Being more than programmers

Steven Covey put it nicely in one of his books. Our mission in life can be measured in four ways: To Live, To Love, To Learn, and To Leave a Legacy.

It's good to grow outside the programming box. I've found such growth, even when not directly aligned with corporate goals, always helps the larger organization anyway. This is something that is deeply counter-intuitive, so many organizations drop the ball in this respect.

I remember consulting with a dynamic, fast-growing software consulting company out of Austin, Texas, many years ago. They had went from 8 to 800 employees in something like six years. As part of that, they were having all sorts of conversations and problems between having small-company roots and big company problems.

As part of that, I was talking to one of the full-time managers about how they measure employee performance. I'll never forget what she said. She said that they used to just have the employee each quarter figure out some personal goal and go achieve it. "We can't continue doing that," she told me, "because so many people pick goals that are not aligned with our corporate goals."

I left the office thinking that I just heard how that company was planning to stop growing.