"Working for The Man"

An interesting post giving advice to young programmers caught my eye the other day (thanks to Steve for pointing it out!) and I’ve been mulling it over for the last few days. For me, I think that the most interesting points were “Reputation is important” and “The community is more important than your employer”. I’m currently pursuing a Master’s degree in CSE, and while I don’t know that it’s the “wrong” thing to be doing I’ve often wondered whether it’s not taking time away from other projects that I could be working on. Granted, it’s entirely possible that I would spend all of my free time playing video games and drinking beer were I not taking classes and working on my thesis, but I honestly believe that I would be dedicating a significant portion of my time outside of work to open source projects were I not in school. As it is, I spend what little free time I have outside of work and school…well…playing video games and drinking beer; after all, “All work and no play…” and all that. I guess for now I’ll just have to wait until after I get my degree to get involved while that I’m not doing irreparable harm to my reputation (or lack thereof) in the open source community in the mean time…