I’ve got a flu and am hopped up on ibuprofen and Nyquil.

This year I’ve been telecommuting and co-working. I’ve made a few friends, but we don’t hang out much. I’ve actually been blown off by a few people to, but you know what? You’re hardly worth the thought.

This rant is addressed to those of you I haven’t met or haven’t hung out with this year, but I truly feel you can do something awesome for the tech scene that’s more than just about your career. Actually if we do this shit that I’ll mention later, you’ll see that it’ll enhance our careers.

I’ve seen you folks in cafes: the guy with the latest Apple laptop tailing server logs with an ev-do card, or the woman compiling drizzle on some beater Lenovo laptop converted to Linux. I’ve seen the creepy and utterly lame pick-up that you engineer dudes do at co-working places. Life’s more than eating where you shit.

Next year, let’s do something awesome. Let’s fucking hang out in meatspace and build something awesome. Let’s have awesome discussions and turn a particular cafe as the place to talk tech.

Let’s meet on some night during the week and actually build and learn shit, and actually help each other. San Francisco has about 17,000 people per square mile in some places. Why aren’t these folks hanging out and making there lives more awesome. Insert Matrix Quote Here.

I know some of you hackers are one pay check away from disaster (if you’re not already there), or some of you are doing okay. Let’s all combine forces and create an awesome network and see if we can actually build something.

You’re the kind of person who knows there’s gotta be better than Facebook or Google. Technology wasn’t meant to pigeonhole and objectify people as consumers but in some weird way liberate their human potential. Ya, it’s pretty hard to buy this BS given what a rough year it was, but if you are reading this here’s my proposal to you:

We meet each week at some common space and work on technology together.

This might sound too simple, but ask yourself this question: What community do you belong to?

Having a hard time answering? Working on a tech project? Then the community I’m proposing might be the one for you.

Maybe there’s already a group out there. If you’re out there, I’d like to talk to you. We have to stop isolating ourselves and unite in a really powerful way.

What is your favorite algorithm?

My favorite algorithm right now is the merge sort.

v1: Nuno Nogueira (Nmnogueira), v2: edited by Daniel Miller (cobaltBlue)

I like it so much that I’ve implemented it in PHP and Ruby.

The problem is that as a web developer I’ve never had to use a merge sort. Back in the old days when pagination was tricky, I’ve had to use a linked list, but you really don’t have to use the merge sort anymore.

So at this point it’s really just academic.

What interview question should really count now?

More on that in my next post. As a clue, I’d like to say it has to do with Leibniz’s statement, “The present is big with the future.” A techie who believes that and the principle of sufficient reason is the kind of techie you want.

I wrote this to the San Francisco PHP Meetup List. I am posting it here because in a month or so I know a huge portion of you will be looking for work in the tech area.

Subject: Re: [php-139] Headhunters/Recruiters: Some feedback please.
From: barce
Date: October 31, 2008 12:06:08 PM PDT
To: SF PHP Meetup List

Let me comment on what’s going on.

I will tell you about two types of layoffs, and then two types of opportunities that I am benefitting from right now.

1. Scapegoating Pathology in Layoffs. This is where staff gets laid off to “fix” a problem, and the problems are still there. Sure, they have one less mouth to feed, but they got rid of the wrong person. How can you tell? The problem is still there. Most recruiters have a hard time filling these spots b/c turnover is high. No amount of technical skill will solve this problem. You need people skills if you’re gonna fill this role.

2. The Invisible Hand Layoffs. The company ends up with more capital and gains more worker productivity because the invisible hand is at work.

I would say that from the Web 2.0 companies that are laying off people it’s 50/50 . If you are really hard up for a job, then your best bet is with a company that’s done scapegoating layoffs.

That is the opportunity #1 that I mentioned, and examples of this are meevio.com which loses a lead every 3 months and Mahalo. Calacanis fired and is now looking for workers again. Talk about scapegating!

Opportunity #2: Litigation Support. Right now a lot of companies have a financial strategy to stay alive, and that is sue. During this economic downturn you will see companies like DTIGlobal, Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM) and other litigation support companies do well. Iron Mountain is already doing really well. I have a client in litigation support where I do light sysadmin work.

Get a job in these areas. Recruiters won’t know about them because they are still trying to fill jobs where there is a scapegoating pathology.

I wish you all the best of luck,
Barce

PS Beer is doing well right now, too, so look for tech work in the beer industry, or hell, do what I did right out of college, sell beer. It is fun work!

SubEthaEdit is a fun editor that links coders via OS X’s chat. You and your friends can see each other’s cursor in the editor and edit accordingly. From a management perspective, it’s quite satisfying to see your coders collaborate on the same tough problem that crops up and you have to have everyone talk about it.

Dear Lazy Web,

I have two questions:

Is there a SubEthaEdit for Linux?

What collaborative technologies do you use for coding?

Cheers,
Barce

PS I use eclipse, svn, pastebin, IM, IRC, and sometimes ventrilo. I would love to just use SubEthaEdit though.