From Wiktionary:

thunk (plural thunks)

1. (computing, functional programming) a delayed computation
2. (computing) In the Scheme programming language, a function or procedure taking no arguments.
3. (computing) a mapping of machine data from one system-specific form to another, usually for compatibility reasons, such as from 16-bit addresses to 32-bit to allow a 16-bit program to run on a 32-bit operating system

I think my Blog is most represented by definition (3). The goal being to take machine data from my head -> blog, but definition (2) is relevant, because I am taking no argument (editing) and by definition (1) as I get older, the computations are getting more and more delayed :)

I started blogging this week and have been trying to get some things out of my brain, to make room for some more useful stuff.. I expect I will get some posts done in this future which are more substantially researched content which might serve valuable. But for the moment, you have to indulge my ramblings..

Today I wanted to get the concept of "Darwinian Architecture" out there.. So what is Darwinian Architecture ?

In simple term, current architectural principles focus around plans, blueprints and patterns.. This view provided a great reference framework for people to try and apply. It allowed for the adoption of a discipline which was crucial to the next phase of deployment (ie. engineering)!!

Rapidly the industry has now realised that in a highly marketing driven and growing economy, technology adoption is far more dynamic. Additionally, the IT industry has a love/hate relationship with standards, defacto standards and innovation/kaos.

So Darwinian Architecture is the concept of enterprise architecture is a process of evolution. In evolutionary terms (my simple intepretation), nature spontaneously generates a change in a species (innovation). This change is accepted or rejected (Natural Selection) depending on the success of animal (product) within its environment(market/economy).

The alternative (and to a certain extent more manageable) is the paradigm of urban planning. The difference between urban planning and evolution is the former assumes some degree design criteria of target architecture/plan/blueprint. Even though this is a fairly loose concept in urban planning because of the complexity of the architecture. Evolution assume no future state (I ignore concepts of faith and religion), but there are some basic contraints defined by the environment, and the sciences of physics (gravity, etc..).

So my plan in the near future is to put some more substantial thought to the impact of this concept on IT Architecture & Engineering. Lets see if the paradigm sticks and if some concept of framework or methodology comes out to help manage this process (eg. managing evolution sounds like a great concept :)

As I have only been blogging for a few days, most of these initial entries are just stuff lobbing around in my head. Not well researched, insightful or worthy of traditional publication. I suppose that one of the advantages of blogging. It allows you to get stuff out of your head quickly.

I have always been an avid observer of the IT industry. My career started during the mid-cycle of the IT boom in Silicon Valley. I watched from the outside companies like Sun, Oracle, Apple changing the IT landscape and felt the impact as the technologies and services I supported changed beneath me.

One moment in my career that gave me a perspective of vendors, was attendance at an Apple Developers conference in the San Jose convention center in the 90's. It was near the Scully transition, but the clash of professional management and the traditional Apple culture was still evident. I also got to spend some time in Silicon Valley for the first time and experienced some of its energy.

Another moment was my involvement with DEC early in my career as part of the University IT services organization. At that time, the culture and energy that made that company great during the time of its founders was almost gone.

So my mind always wondered, "What happened to DEC and Apple?"

A reasonable question and I think the answer lies in the founding fathers of the various companies. The energy and culture of a company is definitely defined by its founders. Their on-going leadership is what gives the company a personality, its connection between a paper-based definition of the company (papers of incorporation, annual reports) and something real and tangible. Its true that companies succeed without involvement from the founders. Some truely great CEO's have made their mark (eg. Lou Gerstner, Jack Welch, Carlos Ghosn), but these are rare cases. From what I have read in the various biographies, they were great leaders who redefined the culture of the company. They founded a rebirth of a new company culture along with managing the business.

DEC and Apple (Compaq maybe also, but I don't know the history) give the great examples of companies who failed to deliver as the mantle was passed to professional management. Apple even proved the point even further as it reclaimed its culture and success through the return of a founding father.

So why to I like working for Sun ? A big part of it is the continued involvement of a few of the founding fathers, and some guys who are the founding fathers of significant IT industry icons. Because of this, the culture of Sun is strong, even during the trouble past and moving towards the optimistic future.

Why does Sun attract smart people (no reflection on the author of this blog) ? Because smart people don't just come to work to make money. Smart people want to be apart of a community that is trying to do something. They want to work in a company culture that strives for innovation and participation. There are few companies that existed during the first IT boom and that are in the same business that have retained that cultural tie to the founding father.

So the evolution to the next step in a vendors life is inevitable. Time marches on, and nobody lives forever. I think transition to the next phase needs to be handled much like parents to children. The values and culture needs to be carefully imprinted on the next generation over a long period of time. The child needs to experience the parents values and then at some point the child seeks independence. A vendor/company is not a business that requires hiring a professional manager and a fixed transition, its a living breathing community.

Its important to be up front when you a essentially giving your opinion. I have no desire to rule the world or become incredibly wealthy. My goals are to make the most of my life and enjoy the journey.

Nothing I say here should be interpretted as condoning a "live to work" attitude. I am definitely in the "work to live" side of the equation. But work takes alot of time and you need to live that part of you life, so make it rewarding..

In that context, I offer my opinion of "10 concepts to help live your career";

1. Work with people you find interesting/challenging.
2 Always be professional and courteous to all (its a karma thing and applies to all aspects of life)
3. Seek a mentor(s) who has had a career you find interesting. They are the biggest source of opportunity.
4. Try to work in the same physical location as your direct management.
5. Take the opportunities your gut tells you to do. Don't listen to your mind.
6. Don't overplan the next career step, you may miss an elevator.
7. Be aware of company politics, but don't make it a profession.
8. Contributing to your community (social, professional, industry) is not your job, but is good for the career and soul.
9. Don't dwell on the setbacks as every negative will eventually deliver a postive (karma, ying&yang, goes around comes around, ..cloud has a silver lining).
10. Understand that there is "what you know about yourself", "what others know about you". Self awareness is the most powerful capability.

How do you know if you are an consultant, an engineer or an architect. Are you really a manager like your title says ? Is your title ambiguous and you are doomed to travel your professional life with no identity or sense of community.

I have since the begining of my career struggled with my identity. Initially it was easy, I knew no better and happily accepted my as "system administrator" or "systems programmer". I still had little or no chance of providing a simple explanation to my family what I did. answer: "Oh Brad, he works in computers!" response "Ahhhh!"

Then I as I started dealing with outside organizations, the business card became a currency of work. My job title and my business card title increasingly moved apart. My job title became a fixed descriptor within a HR system to define a pay grade, and my business card title became a ceremonial exchange of seniority and importance.

Recently titles have been used to determine membership to a community. Am I an engineer, architect, manager or consultant. None of these have a clear definition, so I could call myself a "Consulting architectural engineering manager", but the printers would have a headache with the business card, so again I choose. If I choose "architect" then I am no longer considered suitably technical to be part of the engineering community, if I choose "engineer" automatically the communities believe I have lost all knowledge of customer requirements and business objectives. If I choose consultant, then both the former communities recognise me as a generator of paper for the sole purpose of keep bookselve companies in business. To be a manager, traditionally describes leasdership and importance, but to most it brings the destain of a bureaucrat.

So mostly I pick titles that cannot possibly be attributed with any meaning. "Program Manager", "Engagement Manager" because the automatic response is to ask me what that means. This gives me the opportunity to describe more about what I actually do, in context of the person I am talking about.. Unfortunately that strategy has its limitations. I now belong to know recognizable community, a outcast amoungst my peers :)

So now I ponder am I a architect or engineer. I think the answer is the former, and I will try to explain why.

In simple terms, an engineer to me is a person who takes a set of requirements specification and turns them into some tangible product, or a person who takes a creative idea (requirements without a customer) and turns them into a product/technology. In a "2.0" world, taking multiple products are putting them together to create another new product is valid engineering. To work with a truely gifted engineer is a great experience, and one I have experienced a few times.

An architect however takes a users vision of there requirements and turns them into a tangible customer requirements specifications for engineers to execute. Additionally, architects can take products and work out frameworks (architectures) of how to put them together to meet various visions (for theoretical customers).

Its the same paradigm as the building industry. Within the building industry the same sliding scale of people exist within those two roles. There are architects whose plans are very engineering in nature and there are engineers who works is very architecturally valid. So there is always a blurring between these roles.

I think within that continuum you must be capable of existing at one end of the spectrum (technology execution vs. customer vision) to consider yourself in that role. So I think my alignment is more with customers than technology, which makes architect the more suitable choice.

Its obvious as the career journey continues, I will still call myself whatever happens to be the move effective title and label to accomodate the ceremony of business, but I am what I am!

I thought I should start this category with a brief background so you can choose to accept or disregard my views on the subject of career and work.

I exited undergraduate studies (a completely different blog topic) in physics and mathematics in Australia (my country of birth) and got a job working in a University IT department. Got to admit, I enjoyed the campus life so much, it was a dream job. As an apprenticeship it was exception. Started doing the normal stuff, helpdesk, desktop and network support and progressed up through workstations (DEC Microvax, DECstation) to the bigger stuff (Vax Clusters, IBM Mainframe, SGI Supercomputer). I did the normal stuff, support, system administration, and a little systems programming. Eventually and the need to fund my life got stronger, I moved into management positions and further from my technical roots.

I moved on from Universities to a range of management and consulting positions in various industries (telco, utilities, finance and public sector). A combination of technology deployment, IT operations, architecture & planning with some true consulting (BCP/DR, Risk Management, Outsourcing, Down-sizing).

The one thing I know about myself and can directly see my reflection in my father is the periodic need to throw myself in the deep end. Perhaps a micro-midlife crisis (or perhaps a mid-decade crisis). Anyway, career wise, this came in the form of Sun Microsystems. A friend who I had worked with as an Apple reseller had taken up a job and referred me to a position in the company. It was a career xroads, the world of Sun and the IT Management career I was moving along do not really co-exist. So I took the same decision that has served me well for the past twenty years, I went with my gut and did not analyse the situation too much.

Working at Sun in Australia was a completely different world. I thoroughly recommend people work for the vendor side of the IT Industry at some point in their career. The financial imperative of a company that sells products and sevrices gives you great clarity of focus. Anyway, I was doing similar things in the areas if technology implementations, project management but very little IT management level consulting. After a couple or three years, the micro-mid life crisis struck again. Working in a country of 24 million on a city of just over a 1 million, I begain to realise what a small world we live in.. A fortuitously an email happened across my desk "Project Manager needed for Japan!!"

Once again, off into the deep-end. What do I know about Japan! Except for Japanese Tourists on the Gold Coast of Australia, not much. Did I speak the language (not at all)? Before you know it, that hat is in the ring and the response came back very quickly. "We need you to be in Japan in two weeks time for two weeks and then possibly two or three trips in the next month" Bags were packed and off I went.. A two week gig, became two months and three and half years later, I leave Japan (that is a story for another time). The job was basically DC Management and Support consulting for the largest consumer of IT in Japan. There was also a short gig as a services architecture for a large global customer.

After three years, many days snowboard, getting married and essentially absorbing as much Japanese and japanese culture as a could, I faced my next micro-mid life crisis. I had come to a xroads where I needed to commit at least another 5 years to Japan, or move on to the next thing. Low and behold, an opportunity to do a job in Singapore came across the table. Bags and new family packed, off we go to Singapore.

The work in Singapore involved alot of travel. As a Solution Architecture for Managed Services I supported Sun customers across Asia Pacific. Most notably I spent alot of time in India, China, Thailand and back to Japan. I never quite managed to make it back to Australia. Anyway, a mind broadening experience this was from a diverisity of markets, economies, customers and culture perspective..

You guessed it, 2.5 years later, and a new baby girl, the crisis returns.. This time an opportunity to move to the US was up for consideration. So in May 2006, we arrive in the US to start a job in Silicon Valley working for the services group.

Its been a fun ride and I have lots of experiences to share, some personal and some career and job related. I will try and catalog them here and my personal blog in the coming weeks, months and years. Of course the journey has just begun ...