January 6, 2008
What I Do
by Brian Donahue
Chad MyersBroken Link: http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/chad_myers/archive/2008/01/05/what-i-do-with-spoilers.aspx tagged me with a meme that has been goingBroken Link: http://www.sheysrebellion.net/blog/2007/11/20/what-do-you-do/ aroundBroken Link: http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/joe_ocampo/archive/2007/12/20/what-i-do.aspx for a few weeks now which asks "What do you do?" It seems to me it should really read "You need an About Me page," something that's been on my list for a while now, but it always seems a new blog post would be more worth my time...So, in the interim, thanks to Chad's prodding, here's the "About Me" page as a blog post.
For the last year, I've been working for myself. In April 2007 I got "official" and created a software consulting company, Vitreo, LLCBroken Link: http://vitreosolutions.com/. Our website is currently pretty weak. We are working on a new one (see screen cap to the left) but it's waiting on me to finish writing some copy, and I've been having trouble finding the time to get back to it. Hopefully we'll get it up there soon, as you can see it's much nicer than out current site!
Shortly after starting Vitreo, I hired my brother, Dan DonahueBroken Link: http://newitup.com/, to help me out. Primarily, we build and maintain web-based business applications in ASP.NET and C#. We both have a little experience with Ruby on Rails, but so far haven't found a place for it in our client work. This has less to do with Rails as it does with our lack of confidence/experience deploying and maintaining web apps on Linux.
For a small shop, we've managed to do work for an interesting variety of clients (including some you'd even recognize!). Since coding is our primary focus as a company, we get to set our own standards and try to follow the practices we believe in. This includes agile, CI, TDD, BDD, and using fun tools and frameworks like Monorail, ASP.NET MVC, and others. I won't pretend everything is roses, we struggle with some of this stuff, and it's often hard to sell and/or explain agile to clients as an external/off-site consultant, but we have had enough success to keep us trying :)
Overall, I really enjoy what I do. One of the best things about running your own business is that you get to make your own decisions and commitments, and you are responsible for them. I like that a lot better than when I have worked at companies where others (managers, project managers, etc) often would make decisions or promises that I didn't feel were reasonable, and I and/or my team would be asked to execute on them. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in these meetings where people are saying "we're going to do this, what do you think?" and I'd be waving my arms, saying "I think you're craz!." I think they expected me to just be glad they were asking me what I thought, even though they had no intention of considering my input, as the decisions were usually already made.
This year will be interesting as, so far, things are looking very busy. Probably the biggest challenge in a small consulting shop is balancing work and resources. When do you have enough work to hire another person? I may be finding out sooner than I think (hopefully with enough foresight to make the right decision!).
So, as I shake off the chain-letter willies, I tag:
Steve EichertBroken Link: http://iqueryable.com/
Jeremy JarrellBroken Link: http://jeremyjarrell.com/
Jeff DevilleBroken Link: file:///Users/brian/development/persistall/websites/persistall.com-2010/archive/2008/01/06/jeffdeville.com