So unemployment is better than becoming a SharePoint developer? Really?
Category IBM/Lotus
This is something that's been fermenting inside for awhile, and a comment on a blog this week was enough to declare it ready for pouring.
As many of you probably know, I work at a company that decided to migrate off of Notes for both email and applications. Considering that's the company where I got started with Notes in 1996, and the birthplace of an incredible 15 years of professional development, it was hard to know that things were going to change. When you've spent that much time completely immersed in a technology, it's hard to start splitting time between that and something else... especially when the "something else" belongs to a company you long held as the evil empire... Microsoft.
I've spent the last 15 years going from "what is Notes?" to "this is cool" to "Notes is better than anything out there" to "Lotus is morally superior to Microsoft" to "Microsoft is evil and not to be trusted" to "hmmm... apparently the market is changing" to "let's get real... this is software, and we're professionals."
I still believe that Notes is an incredibly powerful tool, and that it is underappreciated and not fully understood by those who own it and by the market in general. I also believe that SharePoint and associated MS software is at the top of the hype cycle and can't possibly deliver everything that people think it will. That's pretty much the lifecycle of all new technologies, so nothing new there. It doesn't mean the technology is useless or evil, just that it's being applied to problems that it isn't well-suited to address.
But our emotional involvement with Lotus software (and Notes/Domino in particular) has caused many of us to assign moral attributes to something that is really nothing more than 1's and 0's (as someone so succinctly reminded us this week). And what pushed me over the edge this week was a response to a particular blogger's statement about how and why he's not able to hug someone's Xpages tree. The response was that if we don't help our company understand Notes and make the migration to newer versions, we run the risk of becoming unemployed, or worse, enduring the pain of becoming SharePoint developers.
And hence the title of this blog entry. Are you really so arrogant to tell someone that it's better to be unemployed than to work with SharePoint? Have you even *worked* with SharePoint? Is your mind open enough to possibly consider that SharePoint has some... gasp... positive features?
Working with InfoPath forms being sent to SharePoint sites reminds me a lot of Notes. And there's something to be said for the wide array of controls you can use to make things happen. No, it's not exactly like Notes, but there are valid pros and cons on both sides. A competent professional could write some really nice applications on either platform, and an incompetent programmer could screw up quite well in either.
Yes, Microsoft has a history of changing and dropping features that you may have invested heavily in. If you're in the Lotus camp, you'd have to forget Garnet, eSuite, DB2, and composite applications to claim that's never happened to you. Microsoft has a great development environment. Lotus, not so much compared to something like Visual Studio. Microsoft invests heavily in documentation and support for their communities. Lotus would like you to add your information to their wikis. Microsoft even recognizes those in their communities who are considered experts in their particular technology niches. When we tried to get that started with Lotus a couple years back, IBM's first take on the program is that it would only be open to business partners...
In my perfect world, I'd continue working with Notes and companies would be knocking at my door trying to get me to work for them on their Notes applications. But the world's not perfect, and one has to adapt. I'm a professional software developer, not a professional Notes guy, and it's taken me awhile to figure that out.
There is no moral superiority in committing to Notes and choosing unemployment over working with SharePoint and putting food on the table. In fact, you might just find out that there's more out there in your professional life than you thought.
This is something that's been fermenting inside for awhile, and a comment on a blog this week was enough to declare it ready for pouring.
As many of you probably know, I work at a company that decided to migrate off of Notes for both email and applications. Considering that's the company where I got started with Notes in 1996, and the birthplace of an incredible 15 years of professional development, it was hard to know that things were going to change. When you've spent that much time completely immersed in a technology, it's hard to start splitting time between that and something else... especially when the "something else" belongs to a company you long held as the evil empire... Microsoft.
I've spent the last 15 years going from "what is Notes?" to "this is cool" to "Notes is better than anything out there" to "Lotus is morally superior to Microsoft" to "Microsoft is evil and not to be trusted" to "hmmm... apparently the market is changing" to "let's get real... this is software, and we're professionals."
I still believe that Notes is an incredibly powerful tool, and that it is underappreciated and not fully understood by those who own it and by the market in general. I also believe that SharePoint and associated MS software is at the top of the hype cycle and can't possibly deliver everything that people think it will. That's pretty much the lifecycle of all new technologies, so nothing new there. It doesn't mean the technology is useless or evil, just that it's being applied to problems that it isn't well-suited to address.
But our emotional involvement with Lotus software (and Notes/Domino in particular) has caused many of us to assign moral attributes to something that is really nothing more than 1's and 0's (as someone so succinctly reminded us this week). And what pushed me over the edge this week was a response to a particular blogger's statement about how and why he's not able to hug someone's Xpages tree. The response was that if we don't help our company understand Notes and make the migration to newer versions, we run the risk of becoming unemployed, or worse, enduring the pain of becoming SharePoint developers.
And hence the title of this blog entry. Are you really so arrogant to tell someone that it's better to be unemployed than to work with SharePoint? Have you even *worked* with SharePoint? Is your mind open enough to possibly consider that SharePoint has some... gasp... positive features?
Working with InfoPath forms being sent to SharePoint sites reminds me a lot of Notes. And there's something to be said for the wide array of controls you can use to make things happen. No, it's not exactly like Notes, but there are valid pros and cons on both sides. A competent professional could write some really nice applications on either platform, and an incompetent programmer could screw up quite well in either.
Yes, Microsoft has a history of changing and dropping features that you may have invested heavily in. If you're in the Lotus camp, you'd have to forget Garnet, eSuite, DB2, and composite applications to claim that's never happened to you. Microsoft has a great development environment. Lotus, not so much compared to something like Visual Studio. Microsoft invests heavily in documentation and support for their communities. Lotus would like you to add your information to their wikis. Microsoft even recognizes those in their communities who are considered experts in their particular technology niches. When we tried to get that started with Lotus a couple years back, IBM's first take on the program is that it would only be open to business partners...
In my perfect world, I'd continue working with Notes and companies would be knocking at my door trying to get me to work for them on their Notes applications. But the world's not perfect, and one has to adapt. I'm a professional software developer, not a professional Notes guy, and it's taken me awhile to figure that out.
There is no moral superiority in committing to Notes and choosing unemployment over working with SharePoint and putting food on the table. In fact, you might just find out that there's more out there in your professional life than you thought.
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Comments
As a seasoned developer, (graduated from college in 1978), you're right on with Sharepoint. If someone is a good developer, they could make powerful applications in SP. Lotus/IBM has dropped the ball over the years in educating the public on what Lotus Notes can do but Microsoft promotes with expertise, to the level that they promote more than the software can do.
You can bleed yellow forever but what I've found is that you'll continue to bleed, period. We have to realize that Microsoft isn't going away in the near future however good or bad their products are. I wish I'd had situations where I learned more of the web than I have. I'm good at best on the web side. I can do anything anyone needs on the client side of Notes but I've learned that I have to adjust and try to learn more diverse skills in order to continue working. As much as I love Notes, I have to live in the real world and not a fantasy world.
Good points. Thanks for your insight. If those out there are wise, they'd heed your words. We, as Notes developers, have taken too long to realize these things and now we're struggling to catch up to the industry.
Posted by Mike Gonzalez At 12:07:52 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Ben Poole At 12:08:16 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
I hear you. I am an extreme fan of Domino and Notes, but more and more of our customers do not use Notes. We still focus on Domino but only as a Web server which gives customers a powerful Web infrastructure that can integrate with their existing environment.
Posted by Richard Moy At 12:16:06 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
going from... "Microsoft is evil and not to be trusted" to "hmmm... apparently the market is changing"
That's a curious transition, Tom. The implication is that Microsoft didn't change, just your willingness to tolerate them. That's not a criticism; just an observation.
And yes, I agree that I'd rather be developing with Sharepoint than be unemployed. I'm pretty sure the person that made the comment meant it tongue-in-cheek, but your point is still well-taken. An air of moral superiority shouldn't extend merely from one's choice of development platform.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 12:48:26 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
and leaves people blind for mistakes of the software no matter what vendor.
swearing to one tech is only viable working for a vendor and even then its not really a options because it will leavel people that have 0 clue about the other side.
Posted by Flemming Riis At 13:00:43 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by John Turnbow At 14:00:37 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by John Turnbow At 14:08:20 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
I find the yellowsphere extremely insecure. Everytime the word M$ is said, everyone goes in defensive mode.
We can love Lotus as much as we want but if an organization's strategy changes from Lotus to M$ in some way....as an employee, you have a few options:
-Embrace the change
-Be bitter and be left behind
-GTFO...
Again, its all about helping your organization achieve its goals .... no matter what the tooling you are given.
Stay tuned on my blog....got 1-2 posts coming out over the next month re: a similar situation.
Posted by Patrick Picard At 14:24:17 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
I've said many times and will continue to say that I use whatever products will get the job done in the manner I need it to get done. Most frequently, for the work I'm doing, that's been the Domino product line -- but not always, and not forever.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 15:12:52 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Peter Presnell At 16:25:37 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Duffbert At 16:33:43 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
It's not a punishment to be forced to learn a new technology, rather a gift. You're more employable, not less, and should a choice between two technologies you are familiar with arise, YOU alone could be the one gifted with the knowledge of why (or why not) the technology could help or hinder your organization.
Posted by Jess Stratton At 17:34:52 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
At PSC, one of the things we are proud is that we hire consultants, not programmers. Consultants don't care about what tech they work with, they just want to solve biz problems. You know this - you were a consultant at Boom Vang.
Posted by John Head At 18:34:11 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Gasoline bought from a BP or Citgo station runs my car just as well as any other fuel. That doesn't make them into upright corporate citizens.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 19:19:14 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 22:11:30 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
You rock. That is all. Carry on, everyone.
Posted by Rob McDonagh At 23:14:14 On 13/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 06:31:47 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Tim Tripcony At 08:04:04 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Lying, cheating, stealing and harming are wrong, whether they are done under direction by a collective or by individual will. Organizations reward or penalize these behaviors differently, and how they go about it shapes the ethical outcome of the organization as a whole. This is true of government, military, academic, religious, charitable and commercial organizations alike.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 08:05:09 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
I think, Nathan, it's really much easier to sit in judgment when you've not had the power or responsibility to make decisions with as wide an impact.
Would you say that you've never made a move that could be called into question, never made a decision in a competitive environment that wouldn't look well in some light, or didn't overstep the bounds of expectation to those around you in the marketplace?
Microsoft is no more evil than Apple, Google, Facebook, IBM, or Oracle, HP, et. al.
There are plenty of people in every one of those companies who can and would screw you over at any opportunity to increase their performance measurements.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 09:10:39 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Nathan, let me put this another way:
Do you suggest that if I found myself in a competitive situation with you, that I should feel comfortable knowing I didn't have to make sure to play as carefully as I would if I were competing against a team from Microsoft? (Assuming there was actually such an overlap of offerings, of course)
More so, are you saying that even within our small community, nobody you've done business with would give me advice about watching out for this or that bad practice they felt they'd encountered (rightly or wrongly) in the past?
Your own employer is so small compared to an IBM or a Microsoft as to be lost in rounding errors on a divisional budget and mine is even smaller. Long after both my company and your employer are long since defunct, IBM and Microsoft will continue to make more money daily than either my company's revenue or your salary will seen in a lifetime.
Even as tiny and insignificant as that may be, we can find plenty of people out there would would suggest there are examples of morally bad decisions made on either part, I'm sure.
I find it amazing that you, in your role as a technically skilled line manager in a small consulting firm in a small corner of the IT market is able to sit in moral judgment of an entire multi-billion dollar corporation -- and even more so, in judgment of the people who chose to support their families using products from that company.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 09:26:25 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
I didn't call Microsoft evil, by the way. That was Tom's word, and even he used it in the past tense. I simply said they engage in vicious business practices.
Incidentally, I don't work for a consulting firm. If you're going to persist in ad hominem attacks, you might at least get your facts straight.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 12:24:21 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
{ Link }
Posted by Duffbert At 13:30:09 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Frankly, it's starting to resemble IT Factory more and more on a daily basis.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 14:02:59 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
@24 - Nice. So you claim that I'm not qualified to judge the actions of a company, and specifically claim that you aren't either, and then try to slur my employer by applying a label of a company known to be unethical, even though neither of us is qualified to judge their actions.
Awesome work there. Good thing you didn't go to law school.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 17:18:19 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Duffbert At 17:25:32 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Back in 2000/2001 it seemed that IT Factory was on an acquisition binge, purchasing a lot of independent Lotus shops left and right. Sound familiar?
Hopefully this story ends differently than the first time around, and they pay cash, not stock.
Cheers!
Luke
Posted by Luke Kolin At 17:48:53 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Who are you to judge the people someone else does business with? You don't run a business. You don't have his financial or business needs to consider, and you're not an expert on the technology he's chosen.
It's software, not religion.
Finally: If anyone at Group, including you, felt my reference to IT Factory implied a problem with Group's ethics, that is not my intent. I know nothing at all of Group's ethics. I compare the grown pattern. I know nothing of Group's ethics, (or IT Factory's for that matter).
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 17:55:29 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
@28 - When did I judge based on who someone does business with? Why do you feel the need to argue against things I didn't say? Do you need strawmen so desperately that you have to claim I said things I didn't say? I appreciate your disclaimer regarding the ethics of my employer, but alas, I highly doubt your claim of knowing nothing about the ethics of IT Factory, when it is acknowledged and common fact that they committed massive fraud regarding revenues. If you're merely trying to draw a parallel regarding growth by acquisition, I would expect that there are many IT firms you might compare us with, including IBM, Microsoft, HP and Google. Choosing IT Factory and then claiming you didn't mean anything insulting by it seems rather ingenuous.
But perhaps that's a moral judgment on my part. And as you say, I'm totally unqualified to make those.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 19:06:47 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
Then again, you have every right to accuse Group of unethical behavior if you can back it up. If you can't, then it's just sly defamation. But neither outcome supports the idea that only persons that run businesses have moral standing to judge the actions of other persons that run businesses. That remains a truly bizarre conclusion to me.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 19:16:40 On 14/11/2010 | - Website - |
I do recall them seeming to burst on the scene, spend a great deal of time talking about how great they were, introducing a bunch of products that were very shiny but ultimately weren't interesting to me, and then mercifully going away.
As far as enjoying being in an acquired company, good for you. I hope you learn from the experience. I know I enjoyed the stock options that matured when I went through it nearly twenty years ago. On the other hand, your joy sure doesn't show in public. I had assumed it was the pressure you've been under for the last year that explained your attitude and behavior. If that's not the case, then I won't bother looking for any more excuse.
I hope you do very well as a result of the acquisition, because it means some of the really terrific people around you who deserve that kind of success will share in it. In the meantime, however, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to watch the process.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 04:26:59 On 15/11/2010 | - Website - |
Back to the topic of Tom's post.....Great stuff Tom!
As I've said for a while now....Platforms don't pay you, customers pay you. Platforms don't deliver solutions, people deliver solutions.
Too many people mistake the technology BUSINESS for some sort of religion or team sport. Especially in the Yellowverse. Very peculiar.
With regards to supposed competitors like SharePoint, more excellent points. Things like author vs editor or workflow delegation - these are concepts Notes geeks know that few others get and stuggle to implement.
One other thing - while the Yellowverse debates platforms like SharePoint and Google apps, LAMP stack platforms like Joomla and Drupal and others are quietly eating EVERYONE's lunch, and moving from SMB into the enterprise quickly. Interesting times.
Posted by Brian Benz At 11:34:22 On 15/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Coatsie At 11:38:10 On 15/11/2010 | - Website - |
Amen. We use Visual Studio for our Lotus API development and the support from Microsoft is great. At Lotusphere, I asked for a 24 hour turnaround for developer questions like Microsoft provides. I even offered to pay for it, as support is critical when you hit a problem or bug that impedes development.
Posted by Frank Paolino At 07:00:07 On 16/11/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Natalie Loopbaanadvies At 09:36:04 On 21/11/2010 | - Website - |
Some developers conveniently ignore the client after they have begun the process
of .... The Internet, as well as the connections.
Posted by Sharepoint Consulting At 05:34:29 On 03/11/2011 | - Website - |
Posted by Cedric Langley At 22:46:48 On 01/03/2013 | - Website - |