The General Theory of RIAtivity

I worked as a Biological Aide intern to Dr. Devine during the Summer of 1990. Nearly 20 years have passed since that blistering hot summer, but those 13 weeks with Dr. Devine left me with lasting memories and influential lessons that I carry with me still. Today we celebrate Dr. Devine’s long and distinguished service and I’d like to share three short stories about lessons I took away from working under Dr. Devine.

The first story is about how working for the USDA taught me more about Irish history than it did about agriculture. It’s no surprise to anyone who’s known Dr. Devine that he’s fully invested in his Irish heritage. Frankly, I think the only reason he selected my application from the pile was because I had a not-so-common Irish surname, at least not so common in America. There are Brophys all over the place in Ireland. I remember when Dr. Devine called to tell me the good news that I’d been selected for the internship — he asked if I knew of my Irish surname and about my family background. It wasn’t long after starting that Dr. Devine pulled me and his two other interns, Bryan and Stephen, in for one of his afternoon history lessons where we learned about the likes of 10th century King Bryan Boru, uniter of the Irish people. Dr. Devine’s love for Irish history and culture was contagious — he truly modeled a respect and curiosity for family history that left a lasting impression on me.

The second story is about hard work and seeing things through to completion. When I applied for the Biological Aide position in the Spring of 1990, I pictured beakers and lab coats, a summer spent in an air conditioned lab helping unlock the secrets of the soybean genome. My vision couldn’t have been further from the truth. The reality was that someone had to raise the soybeans first. That meant lots and lots of time out in the sun and dirt, planting, hoeing, irrigating, hoeing, pollinating, hoeing, and harvesting. Did I mention I did a lot of hoeing? I also did a lot of cursing under my breath. But the time for lab work came — the last two weeks of August — the bulk of the time consisted of four to eight hours out in the sweltering summer heat and beating sun on a USDA farm just inside the Beltway off of Cherry Hill Road. I’d arrive at 8 am each day and Bryan, Stephen, and I would hop in the USDA truck for the short ride over the hill to the farm. The only real highlights of each day were taking a 15 minute water break at the rickety old supply barn and then going back to the lab in the afternoon. When it rained it was a blessing from Heaven because we got to stay in the lab. But ominous clouds and drizzle weren’t enough — unless the rain was coming down good or there was a threat of lightning you could count on Dr. Devine sending us out to the fields.  But when you’re 17 years old and making $4.03 an hour as a GS-1 hoeing a soybean field it’s hard to see the value in what you’re doing. But I trudged through it, sunburn and all. Hoeing a field is a solitary and fairly non-creative activity, but by the end of that summer I saw the little seeds we planted grow into vibrant, two foot tall plants, that dusty field was a lush green oasis by September, and Dr. Devine had a new crop of plants and seeds that would support several more years of research — research that culminated in farmers here and in developing nations not losing their crops to drought, and turning devasting crop diseases into manageable and preventable ones.

The final story is about patience and believing in others. I mentioned a moment ago that we pollinated the plants. You’d think the US Government would have devised some hi-tech method for pollinating soybean crops. I discovered they did not — the job consists of a pair of tweezers, a jar of pollen, a magnifying glass, and several weeks of dragging yourself along the ground under soybean plants individually placing bits of pollen on the flowers. As a Biological Aide I had to operate at a macro level (hoeing dirt) and a micro level (pollinating plants). Soon I graduated to other, more skilled tasks — on rainy days Dr. Devine would hand me a pile of research papers to proofread, some his, some those of his colleagues. It was during this time that I learned about the effects of pH on nitrogen fixation of legumes and the order of precedence of footnote symbols. At one point during that summer Dr. Devine asked me to help write a computer program, with my collegue Bryan, that would calculate inheritance traits of certain soybean hybrids. It was a short project, but I felt as though I had graduated. You see, I always loved computers, I spent entire summers teaching myself to program on the computers at the local public library, and now I had a real job writing a program for the USDA! Dr. Devine probably doesn’t remember that little program, but I do — it was my first paid programming job and today I co-own a successful software company. Dr. Devine’s patience with me that summer and his belief that I could be trusted with increasingly important tasks meant alot to me; it taught me self-confidence and to be a self-starter and is something I will always be grateful for.

Much of the success I enjoy today had its roots in those 13 weeks I spent mentoring under Dr. Thomas Devine. I look back fondly on that summer, the young and somewhat aimless teenager who got the chance to work with a brilliant scientist and patient teacher. Dr. Devine no doubt contributed immeasurablly to his field during his career, but probably his most distinguished achievement was the positive effect he had on the trajectory of so many young peoples’ lives – those interns who passed through his doors during his decades of service at the USDA.

Dr. Devine, thank you for the memories, congratulations on your retirement and, as the Irish blessing goes, “”May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past.”

Ian Landsman’s response to yesterday’s 37signals’ article “How did the web lose faith in charging for stuff?” is sobering. Both pieces remind us of the obvious, which seems to have gotten lost in the heady pace of the web. Namely, that web startups seem hesitant to charge for the value they provide and the likely cause for that is because many programmers, who are the polar opposites of sales and marketing professionals, are too scared and lazy to want to provide the service and support required of paying customers.

Let’s consider the latter for a moment, because perhaps there are more deeply rooted drivers for this behavior. I’ve been programming and working with other programmers across a number of companies for a long time, but have spent the last five years on the sales side of the software industry, so here’s my take. First, programmers are extremely egotistical of their own ideas and work — this is the dominant motivator. Combine the inarguable fact that most programmers are male, and you have a testosterone-rich competitive environment of guys trying to prove who has the better stuff.

Secondly, once programmers conceive their brilliant app ideas, they immediately envision themselves standing on railroad tracks, fame and fortune sits 100 yards down the tracks in one direction while, from the other direction, a train full of imagined competing “idea stealers” (aka other enterprising programmers) plows toward them, threatening to mow them down. This leads to the “36 hour Mountain Dew fueled coding session[s]” Ian describes. It’s also what explains the explosion of beta releases and commandments such as “release early and often.” Be first, no matter what, even if you don’t have a business plan. I’m guilty of it too.

This behavior has reached mania level and a collective tunnel-vision has arisen focused solely on the technology and little to no attention given to execution, to sales, to marketing, or to longevity. I’d guess most business plans for web startups includes some form of the phrase “build user base first, monetize it later.” When I was in tech support and then later a developer it was the cool thing to bitch about the A-type sales people and the know-nothing marketing team. But once I took a technical sales role and later started my own company, I realized software companies that last, that live beyond their initial investment to be profitable, only do so because of sales, marketing, and management execution in concert with quality engineering and support.

Steve Wozniak said in a CNET interview: “Steve [Jobs] wants to be this guy…who wants to change the world. Every time we’d create something great, he’d have the idea to sell it.” The moral: your app might change the world, but make sure it’s legacy is written in black ink, not red.