My time (27 months) at Critical Mass as a Flash Developer was a wonderful rollercoaster of ups and downs. I had a great time there, working with brilliant individuals, under great leadership, working with some of the worlds best clients. I learned a lot during my stay with Critical Mass and the decision to leave was not an easy one. I had to leave behind friends, colleagues, comfort, and an all around fun working environment (not to mention leaving Canada)!

I have now moved to Boulder, Colorado! To work with another monster agency (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) as an Interactive Developer. I look forward to this new role and hope to learn a lot an maybe contribute a little bit more to my blog as I learn to try and share some knowledge and insight that I gain in this new place.

I left Calgary for Boulder on Friday of last week and made the drive in two days. I drove day and night through Montana and Wyoming and finally into Colorado. This was a challenge for me because I have rarely ever travelled to the US (or anywhere for that matter). I drove through rainstorms, crazy fog at night which scared the hell out of me, and lots of gorgeous sunlight.

I arrived here on Saturday evening to a gorgeous night and a cold. I haven’t been able to truly enjoy the area yet because I have been fighting this pesky cold since arriving but I am working on it. Boulder appears to be a beautiful place in a country and seems very proud of its new president and political direction. I look forward to living here and absorbing all the I can in the process; both knowledge and culture alike.

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I started out in the industry as a graphic designer and web developer but quickly came to realize that the more code I wrote, the less design prowess I had. The trend in the industry to find a hybrid developer / designer is a good idea on the surface but has many flaws. I have always been a fan of the phrase “jack of all trades, master of none”. While it is a great asset to know a little bit about what is happening on the other side of the fence, it should stay on the other side of the fence.

Both designers and developers are creative and skillful in their own ways so why should they try to do it all? I have worked on countless projects where I have been put on a project that was “almost completed” by a designer. Upon getting the files, I am told that I just have to do a little bit of optimization and get the files delivered ASAP. More often than not, once I take a look at the files it is obvious that they need a LOT of work. The designers that I work with are spectacular at what they do, but when they try writing code I am given files that take hours just to understand.

If you would like to be a developer, take a course or two and practice. I didn’t learn to write code over night, nor do I try and create complex designs expecting a designer to pick it up and think it was a job well done. There is a lot more than just being able to write a frame script in Flash that goes into being a good developer, especially when you are creating international pieces.

When I am busy and on a tight deadline, I don’t want to (nor do I have the time to) spend hour after hour ripping apart a project just to re-write 90% of the code that went into the “almost completed” version.

An ideal situation for me is to be able to sit down with a designer as they are starting to work on a project and come up with boundaries and share ideas. I respect their skills and would like to utilize them as much as possible. Just as it isn’t efficient for me to rewrite an application from them, it isn’t efficient for them to spend days creating things that could have been automated with a little bit of code. It is also inefficient for them to realize that it can be done with code and try to do it on their own.

So next time you are thinking about becoming a hybrid or hiring one, take into account the fact that it isn’t as easy or productive as you might think.

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