ya, well, I can relate, you know, cause I'm a Pisces, and I'm also a unicorn, so that basically makes me Superman. I suggest you pay me a lot of money and don't tell me what to do. If you treat me like a princess maybe I'll let you piggyback on my fabulous talent all the way to the bank cause I'm such a nice guy.
I detect sarcasm here, but that's ok. The thing is that suggesting things isn't very productive. If you want employers to pay you a lot of money and not tell you what to do, you should demonstrate that you're worth a lot of money and work best without being told what to do.
If you currently work equally well when you are or are not being told what to do (let's just call it micromanaging, because no one really minds high-level being-told-what-to-do), and you don't want to be micromanaged, should you negatively bias your micromanaged output so your managers will stop doing it as much?
If you enjoy being passive-agressive, then I suppose the answer is yes.
My point was more along the lines of saying "don't think that just because a blog post says you're a free electron, that you're going to automatically get job offers lining up for you." You should get jobs because you are a good match for them.
If you currently feel micromanaged, you're better off hitting the problem head-on. Either find out why you're getting micromanaged and correct it, or find a new job.
I wouldn't describe myself as a "free electron" programmer, that seems a bit out of my league. But I am an inventor (INTJ), and I can tell you that the industry does not seem particularly aware that these personality types exist.
The overwhelming sentiment across the industry seems to be that there is one and only one ideal software developer archetype, who should fit into the overarching software development machinery like a well-designed cog. However, my personality traits make me wholly unsuited to being a cog, I just can't do it. It would probably be vastly more convenient for me if I could be a cog, but I can't sustain that mode for long. I invent things, I make new things, I make broken things better, I tackle novel problems, I don't sit on an assembly line, I don't do the same thing day in and day out, I don't do well with routine. I am creative, curious, adventurous, pragmatic, strong-willed, and occasionally try crazy things. And I have a legitimate passion for technology. I am not risk-averse, dogmatic, susceptible to intimidation, nor even remotely interested in office politics. Unfortunately, many of these traits seem to be the opposite of what's necessary to get along, and get ahead, at any modern, large software company.
I've run across a few other programmers with similar personality traits (inventors, architects, masterminds) and for the most part they run against the grain of the establishment and do not seem to be treated particularly well by the industry (a common theme seems to be jumping ship earlier than usual).
In fairness, jumping ship early isn't necessarily related to how programmers are treated in the case of "free electrons". These personality types tend to get bored with projects quickly and enjoy new challenges.
Note that I use the term "free electron" more in the sense of being a particular set of personality types and less in the sense of necessarily being a great programmer. Either way, I feel that "free electrons" are very valuable no matter what their level of programming skill.
That said, you're correct that these people tend to go against the grain. And you can't really blame people for not knowing how to deal with them: they're incredibly rare. It's a shame though. These kinds of programmers are valuable in so many ways and bring something else to the table that can't be found anywhere else (whether or not they feel they qualify as "free electrons").
And FYI, inventors are ENTJ. INTJ is the mastermind. :-)
So much like me, especially my deficiencies as free-electron are painfully obvious to me. What's even worse, I'm a loner so there's no one to compensate for my deficiencies.
I suppose I focused too much on potential weaknesses of free electrons. I should probably make another blog post about the strengths. After all, your strengths should be more than enough to balance out your weaknesses!
I don't think that's the case. You praise us for having unmatched aptitude for understanding complex systems. While it's probably true, reading such open praise made me uneasy.
Strengths do not balance weaknesses because understanding thing fast and thoroughly does not help me to finish what I am building before loosing interest.
Programming by yourself is really hard, no matter what your personality type.
Other people may have more of a "get it done" personality, but they aren't as good at coming up with an "it" to get done. If you put the two together, you have a perfect match!
I hadn't read the article cited before and it hit home for me in some ways. I've been the guy to deal with tons of crap code that I hadn't ever seen before and fix that critical bug that was making it impossible to ship.
I'm also a pain sometimes if I don't get my way. Right now I care about page load times and features for our current customers and my management cares about these big initiatives. I see their point but that's not what I want to be doing so I have a hard time caring. It's not a good thing really but the things that I've done on my own have turned into major improvements to our technology and served our existing customers very well.
Not sure where I'm going with this but it sort of put some more perspective on some decisions I've felt as though I need to make about where to take my career. I've been coming to the conclusion that a startup is the only way I'm probably going to be happy at work for the short, medium, and long term.
