Careers Start by Peeling Potatoes

Sometimes I feel that people don't seem to want to peel potatoes anymore. Everyone wants to have the highest paying position, but few are willing to put in the hours learning how to do it. People sometimes ask me why, as a freelancer, I take some jobs that others don't want to do. Things like working with old clunky code, technical documentation, and boring CRUD apps. I do it because thats the way for me to keep getting better. My skills don't improve by working with perfect code. They improve by working with stinky code that no one will touch. I learn how stuff works by writing documentation for it. So far, I've managed to write some pretty nice manuals for some pretty ugly code. Every time I've come out with a better understanding of desgin patterns. One thing is to read about good design patterns, another is to work with bad design patterns and see how bad the code turns out to be. This helps me recognize when I'm applying such bad patterns to my own code and keeps my work nicer overall.

As someone who really interviews horribly, peeling potatoes would have been something I would had happily done at any company. Hell, you want me to test how your HTML renders in all browsers? No problem. A lot of the programmers I talk to would be insulted (!) by such thing. Seems their precious skills are not to be wasted doing such menial work. But they dont realize one thing: If the UI that represents your perfect code does not render correctly, then all of the beautiful models and abstractions that you built on your nice Mac Air wont be worth shit. The end user will not be able to use the application. No matter how nice your code might be. I had to stop interviewing and start getting freelance contracts due to how nervous interviews make me. Though Im not complaining, people appreciate a hard worker. Plus they got potatoes to peel, and I got a sharp potato peeler.

One of my latest projects was built using Joomla. I had never used it much, but knew it was a huge ball of PHP spaghetti. I struggled and strugled for about 2 weeks, until I finally saw the light. Then all just made sense. I went from what the !@$# to this is not so bad. Sure, Joomla is still not the best written project ever, but I learned a lot from it. The project had gone through the hands of some other programmers, none of which could figure it out (or maybe they didn't want to). To me, they didn't want to peel the Joomla potato. But I shipped that thing, and its now live. What an incredible feeling. Like peeling a potato with my own hands, cutting it into pieces, frying the pieces and giving them to a person to eat as part of their hard earned lunch. I don't know if I will ever stop peeling potatoes. But if that never happens, I will happily go from kitchen to kitchen peeling potatoes. There is no shame in honest work. Whether its being the CEO of $Megacorp or the guy who makes sure all the HTML renders correctly.

tl;dr: Will peel potatoes. Email in profile. :)

Hit the nail on the head.

An entrepreneur's job is to not only create but to constantly optimize their system or process. And you can't do that without getting your hands dirty. Workers are there to do their job, not optimize and save your company money. That's your job. So the whole benefit of "peeling potatoes" isn't to waste your time or get in touch with your employees but to find weaknesses in your business and find better ways to do something.

Just recently I've launched 2 products, "ToDoCal 17x26 Calendar" and "Bic Magnet Pens" which I'm selling on ebay (links below btw). The Magnet Pens I make myself by hand. I take all the pen caps off, boil them in water to soften the plastic, and one by one insert magnets into each pen cap before the plastic cools. By doing all the work manually, packaging everything, and handling fulfillment. I get to refine my process and make some very clever changes to save time later down the road.

I've already made numerous changes to the packaging for ToDoCal to get costs down and streamline my process as well as build custom tools for my MagnetPens to insert the magnets faster.

And those changes never would have happened If I had hired an employee (my little brother) to just do it all for me.

[ToDoCal] http://www.ebay.com/itm/LARGE-17-x-26-2013-Wall-Calendar-12-...

[Magnet Pens] http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=33075...

One of the problems is that a significant fraction of today's "leadership" views one's willingly "peeling potatoes" as one's self-identifying as a "loser". They then treat those people accordingly. [I'll include or even call out particularly the "potato peeler's" middle-management, here, who are often effectively his or her leadership.]

"Peeling potatoes" is, effectively, a collaboration. When one side doesn't hold up their end of the bargain, the other eventually learns that "peeling potatos" is a road to nowhere.

It can also be a matter of your socio-economic group. For an ambitious immigrant, "peeling potatoes" is perceived as a fine endeavor. For one coming out of a position assumed to confer entitlement, "peeling potatos" can be perceived as a failing.

TL;DR: Always be aware of the -- and your -- context.