work – Kiel the Coder

Field Work

When I started working for a national AV integrator in 2010, I had to fly almost every other week. It was expected that a programmer would be on-site for final commissioning, but sometimes I could get away with only flying in for the last couple of days. This pattern continued for quite a while: office for one week working on next week’s programming, then in the field the second week for commissioning. Rinse and repeat.

It didn’t always go to plan though. I also had service calls where I would be dispatched during the time I’d set aside to work on programming. So I would lose time driving to a local client, only to troubleshoot wiring issues or faulty gear. Good use of billable programmer time! This did teach me not to spend more time than necessary in the office working on offsite programming. I would try to finish as quickly as possible because I knew I couldn’t count on having the full week to work on it. I was also salaried so the expectation was: get the job done, who cares about your hours.

Then I got married. We had kids. I couldn’t be away from home quite so much, so I tried to push back on travel and opt for more remote work. My team finally got work to pay for TeamViewer licenses (that I’d been using freely for years at that point). I think the reduced amount of travel improved moral, but it did make commissioning harder. What I used to be able to turn around in a day or two started taking three, or even a full work week. Maybe not as productive as I once was, and sometimes the difference in timezone meant working long into the night. Trading one unhappiness for another.

So anyway, what sparked this post is: I just got back from a trip to Washington DC. It’s very rare for me to travel at my current company but every time I do, I’m reminded why. I lose a ton of productivity when I’m in the field.

If I’m in the office, I’m frantically trying to program 2 or 3 jobs that are all happening at the same time. It could be more, but thankfully I made 2024 The Year of NO! so a lot of programming work gets contracted out again. I’m also a team of two now, and it has helped immensely for me to regain some sanity! Haven’t recovered any time yet, but I suspect that will happen sooner now. So while I have reduced my workload, I’m constantly inundated with emails and phone calls. I’m a manager, but my team isn’t large enough for me to delegate most of the work. I’d really like to get another programmer on staff for the West coast, but that will have to be 2025 goals.

When I’m in the field, I do my best to focus on the customer in front of me. I can’t split my time like I do at the office. This means I say No! to a lot of help requests that come to me. I have to. I can’t get bogged down working on some other problem when I’m taking up a customer’s time and using their space. But just that those requests keep flooding in is still enough of a distraction, it slows down the work I’m trying to do.

This last trip spanned a weekend, and while I feel like a tool for giving up a weekend for work, I’m always amazed at how easy things are to do when I don’t have a constant interruption battle. Like, I could quickly find and fix bugs in programming because I could focus on what I was doing. It was a reminder that my time estimates have skewed over the years to include all the communications bullshit that pulls me away from getting actual work done.

I feel like we’ve done this to ourselves. There are too many communication channels now, and they’re all flooded with noise. If I could, I would mandate the following uses:

Email for low priority messages, task assignments, or distribution group messages (maybe not low priority in that case)
Teams chat for quick questions or sending documents for review
Teams or Zoom video for meetings (if not everyone is located in the same office)
Text message or phone call for urgent things

And that’s it! If I could switch to only checking email messages a handful of times throughout the day, I could recover that focus I’ve lost. And working in the field over a weekend reminded me of what could be. But that is not the culture at our company. I tend to get someone using at least 3 of those mediums to convey the same information.

I’m about to post this, and I see that WordPress has added a bunch of AI tools to the publishing checklist. I somehow feel that AI is going to make the problems I stated above worse because it’s only going to add more noise to the mountain of communication I have to sift through every Monday – Friday.

Burnt

I haven’t written a word in months because my work schedule has eaten away at my mornings and evenings. The workload has been insane since last year. I do miss writing; it’s a good outlet for maintaining my sanity.

I have ideas rattling around that I’d still like to explore, and I think this blog is still a good place to do that. But I can’t bring myself to stay on a computer any longer than I have to after putting in 12 to 14 hours everyday. I’m mentally exhausted at the end of the day, and I don’t want to spend any more time away from family either.

Our industry ebbs and flows, it always has. It’s hard to track from one year to the next when the busiest times will be. I’ve had distinct memories of suffering through March–trying to close out fiscal year business–but I’ve also had other years where end of summer turned into a death-march–trying to get things lined up for 4th quarters. The whole of 2023 was brutal and the project schedule continued right into 2024 without any let up.

I’m taking 15 minutes to write this for 3 reasons:

I miss writing
I’m waiting for a callback
The techs I’m supporting across 3 jobs today are all busy working on something else

I do think things are getting better. I would like to spend time thinking about project planning and schedules and to figure out how to stay out of this situation, but that’s asking to fix a lot of things that are out of my control. I can only control my actions.

Thank you for reading.

The Future of AV Programming: Part 7

2023 is coming to an end, and I’m so glad. This year has felt like I’ve stumbled out of one bad project right into the next. It’s been a constant battle of double-booking, short timelines, and delayed product. Everyone’s unhappy.

I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the challenges this year, but also to weave in my thoughts on where this is all headed in Part 7 of my Future of AV Programming saga.

Tools of the Trade

Being in the field again for the past week has been a good reminder that every AV programmer should equip themselves with some essential tools. I foolishly cleaned out my backpack last week because I wanted to have an easier time passing through security at the airport. Normally I take everything out of my backpack, dump it into my checked bag, then when I get where I’m going, transfer everything back into my backpack. Oh well, lesson learned.

Lessons from Masters

Originally, I planned to write a post about everything I learned at Crestron Masters this year. In prior years, I wrote everything down that I could and would bring it back to our team of programmers to share. I don’t know how much they cared (my notes work well for me but usually not anyone else), and since Crestron records all their sessions now, I feel less need to capture everything. Work was busy this week, and I haven’t had time to reflect until now anyway.

Crestron Masters 2022

I’m getting excited for next week: Crestron Masters is happening in Orlando, FL. Classes are a little different this year. I’m basically taking Test-Driven Development one day and Immersive HTML5 the next. Then the last day is a bunch of panel discussions. I’m sure it will be worth the trip! Anything is better than sitting on Zoom all day…

The Future of AV Programming: Part 6

It’s been over a year since my last installment in this series, so I thought it was a good time to reflect on where things are and where they seem to be going. I completely missed the mark on touchless control! But I think the need to diversify our skills as AV programmers is more apparent than ever. Prepare yourself, things look a bit bleak.

More Office Treasure!

The owner’s manual for the office microwave oven has been sitting on top of it for over a year now. I’m very tempted every time I see it sitting there to file it in the round filing cabinet. While I was waiting for my coffee to finish, I thumbed through it to see exactly how much instruction is required for a microwave.

But then I stumbled across the page titled MICROWAVING PRINCIPLES and liked the drawings so much I think this manual is a keeper. I really appreciate Sharp hiring an artist to draw such an excited water molecule!

A quick blurb about RADAR and World War II was enough to entice me to read up a little more about early experiments to cook food using microwaves. I found this neat story from IEEE: A Brief History of the Microwave Oven. Enjoy!

Salary

This is a taboo topic, so I’m probably not going to broadcast this one across social media.

I’m very fortunate. I earn decent money doing something I find interesting: programming. I don’t love sitting in front of a computer all day, but that’s where most of the programming happens, so I’ve learned to deal with it. I take frequent breaks, stand up, stretch, get in some push-ups, sit-ups, go outside. It’s taken me years to recognize this important balance between getting work done and maintaining your health.

Office Treasure!

I love going into our office and exploring our kitchen / break room / storage closet when I’m waiting for my coffee to brew. There are so many strange things we’ve held onto for who knows how long. Like today, I just noticed this nice Pelican case sitting behind the refrigerator:

What treasure could we be hiding in such a nice case??

A Sanyo XGA projector?! It’s a $400 case for a $40 projector! I love it! I wonder how long this thing will sit next to the fridge… We should really clean out a lot of this junk we’ve been hoarding.