Thoughts on Agent Themed Instanssi 2014

To continue the tradition I participated in this year's Instanssi. It is a local demoscene event held at Jyväskylä. It lasts for three days and packs plenty of action. This year it was agent themed.

You can check out some of the results. Not all is suitable for work unless you like strange stares so take care.

Personally I participated in a little agent themed competition where you were supposed to crack series of codes. I even wrote a tiny decoder to avoid using clunky, paper based one. Overall it was a nice challenge and I would not mind taking part again. I also learned to pick simple locks at a workshop. Maybe that skill comes in handy some day.

effectserver-client - Controlling Lights Using Node.js

As Instanssi provides programmable lighting through a simple UDP interface I decided to play around with them a little. As a result of my experiments I ended up releasing a small Node based library. effectserver-client abstracts UDP and provides simple means to animate the lights. The library comes with a couple of sample effects.

Of course it's an useless library unless there is suitable hardware around. It would be a good exercise to write an UDP server that works with the client and then provide a visualization for that. Perhaps that is something I will do next year. Or sooner even if there's sufficient motivation and reason to do that.

Conclusion

I hope we see Instanssi again next year. It's not a very big event but that in part makes the atmosphere nice and cozy. This is one of those things I value in Finland very much. It is excellent to have a local community that keeps these kind of events alive. You don't have that everywhere.

EDIT: Photos of the event by Rakeinen.

jsDelivr API - From a Casual Experiment to Success

During the past few months I've been pushing forward a little API for JavaScript CDNs. It's a project that started casually and just keeps chugging on. It's a valuable especially for tool authors but who knows how people will use it. I authored a blog post on the API at gun.io blog. Check it out for some juicy details.

How to Test for Cultural Fit?

As I have discussed earlier, culture is an inseparable part of a company. This is something important to take in count when recruiting. Just looking at numbers and hoping it will work out is not enough. You will have to make sure the prospect fits the organization. But how do you test for this cultural fit?

Valve has made its culture partly visible in a form of an employee handbook. By making these things explicit you will make it easier for people to evaluate whether they would like to work in the sort of environment you have in place. This is only part of the story, though.

Rather than hiring through a proxy, let it be a hiring manager or a HR agency, ask the people the person would be working with. In case you feel good about the person and want to play it safe, you can consider implementing a trial period. This is something Buffer has done with great success.

By actually working for a period of time together both parties will have a good idea if it's something to keep on continuing. Alternatively you could employ the person through a freelance contract and work towards something more permanent as trust is gained. Sometimes retaining the situation as is might actually be preferable to employment. Flexibility can be a good thing.

I feel this is one of those things you should tackle early on. If there's no fit, things can get awkward over longer term. It also restricts the potential of the arrangement. Good environment can bring the best out of people while inverse is true as well.

Culture over Talent over Skills

In my previous post I posited that measuring experience in years doesn't make any sense. It is a very difficult measure to define and it is missing the point. The way I see it both talent, ability to grow, and cultural fit matter more in recruiting. Skills can be learned.

That said I'm not saying skills are entirely worthless. You can make an entire career out of skill. Consider professional level athletes for instance. I think the situation is somewhat different in knowledge intense domains, however. It is more about adapting to the current realities and keeping current. Skills valuable yesterday might not be that tomorrow.

Culture - The Ultimate Force Multiplier

In the right context talent can flourish and skills developed. In the wrong context talent and excellent skills may go to waste. Culture is the ultimate force multiplier. That is something that cannot be separated from the business.

From this perspective the core questions are how to develop the right kind of culture that attracts the people you want. Recruiting the traditional way, ie. job ads and boards, is more of a hit or miss kind of thing. What if the people you want to recruit would find their way to you? What sort of things could you do to achieve this?

Develop Culture, Earn Talent

If you develop the right kind of culture, talent and skills will follow. If you dismiss the importance of culture and just focus on skills, results might be somewhat suboptimal. The business can work of course but you would be missing out on a lot of potential benefits. When the direction of business and individuals are aligned, results are made.

This is the reason why I see work ads focusing on skills misguided. There are smarter ways to attract the people you want and need. Forget years of experience and focus on fit. The skills will follow if you let the people to grow. Do not expect the people to be absolutely "ready" and you will have a much better chance of finding the talent that fits your organization.

Measuring Experience in Years Is Messed Up

When it comes to recruiting, my pet peeves are CVs and years of experience. How can you possibly quantify experience in years? What does that mean exactly?

For instance I have worked with C in some capacity since the last millennium. That doesn't mean I have over a decade of experience in it. Nowhere near even. It would be impossible for me to provide an exact figure in years. It just does not make any sense.

Experience Is Not Just About Skills

If you have even a little bit of talent, you can grasp the basics of a language very fast. Becoming an expert can take a long time. Often it's not just about the language, it's about the ecosystem. You have to be aware of what kind of tools to use and when.

Rather than looking for skills in specific languages, libraries, frameworks, whatnot, it would make a lot more sense to focus on raw talent. People have natural affinities that make them better in certain things by default. I for one make a much better endurance athlete than weightlifter.

It takes a lot of work to turn this talent into actual skills. As a recruiter I would rather seek for talent and ability to grow rather than skills. This is particularly true if you expect your recruits to last.

Why to seek to fill specific positions when you should be looking for people that have the right talent and capacity to grow to fit the need?

The problem with skill based recruiting is that skills become outdated fast, especially in IT. It is common that in frontend web development at least a part of the stack gets replaced with something newer every year. The cycle can be faster even depending on your environment. It's more about the ability to adapt than skills in particular technology.

How to Measure Experience?

If years are a bad measure how should you measure experience then? As a recruiter you should look into accomplishments. Ten years of experience on paper tells you a lot less than what the person has actually achieved. What did you do during those ten years? If it's under NDA, tough luck.

Besides achievements blunders are valuable too. You haven't tried if you haven't failed. I know this is something people aren't particularly proud of. This is what experience is at its rawest form. It is about knowing about all the things that can go wrong. You can be considered an expert once you know enough about failure and understand how to avoid problems.

Past is a bad predictor of the future. There simply are too many factors in play. Even if you adopt a broader mindset and look beyond the years you can still go massively wrong. Talented people are not necessarily the right people.

Who Are The Right People to Hire?

If you fail to hire people that fit in culturally, it will not work out for anybody. Find common values and goals. If you do, it can become more than work. Even though it might seem like it, most people aren't here to work, they are to fulfill their purpose whatever that might be. If you can align personal goals with company goals, you can expect great things and a thriving relationship.

Just to recap, focus on three things: cultural fit, talent and skills. I'm in total agreement with Chuck Blakeman that this is the way to go. Too often recruiting starts from skills and forgets about the important two.

I'm not saying skills aren't important. Over longer term other factors become more important. Developing cultural fit and sheer talent are more difficult if not impossible. You simply cannot make a bodybuilder out of a slim guy and so on. It just doesn't work.

You Learn to Appreciate Your Context Only After You Lose It

You learn the most about yourself when you lose your context. I took a big step eight weeks ago. I spent the hardest part of Winter at Italy. For me it's like Summer here. The weather is just ideal for an adventurous person like me. At times it was a little rainy and windy but nothing I couldn't take. It was funny to see people in jumpers when it was 20 C out there. What do they wear when it gets really cold?

Weather is just one part of the equation. It is always challenging when a lot of things change at once and you need to adjust. I have taken certain things for granted for too long and this trip made me realize some of those.

I also have a lot of thinking to do as a result. I will need to choose my next steps very carefully. I took on perhaps too many projects during my time here. When work starts to feel like work you need to do something. I might need to restructure my business a little bit and start working smarter. I also should start saying "no" a lot more often and be more focused. You can do only so many things at once.

I Miss My Winter

The dark, cold part in the middle is absolutely dreadful and takes away your energy. In return we get to enjoy Spring. Is this something that is harder to experience without a proper Winter?

Be as it may I've noticed my energy levels have gone up. I sleep less and feel more awake. All days aren't perfect but that's just normal. It still feels nice to go out there not having to worry about what to wear. Fashionistas might disapprove my choices but it's their problem.

I Miss My Nature

Even though there is plenty of nature in Sardinia, it's different. I have taken the presence of forest within the vicinity of my home for granted. You only realize that when you lose it.

Maybe it's a Finnish thing but for me personally it's one of those places that allows me to relax and gain energy. Yes, I can go to visit a park here or take a nice little ride on bike. It's different.

I Miss My Sauna

Again, this might be one of those weird Finnish things. But life is just not the same without a sauna. Maybe it serves a similar purpose as nature. It's a tradition. It's something that allows you to forget yourself for a while.

I Miss My Culture

Probably the biggest hit I took had to do with losing my cultural context. When you are pretty much alone in a strange country you start to look your own culture in a different way. Perhaps I appreciate some aspects of the Finnish culture more now.

Besides culture in general the absence of a technical culture has been a little shocking. Where is IT in Italy? Maybe it exists in certain cities and you just have to know where to look. It's a different economy, you can tell that.

That said the locals have been excessively friendly and there are features that I find admirable. We have lost some of these in our own culture. You can see very well that family is in the center of it. It's not all just money and materialism.

Interestingly Finns value nature perhaps a little more. This is visible in the way we recycle and in nature too. Less trash on the roads. Italy is also missing freedom to roam and private property is respected on an entire different level. That's one of those things which is so easy to take for granted. You just never think about things you are given.

I Miss My Language

If you want to learn a very expressive language, learn Finnish. Most Finns speak English, though, so communicating won't be a big problem. You just have to figure out what they are saying. You might expect the situation to be the same in Italy especially given they live partially on tourism. Mostly that's just a false belief.

In case you want to get into the culture, you had better be prepared to learn the language at least a little bit. It's fairly fast to pick up and resembles English somewhat structurally. I still have a lot to learn myself but I can understand a word or two and get basic ideas through. If I get back, this is definitely something I need to improve upon.

Conclusion

Even though I missed certain things about Finland that doesn't mean the trip wasn't a success. As I said in the beginning you learn the most about yourself when you challenge yourself. I would not doubt to make another Winter trip. Another one would be so much easier. In order to leap you have to jump first.