Mike Zornek

Returning to Self-Employment

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 06 May 2025 20:21:54 -0400

My full-time employment is coming to a close, and I am once again rebooting my self-employment life.

What Happened?

If you’ve been following along with my now updates, it has been clear that my full-time job was not in a great place for a while.

The short story is that when I interviewed and eventually accepted the job, I had a well-considered list of things I was aligned with and looking forward to, including:

small company / profitable startup
in-person retreats to support an online/remote team
opportunities to be involved in the product design work
dedicated tech debt time
weekly team educational events

Six weeks after joining, a large corporation acquired us; six months after, a private equity firm acquired that public corporation.

Suffice it to say, the things I was looking forward to never materialized. I stuck it out as long as I could but decided it was time to move on. “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

What’s Next?

Instead of looking for a replacement full-time gig, I am once again returning to a mix of consulting/freelancing while investing in personal product development initiatives.

Ahead of this, over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing some blog infrastructure updates and also did a revamp of my Elixir Consulting page. I’ve also started promoting my availability on various socials and LinkedIn.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to increase my presence in the Elixir community. I’ll shadow the Elixir Slack and Elixir Forums, helping where I can, and produce educational content for the blog. If there is an open source project you need help with or want someone to pair with, please reach out.

I suspect this community outreach will consume about 70% of my time. The other 30% will be allocated to personal education and product development, which is currently in journaling / research mode.

A Nervous Excitement

I can’t share this without commenting for the records of time – it is a scary time to be looking for work.

I do not go into this with ideal world circumstances, but it is what it is.

I am more fortunate than most: I have fair savings, and I don’t have many major debts.

I suspect it will take some creative approaches (productized services, tech gig work) to regain regular income streams. While it will be difficult, I am looking forward to having some space to use my creative muscles again. Being a corporate Jira code monkey truly took a toll on my psyche.

Announcing my New Full-Time Job

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 18:05:27 -0500

I have some big news: Starting December 4th, I’ll be working full-time as a Senior Elixir Developer for Allovue, where they build web-based accounting software for school districts.

This change is particularly significant because I’ve been self-employed as a freelance consultant for most of my career.

Frankly, finding consistent Elixir contracts over the last 18 months has been challenging. I’ve had some ongoing client work, but I have generally described the situation as underemployed to friends and family. While I continue to enjoy Elixir, compared to my historic iOS and Rails contracting, I found companies preferring full-time employees or more extensive consultancy team assignments. Sometimes, I was lucky enough to get subcontracts for such teams, but being outside of those relationships disadvantaged me.

With that context, I started to keep an open mind and consider different job openings a few months ago. When it came to Allovue, I felt aligned with what they were doing and looking for. The interview process took some time, and I kept my expectations in check because you never really know how these things will turn out.

When I eventually got the offer and considered all my observations about the opportunity, it was a good fit. My primary responsibilities will include:

Mentoring the junior contributors.
Owning individual threads of Elixir and LiveView work.
Helping explore larger product and architecture decisions.

I’ll share more as things get going. It’s going to be an exciting new year for sure.

The Purpose of a Business is People

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 14:04:56 -0400

This blog post is part of an open exploration of my core values when it comes to work. Ideally reading through these posts will help you consider your own values. If you happen to be here researching my consulting services, my hope would be these notes help define possible alignment on your project.

First we must acknowledge, a business is a human construct that was built to accomplish a goal. In the United States, and other capitalist-countries, many times the primary goal of a business is to generate and quickly extract profits for the owners or stakeholders. I however have an appreciation and different perspective when it comes to the purpose of a business.

I like to think of a business as the balancing act amongst three primary forces.

First we have the customers, who are provided value through products and services. Without the customer we are lost and so we must prioritize our work and attention towards their needs and concerns at all times.

Second we have the workers. Many businesses view the workers as an unfortunate requirement to accomplish their business goal (profits). The business will determine the minimum amount of compensation that will keep the workers showing up which sadly creates a dysfunctional relationship. I like to think that the primary goal of the ideal business should be to provide a long-term, welcoming and supportive environment for its workers. Worker satisfaction comes from meaningful, rewarding and sustainable work. Prioritize the customer, but never at the sacrifice of the worker.

Finally we have the business (and its profits). In my ideal the business and profits are there to provide long-term stability between the customers and the workers. Each of those groups will need extra support at different phases of a business and a profitable business is better setup to handle those needs. I am not against a business owner or stakeholders taking some profits out of the system to reward an investment of time or money but it bothers me when that is the primary goal of the business. Another options to consider when trying to construct a fair and balanced approach to business is employee ownership of the business.

It can be challenging to reach these ideals inside systems you don’t fully control but none-the-less I find self-reflecting on your values and sharing your thoughts to be a rewarding process. With luck you can connect with people who share your values and have constructive conversations with those whose values differ.

Resources and Suggestions to Find Elixir-based Employment

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 16:12:03 -0400

This post was originally written for my old ElixirFocus blog, and transfer here after its closure.

The following is a collection of resources and suggestions for people looking to acquire full time or project specific employment writing Elixir. I personally lean more on consulting but the topic of Elixir employment comes up enough that I thought I’d share what I’m aware of.

Elixir Job Listings

First we have the aptly named elixirjobs.net, which provides an active catalog of known job listings.

I also highly recommend the #jobs, #jobs_chat, and #looking_for_contract rooms of the official Elixir Slack

Elixir Radar, which may be more well known for its weekly newsletter, also hosts a job board, which is usually promoted in said newsletter emails.

The Elixir Forum has a dedicated jobs tag that is less active then the above can still be a helpful link to track.

Don’t Let “Requirements” Scare You Away

One of my first web development jobs was with a company that at the time was looking for full time / experienced developer. I applied despite my limited experience and with only part time availability (I was still in college at the time). They hired me anyways, found a project that I could contribute to and ultimately provided a great environment to improve my skills.

The point being, many of these job descriptions do not fully convey the situation at these companies. If there is a company or opportunity that interests you, put yourself out there, introduce yourself and share what you are looking for. You never know how it might turn out.

Elixir Meetups / Personal Networking

While applying to a specific job listing can be the most direct approach to finding a new gig, there is something to be said for personal networking. Many Elixir meetups and communities are very approachable online right now. Get out there, introduce yourself (maybe even do a talk!) and be shamelessly direct, explaining that you are looking for work opportunities. Be like Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration.

Elixir Companies

If you observe a company sponsoring an Elixir conference or other kind of Elixir event, they are most likely looking to hire people. You don’t even need to limit your search to current events; if that company sponsored an Elixir event years ago they are still a good target to contact.

You can also look for companies that have been promoted for their Elixir usage or are otherwise known to be using Elixir. If you spot a company that might be a good fit, reach out to them – even if they don’t have a job listing.

Self Promotion

If you have even a mildly active personal website or social media account, consider adding a static header or profile link to a blog post explaining what kind of job you are looking for. Rename yourself on Twitter or Slack to “Billy Beta is looking for Elixir work” to make it clear, even in unrelated posts that you are available for hire.

If you need to be more stealthy, consider a few private emails to friends explaining your situation and that you are looking for something new. So much of my own works comes from friends of friends. It is very helpful to have wide social nets to allow for good things to happen.

Be Prepared

Finally, be prepared. Know what you want and don’t want in a new gig. Write it all down (paper is better) and prioritize your interview questions to align with those needs.

I personally am very behind the People-first Business movement, see also the People-first Job Board, and so I align my own questions around those values and concerns.

Your ability to land an Elixir gig has never been better. Get out there and find something that is a good fit for you. If I missed any resources, let me know.

The Values That Define Us

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 17 May 2021 10:30:00 -0400

Over the last year I’ve gained a much higher appreciation for the proper documentation of a company’s values. When I was younger I was much more carefree about company values or even the company mission statement, but lately I find having well-thought-out and excessively reenforced values are an extremely helpful tool to help shape and align the inevitable hard discussions and decisions that need to be made within an organization.

In part I think this new perspective has been fueled through the company I subcontract through, Test Double, which does an excellent job of consistently referencing and referring to their own core values when discussing decisions, designing systems, hiring new employees or sharing praise.

The other big factor of course is the continued increase in social awareness around racism, injustice, and inequality. It feels great that there is some momentum being made here (noting the long road ahead of course). All this activity has many, including myself, taking stock in what they value and how our actions align with those values.

When the alignment is off you see volatile results like the recent Basecamp leadership failure or even the Apple’s lack of consistency with its quickly reversed hire.

Even when I disagree with a company’s chosen values (as I do while I read through Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon) I actually appreciate the documentation. It helps shape my understanding of the company and its decisions.

For values I do heavily align with, check out People-First Business from Wildbit. There are lots of great topics to read about on that site.

If you share my interest in continual iterative improvement to things like company culture or product development practices I think you’ll find documented company values can help focus many decisions. Personally, I think some value introspection will likely be part of a personal retreat I’d like to take soon™. More on that another time.

2019 Accomplishments and 2020 Goals

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 12:22:38 -0500

A friend recently went off on how he hates these kinds of blog posts but I can’t help myself from sharing. Yes it’s very egotistical, but you could say that about the majority of a personal blog. I also like posting since my blog posts have a way of lasting a lot longer than some random document on my computer and it is fun to read these things years after the fact. (eg: my 2018 post, my 2017 post)

With all that said, a look back and a look ahead…

2019 Recap

My previous goals:

Diversify and increase my income.
- Add more clients so less dependent on single large client.
- Add passive income through a new product/service.
- Shoot for a 10% income increase.

I did pretty well here. I expanded my client roster and made income from four unique clients and was even able to bill for Elixir work. I made a slight amount more than 2018 but this also included a month of no client work in December. If that month had some billable work I might have made my 10% goal. I did not add any passive income via new projects but I have been working hard on Club House Hosting and hope it will start paying clients in the Spring (beta clients even sooner).

Be better at shipping/executing.
- 2017 & 2018 was a lot of learning new tech, demo projects.
- 2019 needs to be about shipping real value.

Did not ship as much as I wanted to. Still keeping up with a pile of new tech to learn. 2020 should see a lot of open threads start to close and showcase via shipping projects.

Do a better job of tracking my time.
- 20-30 client hours/week
- 20-30 project hours/week
- 50 total “work” hours/week

I did a good job tracking, up till December. December is a wash according to my time records. There was no active client work and I did not track my personal projects (though meaning time was spent).

More so, the goal is less about tracking and more about making my hours more productive. Having tasks to fill those 20-40 minute blocks where I can’t start deep work but I should still find something to do.

Better code documentation.

I am very happy with my work on this. I was much better about both inline code documentation as well as for descriptive guides and such.

Utilize work byproducts as education / blog opportunities.

This is a big fat F. I think about it a lot but don’t have much to show for it.

Other 2019 Things of Note

I rebooted the Elixir Meetup Group in May and we’ve been having monthly meetings ever since. We have a small but active group chatting with each other on Slack and some even keeping up with a weekly book club. Really proud of group and hope to expand it in 2020.

I lost a long time (2+ year) client. The project I had been hired for was closing and the budget forced on them just didn’t have allocations for me. I was lucky enough to balance this with some new contract work with a new client but none-the-less, it hurts to loose that stable income.

With a lack of client work at the end of year I was able to rebuild this site. I like the way it’s come out and hopefully the more detailed For Hire and Projects sections will help me land some new projects.

It’s only a baby step but I’m doing much better with my soda intake. I used to drink soda constantly while working on the computer and now I no longer drink any at home. I will get a soda at a restaurant or on occasion when I’m out but more than not I’m drinking water instead.

2020 Goals

Take better care of myself
- New general practitioner doctor.
- More checkups.
- More exercise.
Launch Club House Hosting
- Setup some sample groups during an open beta.
- Do formal public release in Spring before MicroConf in April.
- Keep motivated and accountable via Mastermind groups.
Work on keeping consultancy work healthy
- More marketing of my skills to potentials clients.
- More industry writing.
- Start automated deposits into retirement accounts.
Attend more social events outside the tech zone
- Already started this by rebooting the IndyHall poker game.
- Want to find opportunities outside the bar scene.

Regardless if you post or share, it’s very much worth it to take stock and write down your goals. Good luck with them in the new year!

2018 Retrospective; 2019 Goals

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 22:14:50 -0500

Overall 2018 was a pretty good year.

The Good:

2018 marked the first full year of my self-employment comeback.
I was able to maintain billable client projects the entire year.
After having a few down productive months, decided to rejoin IndyHall as a full time member in July. It’s a bit costly (I pay extra for parking too), but this has helped me focus, both on client work and personal projects.
Attended WWDC and had some social fun.
Attended ElixirConf and doubled down on my excitement for this language, community and ecosystem.
Finished my handoff of Philly CocoaHeads admin duties (still active member), giving me more time for new things.
Continued to expand my web education.
Paid off some long time debits.
Started a savings account for a possible house down payment.

The Bad:

Many of my recent side projects have died on the vine. Lots of false starts. I’m not shipping like I want to.
Most of my consulting income comes from one large client. Need to diversify.

2019 Goals

Diversify and increase my income.
- Add more clients so less dependent on single large client.
- Add passive income through a new product/service.
- Shoot for a 10% income increase.
Be better at shipping/executing.
- 2017 & 2018 was a lot of learning new tech, demo projects.
- 2019 needs to be about shipping real value.
Do a better job of tracking my time.
- 20-30 client hours/week
- 20-30 project hours/week
- 50 total “work” hours/week
Better code documentation.
Utilize work byproducts as education / blog opportunities.

Self Employment Estimate Numbers

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 20:22:16 +0000

In a world of being self-employed you need to constantly be evaluating your finances. I was lucky enough recently to finish paying off some long standing debit and so I did a revisit. Today I want to share with you how I do my estimate numbers and hopefully you can use some of these ideas to help plan your own independence and/or make sure your current indie life is in good shape.

The software I use to do this is Soulver. Think of it as a really smart text editor for crunching numbers. Watch the demo video on their site to see it in action. If you are not interested in Soulver, any spreadsheet should do fine. Just keep it on file somewhere so you can come back and rework it as needed.

First thing you need is a list of personal expenses. If you are single you can do this yourself but if you are married or in a relationship where you share expenses get them involved too. You want to have a full and truthful collection of costs here. The goal is understanding what you need to survive and ultimately what you can cut to help make your dream that much more possible.

I did this by first using my credit card and debit card statements as a source. Every item needs to be recorded. Make three lists, some will be monthly expenses, some yearly expenses and some one-time expenses. Once you get done with the statement history try to brainstorm where the undocumented cash goes. Hopefully these lists will help.

Personal Monthly Expense Examples:

Rent / Mortgage
Home / Renters Insurance
Car Payments
Car Insurance
Car Maintenance
Car Fuel
Health Insurance
Expected Monthly Copays / Medicines
Netflix
Hulu
Monthly Gaming Subscriptions
Game Purchases
Eat Out Food
Spotify
iTunes
Patreon Gifts
Podcast Subscriptions
Haircut

Some of these items might be hard to quantify as monthly. If so just make a yearly entry for them.

Personal Yearly Expense Examples:

Christmas Presents
Birthday Presents
Yearly Clothes Budget
Vacations
Car Inspection

Once I have my yearly and one time costs I like to total them as a monthly expenses (YearlyTotal+OneTime/12) so I can later think in terms of months. This is fine for back of the hand estimates but if you need to plan out your money for specific times (summer vacation, fall back-to-school kind of stuff) you’ll need to do more planning.

Now do the same for your company.

Company Monthly Expense Examples:

Coworking Membership
Downtown Parking
GitHub Membership
Linode Hosting
Amazon Hosting
Books
Google Apps
Verizon Phone
Dropbox
Micro.Blog
Clicky / Web Statistics
Cushion / Finacial Software
Frontend Masters / Online Education

Company Yearly Expense Examples:

Two Conferences Events: $4000
Tax Preparation
New Mac every other year: $4000 × 0.5
New iPad every other year: $1100 × 0.5
New iPhone every other year: $1000 × 0.5
Vimeo PRO Membership
Apple Developer Membership
Trello
Hover Domains
Other Software

Notice how I distribute the costs of various hardware upgrades, which are bi-yearly, and do keep in mind this is all for rough estimating. I in-fact have held off on upgrading my iPhone recently so that’s extra money in the bank (kind of).

Next I work out my income:

## hours a week
## hours × $### per hour
{WeeklyRevenue} × 4 weeks
{MonthlyRevenue} - {TotalOfCompanyMonthlyExpenses} tax-free
{AdjustedMonthlyRevenueA} - 0.10 for Savings
{AdjustedMonthlyRevenueB} - 0.30 Tax Estimate Payments
{AdjustedMonthlyRevenueC} x 10 months // assuming 8 weeks off
{AdjustedYearlyRevenue} / 12 months of payouts
{AdjustedMonthlyIncome} $/month personal income

This last number needs to be able to cover your personal expenses. Using this formula you can get an idea of how many hours and at what rate you want to target for the year. Also, just covering personal expenses is probably a risky goal. You might want to up that savings calculation until you have 12 months of living expenses in the bank.

These things vary person to person, hopefully you’ve found this post useful. If I’ve forgotten anything blog your additions and share along. Thanks for reading.

Back to Full Time at IndyHall (video 5m)

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:06:18 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRuJdIaM_sE

I’m back at IndyHall full-time. What is IndyHall? It’s Philadelphia’s best coworking space. Watch to learn more.

Links:

2017 Retrospective

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 04:22:45 +0000

I’ve been kind of heads down with client work the last few months but wanted to say hi to those who still follow me here.

2017 was a bit of a sucker punch for me, but I survive.

After losing my job and having a neck surgery to open the year I was able to reboot my self employment under a new LLC. It took a few months but I finally landed some client work and have things pretty stable these days.

As for side projects I put a lot of time into OwlDeck in the spring but sadly it took a backseat to client work and revenue once summer rolled around. There is a good chance of it finding a second wind in 2018 as I have a bunch of teaching planned and it would be a great tool to have onhand.

I also decided this year to hand off my Philly CocoaHead responsibilities. I had been lead organizer for about 7 years and figured it was time. I still plan to be an active member but hope the extra hours can be put towards side projects in 2018.

Finally I’ve been learning new tech! I really want to get back into some web development and dedicated a fair amount of 2017 to relearning the web, from HTML5, to modern CSS (Flex, Grid, etc.) as well as new languages like Elixir and Elm.

My first Elm site is underway and I’ll share more as it comes together.

Thanks for checking in. Be sure to follow me on Micro.Blog as well. Have a great 2018!

Introducing Zorn Labs LLC

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 17:44:06 +0000

As I alluded to after loosing my job at the end of January, I knew I’d take the majority of February to recover from my neck surgery and then get serious about work in March. We’ll it’s almost the end of March so I figured I’d do an update.

First, welcome Zorn Labs LLC, my new company. It will house my future consulting and product work.

Second, I am still looking for work. My goal is to find something 10-30 hours a week, doing iOS or iOS mentoring. To help express my skill set and goals I’ll point you to the new company site. I would appreciate all friends and followers to help spread the word.

Outside of setting up the new business and website, much of March has been spent towards marketing and planning. I had many lunches and coffees with prospects and friends. I even had a few offers but they sadly weren’t the right fit for me at this time. When I haven’t been marketing I’ve been trying to jumpstart some new web skills, refreshing my HTML5/CSS3 knowledge, getting deeper into Hugo template design for the new Philly CocoaHead website, and experimenting with Elixir and Phoenix.

For those interested in my Mac app project, you can also check out my project journal blog at: http://restedexperience.com. I’ve been trying to update that a little more often with my recent progress.

So that’s my March update. Thanks for the interest! More to come in April! 🙂

“For the times they are a-changing”

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 17:33:35 +0000

I am no longer an employee of Big Nerd Ranch. The news came down on Monday. I can’t speak to any of the details but suffice to say I am disappointed. I really enjoyed working at BNR. My time there was productive, for my own personal growth as well as that of my students and clients. I wish them well, and continue to recommend them as a good source for iOS education.

So, what’s next for me?

On the immediate horizon, I’m a bit focused on my neck surgery, which is on Feb 10th. Its been scheduled since November. The goal is to remove a large cyst on the back of my neck. I will be put under for this surgery, so tomorrow I have to get a bunch of blood work and X-rays done.

For work, I open to ideas. Generally speaking I’m unlikely to make long term plans and would probably prefer to take on some smaller consulting work. I’d like to steep a bit on my long term options. If you have anyone who might be in need for an experienced iOS or Mac developer, let me know. Thanks for your help.

My Personal Computer History, How I Came to Work on the Mac

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 16:14:25 +0000

I’m working on some other posts to recount the history of our CocoaHeads chapter. While brainstorming for it I couldn’t help but start to capture my own history and how I came to work on the Mac so I figured I’d write it up and share.

The following post has a lot of “Way Back Machine” links to see sites as they used to be, a fun trip down memory lane.

I didn’t start learning computer stuff until high school (1995) and even then it was on a 286 using DOS for BASIC and PASCAL. Starting college (1997) I finally got to buy a computer of my own, it was a Windows machine but I didn’t really mind at the time. After my first year of college I got to take my co-op experience. Through it I ended up doing web design for a small company just outside Philly. I got to work with a former Apple employee and he was quick to saturate me in the ways of the Mac. Overall I was impressed and by the end of the co-op was considering a Mac of my own. Now being in college and just having bought a Windows computer I wasn’t in a financial position to change, but the seeds were planted.

By 2000 I was doing web design part time for Seybold, using a Mac at work and Windows at home. I was getting into the server side of web development, learning about UNIX, Apache, MySQL and the like. Around this time Mac OS X was announced. The idea of running Photoshop next to Apache pretty much sold me and I knew right then I wanted to participate on this platform.

I probably watched Steve introduce the Aqua UI over a dozen times.

With the 2001 Macworld Keynote came the release of the Titanium PowerBook G4. I got the high end 500 MHz model. I split the cost across two credit cards and some cash. I couldn’t afford this machine but I had to have it. It was the first personal Mac I ever owned.

Initially I ran Mac OS 9 on my TiBook, but on Saturday March 24, 2001 I drove out into the rain to my local UPS warehouse to pick up the copy of Mac OS X I had ordered (No way I was going to wait until Monday for delivery!). I came home, installed it and never went back.

Well, technically I did go back to OS 9 on occasion. Some apps like Final Cut Pro (which I was using for my film class) didn’t work in the Classic environment at all and other apps, well, just worked better booted into 9. That said, I really enjoyed working in OS X. Despite all of its performance issues and bugs I was too busy enjoying all the new stuff: the new UI and the new APIs (my first time programming for a native window UI).

Time moves on, it’s 2003 or so. By now I’m a total Apple geek. Regularly reading As the Apple Turns and Daring Fireball. I’m marking my calendar and listening to Your Mac Life’s live radio shows. I’m reading tons of books about the history of Apple.

I’m now also now looking to connect with other Mac users. I eventually come to join MacBUS a local Mac User Group focused on the business side of the Mac. I also visit other groups in the area from time to time such as the Main Line Mac User Group’s Programming Special Interest Group. A fun group but there was little coverage of Cocoa, it was mostly scripting languages like AppleScript and PHP.

It was however through these groups and connections I met Randy Zauhar, a professor at the University of the Science. He and some of his students were working in Cocoa and wanted to start a regular meetup. We called it PHAD, Philadelphia Apple Developers.

And that’s it for now. I’ll recount more of PHAD and how it eventually lead into Philly CocoaHeads in my next post.

Questions for Your Job Hunt

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 03:45:49 +0000

While looking for a new job last year I slowly built a list of questions I would ask the various companies to help better understand if they were a good fit for me. Some of these questions are ripped from other blog posts, like The Joel Test, but many of them were from personal brainstorming and soul searching about what I wanted.

Hopefully this list helps those out there looking for something new.

Culture

Pretend I know nothing about the company, how do you describe it?
Who owns the company? What are their interests?
How would you describe the company culture?
What are its core values?
How is this evident in everyday action?
There is a great TED talk by Simon Sinek that has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” He describes a circle with the word Why? in the center and then moving outward, How? and then What? — Simon explains that most people can answer the What, what do they do? — some fewer still can answer the How — but the truly successful can answer the Why? Why do they do it? Why does your company do what it does? Why does this company sell paper towels instead?
What can I see / download as a public example of your work?
Name something the company is struggling with and how you are trying to fix it?
Name something the company excels at? What are the lessons to be learned?
What’s going to change at this company over the next year? three years? five years?

Process

How does upper management communicate with the company at large?
How are projects and/or teams organized?
How do teams communicate?
How do you plan and track work?
How do you estimate?
Do people work on multiple projects at the same time? If so, how is time broken up?
What is the process like from napkin idea to deployed feature / service? Where am I in this process?
Who decides what to work on?
Who is the designer? Do they work closely with the development team? How much to they appreciate, expand on norms of the various platforms?
Is there a standard process for the handing off assets, specs, motion simulations from the design team to the development team?
Do you ever do retrospectives? If so when? end of the sprint? end of the project?
Do you ever have internal projects? How do they work?
How would you split up my weekly hours between different responsibilities?
How is customer support handled?
Do I have any interaction with the customers?

Process (Client-based work)

If I’m working on a client project, what is my interaction with them?
How does pricing work for client projects? How is development involved in coming up with these figures? What would my responsibility be in this?

HR

How do you run employee reviews?
How do you gauge employee happiness?
Are there any company events? travel?
Would I be required to interview people?
Do you have an official interview process?
Do new candidates write code during their interview?
How does overtime work? Are people compensated for overtime?
How does vacation work?
Are there sick days? Long term sick days?
Can people work from home? Do they?
Is there a 401K?
Is there a health plan? Dental?
Is there on-site parking? Do I have to pay for it?
Is travel involved for this job?
Do you have a company manual? Can I have a copy?
Do you have an org chart? Can I have a copy?
How is the development group organized?
Who do I report to? Who reports to me (if any)?
How transparent is the company with regard to it’s goals, it’s plans, it’s money?

Education

How do you make sure the staff is continually learning?
Do people get a dedicated budget for things like attending conferences, purchasing books?
Do you allow people to travel to speak at conference during company time?
How do you track staff technical skills? Current abilities, wanted improvements?
Do you have an official mentoring system?

Tools

Do you use the best tools money can buy?
Do you have testers?
Do you do hallway usability testing?

Code

Do you use source control?
Can you make a build in one step?
Do you make daily builds?
Do you have a bug database?
Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
Do you have a spec?
Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
Do you do code review?
Do you do pair programming?
Can I have a tour of an active project’s code base?
How many developers are there?
What is the proficiency ratio between senior level / mid level / junior level developers in the company?
Do you let people jump around from stack to stack or do most people stay focused on their specialty?

—

End of list. Best of luck with your job hunt!

My New Job with the Big Nerd Ranch

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 22:26:40 +0000

As I posted on Twitter a few weeks ago, I recently accepted a new job with the Big Nerd Ranch. The job itself starts tomorrow and I’m really excited.

The Big Nerd Ranch and its founder Aaron Hillegass have already made a huge impact on my career. When I first started to learn to program for Mac OS X I turned to Cocoa Programming for OS X. It was the, then unlabeled, first edition of the book and it was a game changer for me. Not only did I fall in love with Cocoa but the book itself was incredibly well written and helpful. Later while attending MacHack I was even able to get a pre-conference day of training from BNR. It too was great and the teacher, Chris Campbell, was really helpful with me getting my MegaManEffect hack to work. (It even took second place in the hack contest!)

These days Big Nerd Ranch is still known for their awesome books and educational classes, which now cover way more than just Macintosh and include iOS, Android, Rails and a much more. The Big Nerd Ranch also codes for hire, doing consulting projects for various clients big and small.

Myself, I’ll mainly be teaching and preparing new teaching materials to start. To think, I’m going to be helping craft the very books that got me started — it’s a real honor. In time I’ll probably also help do some consulting but for now, the focus is on education.

I’ll work remotely from Philadelphia and travel as needed for the classes (probably 1 week every 5 or so) and to checkin with my coworkers down on the ranch in Atlanta on occation. I’ll post info on my travel plans as they evolve. I’d love to connect with other CocoaHead chapters and various “conference friends” during my travels that I’d otherwise only see at WWDC and such.

To the company I’m leaving, Tonic Design (formerly DmgCtrl), I want to say thank you. DmgCtrl took me in with a very warm welcome when I was in a bit of a rut doing solo consulting (both creatively and emotionally) and I’m extremely grateful to them for the opportunity. Over the past year+ we’ve built a lot of cool stuff together and I wish them the best of luck moving forward.

Anyways it’s going to be an exciting fews days as I get familiar with all the internal Big Nerd Ranch stuff, and to my new coworkers who might find this, I’ll see you in Atlanta for a week of introductions and geeking out real soon.

My New Job with DmgCtrl

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 03:00:27 +0000

After almost eight years of self-employment I have decided to jump back in and as of Monday started a new job working at Damage Control (DmgCtrl) here in Philadelphia.

I would suspect most people (especially those outside Philly) will not know the name DmgCtrl and that is kind of intended. The founders Jason Allum and Mac Morgan have never really put much energy in advertising their “brand” and have let their work and client happiness speak for itself. Mac once said:

Do great work and everything sorts itself out. We don’t advertise (you can see from how sparse our website is) and rarely have to even pitch work, people find out about us entirely through word of mouth. So keep your eye on quality. Everything else is a distraction.

I’ve known DmgCtrl through IndyHall and Jason for years and there is really a lot of great things going on here. This isn’t a strait-up “Platform X” development shop. The projects aren’t limited to a single tech stack nor are the employees abilities. Diverse backgrounds are common and education seems to be a core part of the culture.

It may sound trite, but one of things I really came to love about working on Shindig was the benefits of being on a development team. I loved getting feedback via code review; I loved brainstorming ideas over lunch. Going back to contracting, doing 1-man projects all on my own, I felt like I was missing out, like I’m not growing as a programmer as much as I could.

Anyways, I’m really looking forward to working at DmgCtrl. There are a bunch of interesting things in the pipeline, some I might even be able to talk about someday. 🙂

A Change of Scenery

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 02:43:27 +0000

After considering my options over the past few weeks, I made the move this past Sunday. It was another long Sunday night working at IndyHall, and as I finished my work, I proceeded to pack up my iMac and all of its various wires. For the next few weeks I was going to work from home.

To be clear, this move has nothing to do with IndyHall, the workspace, or the community. It’s more of personal problem. I’ve done a poor job balancing my work time, my investment time, and my personal time.

I’ve been working at IndyHall full-time for almost two years. The best times for me mentally were when I had a single project on which to focus. I would work 4 days a week, usually from 11:00 am til 7:00 pm and then spend Friday working from home, throwing in laundry in between Xcode indexing stints.

These days I have two main projects. One is a consulting gig with an ever-approaching release date. The other is Shindig, which is a startup I joined over a year ago. It has similar big ship dates on the horizon. I also have my own company — Clickable Bliss, which has it’s own customer support needs. Plus, I have an ongoing update to my invoicing product, which has been on hold ever since I started working on Shindig.

Over the last three months, I’ve been spending 6 days a week at IndyHall, many until late at night. It’s become very draining and stressful.

This week is my first week back at home. I’ll go into IndyHall on Thursday to pick up my new MacBook Air and to conduct PhillyCocoa Office Hours, but otherwise it’s back to coding in the bedroom. I don’t have any major goals with this change but I do want to see where it takes me. Previously, I would avoid working from home, especially since doing so can lead to easy distractions and longer lunches. These days, however, I think I need a little of that.

For now, I think I’ll close this up and grab my swim trunks for a few laps at the gym — another thing that’s been off my schedule for too long.