YOU, yes YOU! can be a programmer and still be ridiculously good looking!
You’re a developer and like what you do, but never quite felt like you fit the mold. Sure you are slightly bemused by the semi-nerdy reference here or there, but you could never quite buy into the full depth and breadth of geekitude that seems to come attendant with the job. To stay current and bad-ass, you need to stay on top of the new technology and best practices and engage the tech community on the web, but is it really worth suffering through the 133t IM-speak, WOW fan fiction, or shitty homemade anime? Subtract out those social liabilities and you are left for the most part with the boring, monotone (written monotone even!) code posters with their foo / bar / baz examples of how to overoptimize some academic jerk-sort algorithm applicable only in string theory super-manifold physics, a field which yields decidedly *no play*.
I mean, come on, you’ve actually *got* game with the ladies, you can pick your own clothes, work a room, hotwire a car, defuse a bomb. Are you alone afloat in a lifeboat of despair in a sea of jack-assery? Who can you identify with on the web in these trying times? The answer is the man who singlehandedly changed the internet as we know it, Justice Gray.
*** For the uninitiated, Justice Gray is an Edmonton-based leading .Net developer, .Net convention speaker, influential opinion maker, paradigm-challenger and lady killer. From the outset he has championed the suave, charismatic, virile and pithy route as a fast track the top of the industry, and has largely pulled it off. Read on to learn his tricks of the trade…
A mentor to shake you out of your career doldrums has arrived …
Justice Gray is North America’s favorite metrosexual software consultant and he’ll be the first one to tell you so. He brazenly boasts to be "a seething cauldron of rampaging masculinity. A fighter! A brother! Your secret lover!" …. And he’s right.
Alright Mike, what did this guy do that’s friggin’ awesome? He some sort of guru? Did he orchestrate some awesome HACK? Are you being remunerated for writing this?
The answer is this: He staked his claim on the development world as someone who was over the top and didn’t give a crap.
Somewhere along the line , Justice Gray decided he was going to write posts people might actually want to read, and others that they probably weren’t cool enough to read. He’s written informative tech posts that don’t suck such as his seminal "My Grandmother And.." series. He’s talked about tricks and techniques for staying ahead of the game, book reviews, and started viral memes which wormed their way through the ether. From witty bombast blogger, Justice has become a full blown Dude, now making the conference-presenting circuit and dancing dangerously close to that tier of blogger / consultant / opinion makers that have been getting snapped up by Redmond in rapid succession these days (Hanselman, Conrey, Haak, etc).
What can YOU learn from Justice Gray?
I’ve never met the guy but wanted to give a shout out on my blog, urging people to check out his style. What better way than with an interview? So get off your mouse-ass, go poke around his site, then come back here and read:
12 Questions with Justice Gray:
vs. 
MD :"Justice Gray"? What kind of name is that? What are you some sort of superhero or something?
JG : Yes, a *sexual* superhero. As for "what kind of name is that", considering how many hostesses worldwide have told me it’s an awesome one, I’m inclined to agree. Maybe you should try going through life with a name like Justice and see what it does for your seduction success ratio!
MD: <sychophant>Your metrosexual bombastic blog persona certainly stands out in the otherwise tedious world of tech blogs.</sychophant> Was there ever a concern that having an over-the-top blog would hurt you professionally? Do you "forget to mention" it to clients, potential mistresses, parole officers, etc?
JG : You mention the "metrosexual bombastic blog *persona*" as if that’s *assumed* - that’s actually who I really am (just ask my wife). It’s the Justice Gray that initially meets with clients and is a little "dialed down" that is the assumed persona, and once my relationship with a client is a little more entrenched it gets a lot more bombastic - I’d say it gets more metrosexual as well but that’s not something I hide at any point. =) I like things better that way, and judging from my ability to avoid being out on the streets begging for change - okay, fair enough, to avoid doing that as my sole source of income - my clients do as well.
My experience has been that companies also prefer someone who is authentic even if they seem a little "out there". Now, there’s important caveats here - there’s still the normal decorum and tact one has to use in everyday conversation. Being authentic means *nothing* if you’re authentically an @$$hole; no one wants to work with you. I can think of a couple blogs I have read where I knew the person was being open and speaking their mind, but doing so in such a way that I was concerned that said person would be a cancer in a group of developers with me. That’s not the kind of reaction I’m looking to engender. I think there are enough developer slap fights out there where guys who never got laid in their lives figure their big call to manhood is to have a flame war in someone’s comments thread.
Clients get lied to often, either by:
a) passive-aggressive, non-confrontational nerds who try to avoid confrontation and thus also avoid telling them what needs to be said
b) good talkers with absolutely no technical credibility whatsoever
Having someone on their side who doesn’t treat them like idiots because they haven’t spent their lives tinkering in machine language is a pretty big bonus, an even bigger bonus if that someone isn’t trying to exploit their lack of technical ability to make a buck charging $700 to add a value to a drop-down field.
Anyway, this blog has made me so many great friendships and opened up so many different opportunities I can’t possibly say being myself on the internet was a bad idea. Then again, you’re talking to a man whose ex-girlfriend used to throw dictionaries at his head so my ability to determine "bad idea" may be suspect. 
(As an aside, the only time being "myself" got me in trouble was several years ago, when I was at large company X and co-wrote a technical design document that was later rejected for being "unprofessional" by one of the project managers at the time, despite him not being attached to the development project. Fast-forward 5-7 years later, I’m being interviewed by you about why I’m so awesome, while he is now unemployed. Guess that’s a lesson for everyone).
From a blogging standpoint, it’s also far more important to be authentic than it is to be dull as dishwater. Seriously, 90% of the technical "writers" out there have forgotten the writing component of technical writing. Most blogs out there just aren’t memorable; they say the same things everyone else is saying and they use the same canned generic templates as everybody else. What makes you *different*? If you have something to say, you should say it in a way that people will remember, otherwise you’re just filling up space.
MD: You seem to be transitioning from blogger / consultant into the ranks of the presenters / tech evangelist. Is this a path you considered all along and see part of career development or did this just "happen" (like say, pregnancy)? Do you think this is a standard progression that other metrosexual consultants should consider?
JG : Yike.
This is an interesting question, and I will admit I had a bad case of the twitches when I first read the part about transitioning into the presenter/technical evangelist role. This is mostly because I think the current presentation circuit (at least .NET-wise) is at least 70% fraudulent.
A lot of the so-called "presenters" out there are out there talking about technology concepts they barely understand, putting together half-baked, ill-prepared "demos" that are barely anything more than surface-level explorations into technology and even worse, showing off poor practices when they’re up there. When you are a presenter, I feel that you are an example to people and some will hold you up as a way to do things better. Many .NET presenters out there present simply because they like getting a paid vacation somewhere and a hotel - not because they’re actually helping the community in any way. I had a meeting with INETA themselves where it was indicated that many speakers simply *refuse* to speak at venues other than big-name cities because "the speaker wants a holiday, and going to [x] doesn’t qualify as a holiday for them". Look, I won’t lie - it does look good on your resume if you are doing presentations, because many people assume that because you are presenting on something at a local or even national level, you are a de facto "expert" in that technology. But there are a lot of charlatans out there who, through the code examples they demonstrate and their lack of *knowledge* of any sort of best practice are anything but experts. People fall all over themselves to latch on to a "hot new tech piece" so they can have a speaking gig for the next 6 months. And trust me, though I am an attention whore, I have *nothing* on a lot of the people in the circuit who think it’s impressive to offer up a self-written 3-10 page bio telling people how the world thinks they’re a pioneer.
Half of the presentations I see are so out of the realm of "real-world" that the only use they might possibly have is an ego-stroke to the presenter. That’s unfortunate because it doesn’t help our industry very much. Ideally, people would not be presenting out of desire to market themselves but more out of a desire to help the community and by extension, our industry, become better.
I’m sure to some people that the rush of "celebrity" that comes from speaking or whatnot is intoxicating, but as I have said to friends before, it’s really akin to being the best singer at your high school. And let’s say you eventually get that Microsoft MVP, or you get that exclusive speaking engagement at the hot conference - is *that* really going to make you happy? Or are you going to find yourself wanting? And in the end, does it make your industry better or just your resume?
*ahem*…all right, off of my soapbox….
I’m not sure if I considered tech evangelism/presenting as part of my career development; it certainly wasn’t something I thought was inevitable. Part of this has to do with my perception that in many cases the route of tech evangelism is where programmers go to die. ;) This is entirely dependent on the person, however; there are some tech evangelists out there who are probably about 5-10 years away from having worked on a "real-world" solution, but there are also evangelists who still attempt to build applications or be involved in open source.
I think it is definitely an arena to consider, provided you’re doing it for the right reasons. Another path to consider, however, is that of an agile coach or almost development coach; I’ve performed this role at a couple of startups and I’ve found that being able to pair up with someone on an extended basis is a much easier way to have someone else learn and get inflamed with passion for the industry. Presentations are a fantastic way to maybe get someone thinking about bigger issues but how much is a newbie to *mocking* really going to take away in an hour, for example?
MD: How do YOU stay on top of the unending deluge of new tech stuff constantly coming down the pike to retain your mack-daddy status? Google reader, particular sites, podcasts, tips from MS insiders?
JG : I feel the need to clarify that my mack-daddy status is simply part of my genetics and isn’t influenced by my knowledge of technical matters. I don’t want your readers obsessively poring over "The Art of Computer Programming" simply thinking that’s *all* that is needed to become a
MASTER
SEDUCER~!
such as myself. That being said, I don’t stay on top of it all - I pick and choose based on what I’m personally passionate about and what is technically relevant. I subscribe to a large number of blogs (I’m not as big on podcasts, though any podcasts that mention me personally are always worth my time) and even my Twitter feed is pretty helpful when it comes to keeping up on discussions.
On a normal morning, what I will do is go through Google Reader and quickly skim all of the articles. Anything that either:
a) is written by a friend of mine
b) something that looks potentially interesting
I file under a list called "Saturday Stuff" in Backpack. Then (surprise) I take some time out of my day on Saturday to read those articles and whatever books are in my pile to read.
It helps that I’m a fairly fast reader and can get through a technical book in a fairly short amount of time…
MD: That does bring up the question of whatever happened to your infamous "Make Yourself A Better Dev in 6 Months" post…
JG: …sigh. It’s honestly not abandoned! =) I know it looks like it given that only 3 or 4 of those books have actually been reviewed by me. I know Hanselman and Franklin were wondering "How does he have time to code?" but that was the easy part, actually, given how I had scheduled my time. However, about 2 months after making that post I also took on some coaching work and some new opportunities came up career-wise that I absolutely couldn’t pass up. Then of course I was called up to present at DevTeach and that took a large portion of my time as well - it was clear something had to give, and my wife and I did not want it to be our marriage, so…;)
I will be resuming my reviews soon as well as going on with some isolated posts discussing pieces of the books themselves. Hopefully within the next month or so. I have to announce the winner of the "What Justice Gray Means to Me" contest first (yes, a winner has been decided) and then we’ll get back to business.
MD: From your posts its clear that you have some non-technical books that have shaped your productive, time / career management side, ex Beyond Code. Hit me with a list of non-purely-tech books you think tech workers should read to not be such insufferable dweebs.
JG : The *most* influential book for me career-wise was definitely "The 7 Habits of Effective People
- Arnold Schwarzengger’s "Encyclopedia of BodyBuilding
- Napoleon Hill’s "Think and Grow Rich
- Robin Sharma’s "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari )
- The Bible, by various
- Mindfulness in Plain English
- Any of the Harrington on Hold ‘Em
I would be remiss if I did not also give special note to "Getting Things Done
MD: Tell me a joke I probably haven’t heard.
JG : Donald Belcham.
MD: You’re a prolific blogger, and have mentioned before the concept of career security over job security. Do you consciously schedule time to blog or does it just happen as it happens? How do you have the time to write these posts all the time? Really. Must be nice.
JG : I do try to lay out some time for blogging and I keep a list of ideas written down in Backpack when I have a topic I feel is worth consideration. I try to be responsible to my clients and not spend their money blogging - now, in my case I’m getting up somewhere between 3-5 AM so that I can have time for everything else I want to do; not everyone feels the same way. I often wondered how Atwood actually had the time to post all the time until I found out he was a "tech evangelist". I carve out the time from my schedule because I enjoy the community interaction that comes with it; the sacrifice of an extra 30-60 min every couple of days is definitely a worthwhile trade-off for the experiences I have had.
MD: Ever since my Vic-20, Commodore 64 & 128, and Amiga, I’ve been a windows guy. Are you just frontin’ or do you really use a Mac as your daily machine as your blog would lead one to believe? As a .NET guy what do you get out of running a mac, is it more than just a glorified log-in screen to running Visual Studio in parallels? Is there some sexual component to this?
JG : I use a Mac all the time. To be honest, I wanted a Mac for the last several years but it was only upon them running Intel that I was able to justify the switch, since I did want to be able to do development work off of the machine and while I love Rails, my current contracts are all .NET-based. I love the user experience of OSX, especially when compared to Vista. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
And let’s be real here - *everything* I do has a sexual component to it!
MD I’m a big time tools fiddler, Hanselman’s list is like crack. What non-obvious tools do you use that you can’t live without?
JG : A short list would have to include:
- Lancome Eye Serum
- American Crew Forming Cream
- Nivea For Men’s Energizing Gel
- The Morning Scrub Invigorating Exfoliant from Johnson & Johnson (ridiculous quality for its price - wakes up my face like nothing else)
- Eternity for Men
The above 5 are pretty much my license to GET LAID. Seriously, I normally end up dodging bras and panties being thrown at me just trying to leave my apartment building, let alone walking down the street to my office.
In addition, I *would* have included
- charm
- wit
- fantastic shirts
- ridiculous good looks
but I believe your criteria was "non-obvious".
There’s always the off chance you were asking about technical tools, in which case the biggest one most recently has been the "Remember the Milk" extension for Gmail. I can’t remember who pointed this out to me but it’s awesome. I was never really a fan of "Remember the Milk" (Backpack works just fine for most of the things I want to track) but having it integrated into Gmail makes it a completely different experience to me.
MD: What are some tips you give to new metrosexual developers to distinguish themselves from the crowd?
JG: Be yourself, above all else. I know this may sound a little bit hippie to some people, but we are all unique and have unique spins to put on things. You have a voice no one else has - your own! If you try to conform yourself to what you think will either get you a job, a Microsoft MVP, or a slot on the presentation circuit you will inevitably find that there’s no longer any "you" left in your blog.
Now, you *did* say "new *metrosexual* developers", so to them:
To you, the socially balanced, the well-dressed, the technically credible: you are the only hope for the software development field to pull itself out of the stereotypical abyss of social retardation and insular incestuousness. You are future leaders of software developers, and (if you so choose to be) the leaders who will guide, shape, and inspire the entire industry in the years to come.
And to everyone else, *please* stop wearing those Microsoft polo shirts or launch T-shirts in public. That’s just embarrassing!
MD: (Paraphrased James Lipton ripoff question): What profession other than your own would you like to try?
JG : Male stripper, strategy consultant, karaoke singer. Preferably something that can combine all three for the best of both worlds!!
MD: What didn’t I ask that you want to self-aggrandizingly answer here anyway?
JG : The *only* man in the software development field with better hair than I have is Calgary’s Terry Thibodeau. *#@&#ing guy. No, I’m not jealous in the least.
You’ve read this far. You’ll have my many thanks if you give this post a Digg / DZone / Delicious or whatever. Thanks, brotha!
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