[undertoad]

Thanks for posting this; the part at 40:00 actually motivated me to view the rest, which I recommend to anybody working in a corporate job.

Hopefully this summary does justice to the remainder (but IMO it's worth watching):

40:00 Essentially he says you're not defined by your job. Your outside projects represent your self-expression and the corporation doesn't get a piece of that.

42:00: Most companies treat programmers like factory workers. In that case, act like one: do a professional job and punch out at the end of the day.

43:30: "If the company makes money off the sweat off your back, you get a chunk. If you don't get a chunk then you give them what they absolutely ask for, keep it to a minimum, be friendly, be very professional, do your stuff, make sure it's well-written, but don't go out of your way to give them your latest, greatest research or your idea or whatever."

44:00: Work on weird and cool stuff at home to stay sharp. If all you do is corporate coding, all you'll ever be is a drone.

45:00: When you're coding at home, "you're making poetry people can play with." But you don't want to do this for a company that doesn't care. "Who wants to make another document management system, time tracker or accounting system? There is money in that, but unless you're making the money too, it's not really fair."

47:30: Don't fear change. At home, take chances and learn new stuff. But at work, just give them what they want because they'll make changes whether you like them or not. It's just a job.

50:00: If you're concerned about being outed, consider creating an online identity (like "_why").

51:30: Don't do Blub at home; do something completely different, break the rules and code for fun. At work, don't think too much, don't be different and just get it done.

52:40: Outside work, make sure you're not someone's "resource" to be "utilized." Run with like-minded folks.

54:00: Embrace your geekiness, get out there and do it now.

55:00+: Questions and answers. This was good too, but somebody else will have to take over the transcription. ;)

[nihilocrat]

I haven't personally worked there, but from everything I know I have to second his idea that you shouldn't work for a big huge video game company (chiefly EA) because you like games and want to make your own. If you have the capital and the skills to make games on your own and/or with a few friends, go for it! The late 2000s are proving to be a sort of golden age of indie gaming from both ends of the transaction.

edit: Also, unrelated to this, another question/answer pair starts around 66:00 which I think is a pretty good idea.

[michaelneale]

Q&A was good - I think Zed is wildly missing the non technology/boring business aspects of starting up (I guess he hasn't tried to start something up before? Or maybe he has...).

[undertoad]

Reading your post and considering it further, I guess his message is less about starting up than about how to survive a day job and continue to grow as a human being by doing interesting work at night.

Blub work on a startup at night could be another path away from employment that isn't really addressed in the presentation (though it's very difficult to pull off, IMO).

[Angostura]

It's strikes me that his advice on how to avoid getting burnt out at work is advice that is precisely designed to ensure that your day job is boring, unfulfilling and that you never get given any tasks that are interesting or designed to let you stretch your intellectual wings.

[michaelneale]

possibly - I watched probably 80% of the presentation, so I might have missed some nuances. My brief experience with startups showed me the last thing you worry about are tech choices and if you are in blub or not, more along the lines of "holy shit holy shit they won't pay that bill". But that was sometime back, startups now seem like a whole lot more fun (maybe thats VC backed ones were you aren't focusing on cashflow up front??).

[michaelneale]

Well I think his audience is "corporate programmer" types isn't it? cause what he says is just confusing to the rest of us.

[nailer]

Actually his audience are people who happen to have days jobs as corporate programmers. The difference is both small and large.

[michaelneale]

Right - yes understood.

I guess the actually title of his talk is less interesting to most (but its good for people to realise ACLs and such are just not practical anymore - its a worthy talk subject !). I think I discovered that about ACLs a while ago, but assumed it was a specific problem with whatever I worked on, not that its a general issue with the ACL approach.