Gold, Silver and Bronze, naturally). The crabs are hermit crabs with uniquely painted shells, so it's easy to tell them apart.

Of course, this being Australia, this crab racing isn't entirely just for fun - it's a betting game. The beneficiary is the local helicopter surf rescue service. Still, I couldn't get involved in the betting. The prizes were all either local services, or heavy stuff such as a case of beer - neither of which are really practical to win when I'm just backpacking through town and will be gone tomorrow. But at the end, I did give the charity a handful of my loose silver change (about $5 worth).

As expected, in the late afternoon it started raining - HARD! And it didn't stop for the next 24 hours. So I spent this last night in Coffs Harbour chilling in my motel room with a sixpack.


Monday 14th Feb 2011

Took the train out of Coffs Harbour for Brisbane today. It wasn't purely a train ride though - we got transferred to a coach at Casino - near the NSW/Queensland border.

Arrived in Brisbane at 9pm. I'm staying on the couch at my dad's serviced apartment here (he is currently working on a contract in Brisbane). This puts me in a somewhat lazy mood - not only because it isn't costing me anything to stay there - but I've also developed some blisters on my toes from all that walking in the Blue Mountains and Coffs Harbour.


Tuesday 15th Feb 2011

I decide to take a good, long, exploratory walk around central Brisbane. The weather is warm, humid, and showery - classic subtropical summer really - but I press on. I walk from early in the morning till after 2pm. Of course, given that I already had blisters on my toes, these now get full-on feral.


Wednesday 16th Feb 2011

I lance and clean up my blisters in the morning, and spend the rest of the day resting and chilling. This is the first lazy and relaxed "day in" I have on this trip - I spend most of it reading "The Jungle".


Thursday 17th - Tuesday 22nd February 2011

Bumming around in Brisbane...

As said before, this always happens to me when I crash with friends or relatives on my travels - not much gets done in terms of touring, sightseeing, and other such special activities. Mainly lazy relaxation.

On the plus side - I did get a lot of reading done.

As for Brisbane itself - I did explore the CBD and immediate surrounds quite a bit. It doesn't have much on Sydney or Melbourne (in terms of being an equal as a large Australian city - it's really a lot like a smaller, watered-down version of Sydney), but it's got a very good Chinatown!


Wednesday 23rd Feb 2011

Off to Hervey Bay today...

For the uninitiated - it's pronounced HArvey Bay. This is something that got me the first time I looked the place up - under the wrong spelling because I was told about it verbally.

This is my first ride ever with Greyhound Australia. More or less what you would expect for a regular intercity coach service.

We arrived in Hervey Bay at 5:30pm. The town area was a bit more spread out and car-dependent than I expected. For some reason, I was picturing a compact beach esplanade and a busy and walking-friendly town right behind that. But it's not like that at all. It really feels more like a very sprawling, car-dependent suburban area, than like a friendly little tourist town.


Thursday 24th Feb 2011

Spent the morning walking around Hervey Bay. The main town beach was quite deserted - I'm starting to think that pretty much everybody who comes here must just use Hervey Bay as a base to go on Fraser Island tours - hence the town and its beach are quite empty. So I booked a Fraser Island tour for tomorrow myself!

It started raining in the afternoon - so I retired to my motel room with a few beers for an early night. It'll be an early start for the Fraser Island tour tomorrow.


Friday 25th Feb 2011 - Fraser Island!

Got up early to catch the courtesy bus to the barge landing for Fraser Island. The weather was perfect - slightly partly cloudy in the morning - but no real threat of serious rain. Relatively cool too - by summer standards here - high 20s only.

The Fraser Island barges are sort of like military amphibious landing craft - made to be packed with vehicles and people, with a landing ramp thingy on the front. The landings are just standard boat ramps - the barge simply rams up onto them as if making an amphibious landing on a beach.

Our tour guide puts us on a large 4WD bus - these basically look like standard buses, except that they're 4WD and a bit raised, and have big wheels. We are on our way...

To work around the tides that day, we are first taken right up the east coast of the island to the northern beaches. This is where we get to see a few special sites such as the mouth of a freshwater creek, a shipwreck, and some multi-coloured sand and rocks. Yep - doesn't sound too exciting, but it's actually much more interesting to actually see than to talk about. Fraser Island is that sort of place. Not so much there that sounds mind-blowingly spectacular when you talk about it (or even in photos), but it's really quite pretty and amazing to actually see.

Our tour guide gives up some excellent insights into the history of the island. Right from the Aboriginal history, through to the colonization, through to the present day. We don't get to see a dingo though - that's once tiny disappointment of this tour - but that can't really be guaranteed. It's not a zoo. :)

The highlight of the tour is hands-down Make McKenzie. This is a large, crystal-clear rainwater lake in the middle of the island, set among subtropical rainforest. It's easy to see why the Aboriginals called this place K'Gari - meaning Paradise. In all, Fraser Island was way better than I expected. When I read about it being a "sand island", I expected something much more desolate. But it's actually quite amazing what a varied and beautiful environment it has.


Saturday 26th Feb 2011

Took the bus to Rockhampton today. The bus was due to leave at lunchtime, so I had some spare time and jumped on the Internet for a bit - and the news for travelling further north in Queensland was not good. It's been a very severe and active monsoon season, and the rains and floods are continuing up there. More rain every few days than what your typical temperate climate (such as Melbourne) gets in a whole winter! It doesn't sound too appealing for going further north, so I decide that I'll be turning back south after Rockhampton - and spend some time in Byron Bay instead.

Arrived in Rocky at 7:30pm. The numbers of bugs, lizards and cane toads were like a plague, which made for an interesting first impression of the place. Didn't do much that first night except settle into the hotel.


Sunday 27th Feb 2011

Woke up to the smell of cattle manure...

I had no idea until I arrived and read the motel's welcome booklet - but Rockhampton is the "Beef Capital of Australia"! What this means is that the main highway through town is a constant stream of live transport cattle trucks - accompanied by the wondrous "aroma of live cattle truck".

Took a walk to the CBD - which actually turned out to be quite pretty and historic. Lots of nice colonial era buildings, and a nice aspect to the Fitzroy River. There are crocodiles in this river, which, together with the coconut palms - which are everywhere - are a reminder that I am now solidly in the tropics.

Spent mid-afternoon sinking pints in an Irish pub. It was kind of an odd experience - a very typical Irish pub with the typical, cozy, Irish pub atmosphere - set amongst the heat, humidity and palm trees of the tropics. Of course, it's not like I haven't been in Irish pubs in a warm setting before (such as Melbourne summer), but still, the full-on tropical atmosphere made it feel unambiguously odd.

Having an early night at the motel - have to get up at 5am to catch the train back to Brisbane, and then bus onto Byron Bay.


Monday 28th Feb 2011

Woke up at 5am and walk to the train station.

I get on the fast "Tilt Train", and it turns out there's a problem. Due to a technical glitch, the train can do max 100km/h, instead of the usual 160. Oh-oh - I've only got 80 minutes for the connection to Byron Bay, and it's not a guaranteed connection because they're totally separate services. The initial estimates are that we probably won't make it.

Turns out that luck was on my side that day - I just make it! It was a long and rough day though.

I get to Byron Bay at 9pm, and am instantly hit by the Byron Bay vibe! The legends were indeed true! There really is something in the air here. Some kind of indefinable quality of tolerance, friendliness, and diversity. It's been a long day, so I settle into the resort for a good night's sleep.


Tuesday 1st March 2011

I wake up early and go for a walk around Byron Bay. I'm first walking around randomly, but then decide to go over to Cape Byron and the lighthouse.

The walk is great - but fairly exhausting in the heat and humidity - and with so many uphill and downhill bits. I see some funny-looking birds that look like turkeys in the bush, I look it up later and it turns out they're bush turkeys - wow! Amazing how that works!

High points of the cape walk trails offer some great views - both of the ocean and the mainland. The peak of Mount Warning is a unique and clearly visible high point in the distance. As this is the highest point in the area, and the area is the easternmost point of the Australian mainland, Mt Warning is the first place in Australia to see the sunrise. The local Aboriginal people call the mountain Wollumbin - meaning cloud gatherer. It is considered a sacred place - so they request that people not climb the mountain.

I continue walking right through to the tip of Cape Byron - officially as far east as you can go on the Aussie mainland. By this time I am utterly drenched by the heat, humidity, and exercise. The forest walk - downhill off the cape and into town - is a welcome relief. After this, I get a pub lunch in town and head back to the resort for a swim in the pool. It's very refreshing after that long walk around the cape and Byron Bay town.

Byron Bay has impressed me and affected me more than any other place on the trip so far. It really would be worth coming back here again for a week, or even ten days. It's hard to put a finger on exactly what it is - I guess it's the hippie and alternative lifestyle heritage of the place, and the fact that it's a very compact and walkable town. It's amazing what a difference that can make to how attractive a place is. But mostly, it would have to be the diversity - you've got everything from the barefoot hippies to the super rich yuppies here. And everything in-between. It's definitely touristy, but not in a flashy and overcommercialised kind of way. For example, the locals take a lot of pride in their local produce, and there are a lot of local, independent food joints - no corporate fast food culture here.

I definitely want to come back again!


Wednesday 2nd March 2011

Leaving Byron Bay way too soon. Along with Katoomba, this is the only other place I really want to come back to again - for a longer and more dedicated stay.

I spend the morning looking into what I can do with the Sydney to Melbourne leg of the return journey. My initial idea was to travel along the coast and enter Victoria via the NSW south coast, into Gippsland. It turns out this isn't actually too practical - most of the transport routes run along the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne corridor through the inland, so I scratch this idea and just decide to come straight back home from Sydney to Melbourne by bus on Friday.


Thursday 3rd March 2011

My train to Sydney from Coffs Harbour is running almost 2 hours late - DAMN! I had it all planned out too - arrive in Sydney at 9pm, early enough to get a nice dinner and a few drinks, etc. Being 2 hours late throws it all off. It's too late to have a slow and relaxing dinner, go for drinks, etc, and make much of the evening at that hour. Ahhh well. Cards, dealt, etc.

I arrive in Sydney at 11pm and get to my hotel - and realise it's actually a pub! Wow! I finally get to stay in a genuine Aussie pub hotel!

For the uninitiated: in Australia, due to some quirk in alcohol licensing laws, pubs in the past had to officially be hotels, so they all had a few rooms of accommodation upstairs - sometimes almost totally token. Of course, this overlaps somewhat with this function being a real historical function of pubs (especially in the countryside) - but the quirk in liquor laws kept it going, so every pub was forced to keep a few rooms of accommodation upstairs, even if they didn't really want or need that business. Anyways, I've never stayed in one of these before, so it was a new experience for me.

The room is comfortable enough. More or less like a normal hotel room. It's late, but hey, this is a pub! - so I head downstairs for a few cold beers. Then back to my room just after midnight to get some decent sleep. It's a 14 hour bus ride to Melbourne tomorrow.


Friday 4th March 2011 - LAST DAY!

14 hour bus ride back to Melbourne today.

I didn't realise until I got to the bus, but it passes through Canberra! Wow, I'll finally get to see the nation's capital!

Canberra wasn't on my list for my walkabout - even though it's on the way - for the following reason: it's said to be very spread out and car-dependent. I didn't really want the hassle and expense of having to get a rental car to get around town, so I decided to skip it.

So we stop in Canberra for lunch, and sure enough - the place looks pretty much like a bunch of far flung separate suburban estates. Apparently, this is how it was actually planned - as a bunch of distinct "towns", separated by parks and open green reserves. I personally think this idea was much better in theory than in practice - to say the least. The city feels extremely soulless and "over engineered" somehow. Just like it's missing the touch of real, natural human history and organic growth. I get this feeling with a lot of planned urban environments (eg. Docklands in Melbourne), but Canberra takes the cake.

Still, shouldn't judge too harshly. I only spent an hour in town for lunch, basically just passed through by bus. Didn't get to see any of the great national monuments or anything. This is the main reason to come to Canberra as a tourist. I really should do this someday. Of course, I'll come with my own set of wheels!

After lunch in Canberra, we town-hop through Wagga Wagga and Albury, and then express onto Melbourne. We cross the Murray river into Victoria at 7:10pm - finally starting to really feel like I'm coming home.

We get to Melbourne at 10:45pm. It's a beautiful, cool late summer night. Then I realise we're in March, so it's actually officially autumn now. Either way, this is my first refreshing cool evening in a long time - after almost a month of tropical or subtropical mugginess.

I get home at 11:20pm. The Walkabout is over.


Monday, February 7, 2011

Off to Sydney!

I'm catching the train up to Sydney in a couple of hours...

This is where the real walkabout begins. All I have is a train ticket and 3 days booked in a cheap Sydney hotel. After that, probably Blue Mountains and then up the coast. But I'm playing it all by ear. :)

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Perth

So I've been in Perth for six days now...

I'm staying with friends who moved here from Melbourne recently. It's been great catching up with everyone.

But overall, I'm having a pretty lazy holiday here, so in the spare time I find myself browsing Stack Exchange and other programming blogs quite a bit. I don't think I can go a single day without at least reading about programming, if not actively discussing it on a forum. I suppose this is a good sign - it shows that I definitely have a passion for it - I just burned out with the grind of nitty gritty "work", corporate politics, etc.

It's been over a week since I went on sabbatical. Two things are very clear to me now:

1) I really really really needed this.

2) There is absolutely no danger that I'll get lazy and never be able to ramp myself up to work again. - This is something that some people warn against when taking career breaks and sabbaticals - but I just don't have that lazy "eternal leisure" streak in me. Even if money was not an issue and I could do whatever I wanted forever, I'd still want some kind of routine and structure. Some reason to get up at a decent hour and do something productive every day.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Off to Perth!

I'm off to Perth tomorrow! The friends I'll be staying with do have a computer and an Internet connection, but I'll try to not use it at all (or at least, no more than to just check my emails and do online bookings and such).

I also just got the fanatic badge on Stack Exchange today, which was a bit of a wakeup call to how much time I spend online.

Anyhoo, last post from Melbourne in January. :)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Workday #2

I've been on sabbatical for two working days now...

Haven't really accomplished anything much except played a bit of WoW and got a few simple errands out of the way.

Funnily enough, even yesterday - on my very first weekday day off - I already felt a bit indulgent, lazy, and useless. I couldn't immediately understand why, but after a bit more pondering today, I think it's like this:

This is the first time ever that I've been completely voluntarily out of work, and not even looking for work. Previous stints of unemployment, vacations, and weekends were different. They were breaks that were taken within a framework where there was work being done. It didn't feel indulgent to take a day off and play WoW after spending 50 hours at the office. But it does feel a bit indulgent when I'm not doing anything anyway.

I'll be heading off on my travels in two days. But once I'm back in Melbourne fulltime, there is no way I'll be able to put up with such a productivity void. Probably not even for a week. This has been a good test, and I've already passed it. - I now know that I don't want to just sit at home playing WoW all day and being useless. In all honesty, I thought it would take weeks to get to this point, but I guess I'm glad that even a day or two was too much. :)


Friday, January 14, 2011

Officially on sabbatical!

Well, my last day has come and gone...

Mixed feelings...

Scratch that - I'm just going to miss the people. So my feelings aren't really "mixed". It's simpler than that - it's two dimensional - I'm just going to miss the people, but the rest I'm mostly relieved to leave behind.

Looking back now, when I no longer have to face even another second of that job, I don't think it was all that bad at all. Certainly better than average for a mid-sized-corporate gig. But such is burnout. In my case at least, it was a complex intersection of different frustrations. There's nothing to point as a single root cause (although one bad project from 2 years ago was probably a major catalyst), but lots of little things that built it up, over almost two years.

I don't think it's going to fully sink in until Monday, when I wake up and realise that I can just stay in bed.


Friday, January 7, 2011

Putting yourself out of work

So I was surfing Stack Exchange yesterday, and I came across this post (in a thread about "controversial opinions about programming")...




Of course, I'm sure all good programmers agree with this in principle, but how many of us have actually worked in a role where the work was clean and well-documented enough for a new programmer to come in off the street, and "be up and running within a week tops". In my last gig, the one I burned out with, the ramp-up time was more like a year. Or maybe as little as several months on a team that did the most standard and basic of work. But still, nothing like "a week tops".

What it means to "be up and running" is subjective of course, but the elephant in the room here is obvious: programming should be done in such a way that individual developers don't get stuck being the only ones who can do their job. It should be clean, well-documented, and open enough for any decent developer to be dropped into the role at relatively short notice.

I've never worked in a role which has been even remotely like this. About the best ramp-up time I've ever worked with is around six months. And yes, I have considered the possibility that I'm a 'tard and a slow learner :) - but that wasn't the case. I've watched others start at these companies, and saw the same ramp-up timeframes play out. The projects were just never done to be well maintainable, or "developer-accessible" enough. Documentation was unheard of (or woefully out of date).

I guess the reason this bothers me is that I really don't enjoy this kind of messy, open ended, maintenance-oriented work. I like the idea of clean projects - a well defined beginning, progression, and end. Some people can work on massive reams of bad, unmaintainable code, and just sit in the same role forever, constantly re-shaping the big ball of mud, relishing the job security. That's just not me. Or more accurately - that's not me in spirit, but it's a rut I often fell into in roles and environments that encouraged this approach to programming (intentionally or unintentionally).

I think Mike Hofer is quite right. And I believe there is a strong corollary at play here: companies/projects with a very long ramp up time are a bad sign. If a software project is done well, any developer should be able to come in, read the doccos, and be up and running within weeks - and probably plateau out (more or less) in basic everyday productivity within a month or two. Of course, there will always be certain details which more senior people know better than a newbie - but it shouldn't be this hidden "dark art" type of scenario where it takes years to become fully proficient and productive - because the system is full of little tricks and hacks that aren't documented anywhere, and can't be learned easily.

Of course, making yourself easily replaceable might not be very good for job security. On the other hand, this kind of "artificial job security" can easily lead to burnout - at least if one is focused on closure - rather than ongoing work and job security for its own sake.