Thanks
Tina Walsh

Chrome has a Visibility API now to check if your tab is in the background! Happy days. http://code.google.com/chrome/whitepapers/pagevisibility.html – they’re looking to make this standard: http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-page-visibility-20110602/

I can particuarly relate to the points you made about time management, personal goals, client management and progressing your business!

I too think that to truly progress a business in this area, you need someone to be focusing solely on the number crunching and marketing side of the business all the time. Which truth be told, as a developer I often just find myself not finding the time for, or I don’t have the passion for that side of the business. Either way its such a key aspect to have, that ignoring it will ensure evantual business failure.

I’ve also lately been trying to grow some roots in our local area, web development and design wise. I used to find it difficult to understand what people got out of morning meet ups and conferences, but I beginning to understand its about a little more than just meeting up for a chat. Even though in essence it isn’t, but beneath that little chat is the opportunity to build a relationship which could cherish into a business relationship or a keystone for passing more work to yourself, on a referall basis.

I intent to write some more follow up posts to this one, very soon.

Firstly great article, has some really valid points and concerns of developers within a small agency.

Like yourself, I’m pretty much in the same boat and am often asking myself the reason I do what I do. When this happens I usually start to plan out where I want to be in few years and what I want to be doing. But, the main problem for me is simply finding the time to work towards my goals, especially as I have a habit of wanting to please all my clients at the same time so when they have urgent requests I’ll manage to fit it in by working later, starting earlier, working weekends. Personal time for me is really important, but more often than not it gets cut into due to the fact that I need to make money and feels like I can’t afford to turn down work or disappoint. Whether or not this is true I don’t know, but it always feel if you say ‘Sorry, can’t help this week’ then the client will go elsewhere.

I love what I do, and have been doing it as a hobby for 10 years now, and professionally for 5 years. I’m a coder, I love logic and solving real life problems, however as a sole director of my company and the web developer, it’s difficult to progress my career. I mean, I don’t hate the business side of things, but the way I see it the only way for my to progress within my company would be to get more staff, stop coding and concentrate more on actually running the business, which from a business perspective is a logical thing to do, but it’s not something I’m going that I’d enjoy day in day out.

It’s hard to weigh up the pros and cons of working by yourself, or working for wage with a company. Like you said, there is ultimate flexibility when working for yourself but sometimes it’s impossible to get away from the desk. I try to go to the gym 3/4 times a week around 10am to 11am, and then work a little bit later to make up the time if required. But it’s a real struggle to walk away from my desk when there’s emails waiting, and work to be done, even though it’ll still be there when I get back and the same amount of work would be done in the day.

I’ve set a goal to explore our industry a bit more and to get out a meet new people. So far I’ve booked a place at the Web Developers Conference in Bristol later this year which I think will be a good place to meet like minded people and just generally socialize and to get away from the desk.