Nomadic Programmer

A NomadicProgrammer is never comfortable in one place (project or product) for too long. This individual is constantly on the move, always looking for adventure and the challenges in the unknown that awaits ahead.

Good Nomadic Programmers leave wisdom behind (when they move on) in the form of patterns, solid code and enlightened team members. (Contrast this with the GrifterProgrammer?.)

Unlike the PastoralProgrammer, the nomad fears being married to the land (project or product -- but not necessarily the job).

-- ToddCoram

Speaking as another nomad, I don't think "fears" is the right word. I originally started out as a nomad because I wanted to stay with the cutting edge, which, in Australia, is hard to find in the first place. There are a few places there where a farmer can get and stay skilled up - Cannon Labs, Softway and parts of Telstra & Optus spring immediately to mind - but, for the most part, if you want to get skilled you have to go where they're desperate enough to pay you to become skilled. I was a nomad because the land wouldn't support much agriculture.

But now that I have a fair bag of tricks and have moved to the US, I'm nomadic for another reason. I want to farm my own land. I don't see myself spending my life riding someone else's boundaries, but instead I aim to start my own patch.

I've tried and failed at this once, and I'm making preparations to try it again in a year or two. While I feel emminently qualified to hunt and gather, I'm now intently learning new things about land management, animal husbandry and so on. That is to say, I'm learning the things that make or break a software business as opposed to just a software development.

Why go to all this trouble? Now I'm a green-carded resident of the richest nation on the planet, why not settle down in some cosy technical hamlet and gather equity while ye may? Why not become a PastoralProgrammer? I've seen enough changes go down in my little career to feel insecure like that. I feel that, as an originative technologist, it'd be abrogating what I feel is my responsibility to make the best technical things I can. And anyway SpecializationIsForInsects.

So, until I'm ready to pitch my tent, it's the open road for me. Wide open spaces. Consulting work. I seldom take a contract that's shorter than six months. Seldom stay longer than three years. And I make sure employers know that when I'm going in - no one likes surprises. -- PeterMerel

See also SuitcaseFarmer, NomadicProgrammer, PastoralProgrammer.

CategoryConsulting