May 2008

Thoughts from inside a developer’s head

Being a developer is exciting in many ways. Being a developer at a company that is using the technology to its extreme is even more exciting. If you then have the privilege to be a developer on a project that is developing a product that will be a pioneer in the European financial market, it is hard not to love your job! Wake up smiling every Monday morning.

What is it that I like with being a developer? I can only speak for myself – well, it might be that I can also speak for my sister (she works for Cinnober, too), since we usually like the same things – and here I will try to describe what it is that I like.

I like being part of and have an understanding of the whole chain of events. I like to understand. Understand that if I implement this requirement or use case, what does our customer gain? And more importantly, what does our customer’s customer gain? What impact does this implementation have on other components in the system? Is the performance affected? Is it compatible with the prior release?

It’s almost that I’m ashamed to tell you, but one thing that I really like is when there is a seriously and tricky problem to solve. It is not that I want to have seriously tricky problems. But if we do, I’ll like to be part of the team that solves it. It’s something with the adrenaline that I like. To stay calm. Understand the problem. Identify the potential areas where the problem lies. Communicate with the customer. Narrowing the potential areas. Finding the root cause. Reproduce the problem. Find a work around. Find a solution.

I spent one year of my life collecting experiences from operations and the trading floor at one of our customers. The option system that we have delivered to them is integrated in a fairly complex environment. Once there was a problem with surrounding systems that affected the option trading in a negative way. To clarify; options couldn’t be traded. Traders surrounded the Service Desk. Managers, vice presidents, presidents and the CTO were all coming to the Service Desk. The higher they screamed the higher position they had. (Showing power to act…) To be there, in the middle of maybe 100 persons, answering questions on how the system behaves was remarkable. (Ok, I was kind of nervous at the time, but now a couple of years later I would rather describe it as remarkable). Knowing that the traders were losing money. Knowing that the exchange was losing credibility. Knowing that the traders didn’t care where the problem was. They couldn’t trade options. Which meant that Cinnober could also lose credibility. But we could also gain credibility if we helped solve a problem that had its root cause outside our area of responsibility. Answering a question by saying “I don’t know” was not an option. Answering a critical question with an incorrect answer was almost equal to suicide. Not only was the answer supposed to be correct, it was also supposed to be politically correct. And instantly.

Maybe you are wondering why I don’t do support if I like it so much. I think I like it that much just because I am a developer. In those critical moments you need to know the code. The connections. The whole system. The customer’s business. The details.

But there is no doubt about it – I just loved being onsite. I never felt so alive.

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