As I announced on Twitter last Monday, I’m taking a position at Apple in Developer Technical Support. I’d like to talk a bit about what I’ll be doing in my new role, the thought process that lead me there, and some answers to the inevitable questions the news has brought.
What is Developer Technical Support?
DTS is the engineering arm of Worldwide Developer Relations, the group that puts on WWDC, holds technology workshops, and generally serves as the interface between Apple and its rapidly growing third-party developer community. When you get help from one of Apple’s own engineers, you’re usually dealing with DTS.
If you get stuck while writing your next Mac or iPhone application, you can use a DTS incident to get help. This includes pre-release platforms, which I wish I had known during the iPhone SDK beta. If you’re a seeded ADC member, you get a number of DTS incidents as part of your membership, but they lapse when you renew your membership, often going to waste. Incidents can also be purchased a la cart.
Insofar as I’m not omniscient, fixing your problems is going to require a lot of learning. My job will be to talk to the framework engineers to figure out how everything works. Armed with an Apple badge and a need to know, I’ll have the opportunity to meet everyone and learn everything. To frost that cake, I’ll get to contribute to the greatest week in a Cocoa engineer’s year — WWDC.
Why you got to sell out, sellout?
A lifetime ago, I intended to fly airplanes for a living. I worked for an airline full time, and worked at a flight school part time. After getting through ground school, I used the employee discount on airplane rentals to work toward the hundred some-odd hours required to become a certificated private pilot.
My life revolved around aviation, as did my life’s plan. After getting my private, I’d get rated for instrument and multi-engine, then get my instructor’s credentials and teach for a while at the school where I already worked. When I had the hours, I’d start flying Dash 8s as a copilot for Horizon, then copilot 737s for Alaska. The only real decision was whether I would take captain at Alaska or move to another airline to fly heavies.
One artifact of being a pilot is the radio headset. Decent ones started at $299, with the top of line being the Bose Aviation X, using active noise reduction technology on a lightweight magnesium frame — all for a cool grand. Ironically, these were the only ones I could afford, since they were so expensive they had a 12-month payment plan. I bought mine to celebrate my first solo flight.
Your first solo flight is your first day as a real pilot. It’s the day you share with all other pilots the moment of realization, about 20 feet up, that the only thing standing between you and death is the fact you practiced until you could and did land airplanes in your sleep. Two minutes later I parked my Piper Warrior for the last time. I never flew again.
Long story short, I was downsized from the school and, without the discount, I couldn’t afford it anymore. I spent a year trying everything I could to beg, borrow, or steal the money. If I couldn’t fly airplanes for a living, I didn’t know what I would do. Finally, I sold my headset and bought a used Powerbook and a book on Java. The rest, as they say, is history.
You gotta know when to fold ‘em.
I’m the world’s toughest programmer because I don’t know when to quit, but I’m a successful engineer because sometimes, I do. At the end of the day, when the world starts falling apart, there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be than Infinite Loop. When the zombie rise and the security doors fall, I’d like to be inside, where the food is.
Which is not to say things are so bad I have to go to Apple. It’s definitely a conscious choice while choosing is still an option. There’s a lot of money in iPhone contracts right now. After a couple of years I could probably save enough money to go back to working on my own projects full time. Either road leads to the same destination, but which one is going to make me better engineer?
I’ve long felt something missing from my education. Having learned my trade by apprenticeship rather than scholarship, I never got the years of drills. The problems of shipping an application are quite different than the contrived problems of an engineering school. A couple of years in DTS could really round out my abilities.
That was what ultimately made up my mind. I had a lot of job offers, many more interesting and lucrative, but they were all based on my expertise and experience. If living in Wil Shipley’s basement proves anything, it’s that I’m much more interested in what I stand to learn than what I stand to earn.
Giving up the indie lifestyle
There are those who aspire to independence, and those who have independence thrust upon them. I actually fall into the latter camp. Long before I fell in love with airplanes, I loved the movie “Real Genius.” I wanted to go to MIT, then Harvey Mudd, because I wanted to hang out with a bunch of crazy smart people.
My interest in software engineering was renewed by reading the book “Microserfs,” by Douglas Coupland. I wanted to work insane hours with a team, be it in a garage, an office, or a cube farm. Given my life at the time, a cubicle sounded awesome. Dilbert quickly became my favorite comic because I envied the life Scott Adams was lampooning.
I didn’t leave Alaska because I hated my cube. Far from it. I left because I wanted to write Mac software, but more than that I was tired of being the only person there who knew what I did. I left because my partner left, poached by Starbucks, much as I left Delicious Monster after Lucas left.
For some people, working alone is paradise. I am not one of those people. I don’t need to be independent. I need to be part of a team. I need to be part of something bigger than myself. I need to be with people who are smarter than me.
My dream is a kind of engineering paradise where the air has a hum of productivity. One day I found a place like that, and I tried to work there, but I wasn’t good enough yet. I’ve since built companies based entirely on my memory of that magical place. Now, I get to work there for real and I couldn’t be happier.
It’s not a sad story at all, you see
A few people have bemoaned my employment as a loss for the community, but I disagree. One of the most frustrating side effects of having been so busy last year is not being able to contribute to the community as much as I would like to. I’ve iChat in Don’t Bug Me mode for months. I don’t have time to visit the iPhone forums, publish tutorials, or write meaningful essays about important programming topics.
All through my entrepreneurial period, I hoped one day things would be established and stable enough that I could afford to do things like that. In a very real way, going to DTS is exactly that. I get paid to help the community. I don’t get to be in charge, I don’t get to put my name on things, and I don’t stand to get rich — but I don’t care about those things.
What I care about is doing good work as part of a team. I care about giving back and helping others succeed. If the best way to do that is to fold up United Lemur for another rainy day, so be it. I’ll see you all at WWDC.
I’m the world’s toughest programmer because I don’t know when to quit, but I’m a successful engineer because sometimes, I do.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Good night and good luck
