#buzz andersen

[arinewman7]

Photo by Buzz Andersen

[emmaandnicola]

My First Internship: Buzz Andersen, Developer and Entrepreneur

Long before we teamed up to write The Nanny Diaries, Nicki was bestowed the privilege of crawling under an off-Broadway stage in a miner’s helmet to scare away rats before show time. Emma was trapped in a closet at WQXR binding information packets with a giant box of custom-made clips shaped like plastic ears that would have made David Lynch queasy. Whether momentarily making or breaking us, our internships unquestionably honed our professional journeys. Now, we’re hoping to bring a little comfort and context to those just setting out. In anticipation of our new novel, The First Affair (out on 8/27!), we’ve interviewed some of the most accomplished men and women we know about their first work experiences. We hope their interesting stories, humbling mistakes, glorious achievements, and unique advice will inspire you as much as they’ve inspired us.

"When I was in high school, my family's credit union in Denver had a summer internship program. Working in a bank for peanuts might not sound like an opportunity a high schooler would jump at, but I had been selling computers at Best Buy as an after school job and a desk job seemed pretty cushy compared to retail. I applied and was assigned to...the Collections Department of all places. I have no idea what suggested to them that a shy, mild-mannered nerd like me would be a great fit for the hard bitten world of debt recovery, but there I was.

My supervisor was a tough-as-nails lady who was a 20+ year veteran of the collections biz. She spent most of her day on the phone confronting people and attempting to intimidate them into settling debts that most of them realistically had no way of paying. Occasionally, she'd have to tell someone their car was being repossessed or that their assets were being frozen and have to close her office door because of the shouting match that would ensue. She and the other collections guy in the office were actually very decent people doing a highly unpleasant, low status job, and consequently they shared a cutting sense of gallows humor. My sheltered naiveté stood in constant contrast to their world weariness, and I think they felt both a sense of sadness and amusement at being my introduction to the scarier aspects of adult life. In deference to my delicate sensibility, they mostly tried to task me clerical busy work (microfiche research for audits and things like that). Occasionally, though, they'd be busy and ask me to handle an IRS garnishment request, which meant I'd have to call someone and tell them that the government was seizing their bank account. At least in that case I could shrug my shoulders and blame it on the Feds, but let me tell you, for someone who has a lot of anxiety about even innocuous phone calls, this was like Fear Factor.

As you can see I definitely did not opt to pursue a career in collections (or banking for that matter). That internship did, however, give me one of my first opportunities to shine by using my programming skills to solve real world problems. In addition to all of that old fashioned skull busting, the job involved a lot of tedious clerical work and report creation, most of which was done in the most backward, manual way possible. Rather than simply grinding my way through the busy work, I usually opted instead to spend my time automating it away using Excel trickery. Once I started gaining a reputation as a wizard who could turn tasks that once took all day into automated processes, I was pretty hooked on programming.

Aside from learning that people in charge generally value people who can independently solve problems for them, it also gave me a healthy respect for the ways adults can get in over their head financially -- and not always simply because they're reckless or irresponsible. Experience in loan collections, combined with a post-college stint as a programmer for a mortgage company smack in the middle of the subprime mortgage boom, started me off in life with a pretty healthy respect for the financial realities of the real world.

In retrospect, I probably could have made an effort to learn more. I wasn't particularly interested in finance at the time and I didn't really consider the job preparation for my career per se, but my early experience in banking and lending suddenly became more relevant and interesting to me after the subprime crisis and subsequent 2008 economic collapse. Everyone in this country should understand finance better than they do, and I wish I had taken advantage of that opportunity to learn more.

I've always prided myself on being a quietly competent problem solver with a strong work ethic and an aversion to self promotion and 'playing the political game' to get ahead. I think this has served me well in some ways but less well in others. When you're young and just starting out, it's easier to get recognition for exceptional work simply because, frankly, people expect a lot less of you. If you're truly talented and motivated, you will naturally stand out from your peers. As you advance in your career however, you will start to be surrounded by more and more people like you, and you will probably find it starts to take a lot more to stand out. I'm not saying you need to become some sort of soulless careerist and claw your way into middle management, but I think one thing it took me way too long to internalize is that not only is it OK to (tastefully) toot your own horn every once in awhile, it's actually a pretty key career skill (I believe the kids are calling this "Leaning In"). As much as we'd like to think we live in a meritocracy, we don't, and after a certain point your success starts to be as much about the story you tell about yourself as the work you do.

After all that early financial experience, I decided I never wanted to work on anything but packaged consumer software applications again so I started teaching myself Macintosh programming. As part of that effort, I wrote a popular shareware app called PodWorks, which was the first app to hack Apple's iPod database to allow easy song copying from the iPod to a Mac. It was actually a surprisingly good seller for about 10 years--I only shut it down recently because I'm too busy to update it. My big break really came in 2003 when my iPod hacking helped get me a job at Apple and I moved to California. At Apple I spent two years as part of the team responsible for Mac OS X releases and two years as an engineer on Soundtrack Pro (a sadly discontinued sound editing app for filmmakers). In 2007 I left Apple and moved to New York with the intention of working on my own apps again. During that time I released a critically admired but commercially middling Twitter client called Birdfeed which I eventually sold. After Birdfeed, I took advantage of an opportunity to join Jack Dorsey's mobile payments company Square as the 8th employee (they're now well over 500 I believe) and was part of the team that launched the product. I spent a few years at Square, then I did a stint at Tumblr helping them build an in-house mobile team. Nowadays, my business partner Phillip Bowden and I have a small iOS development consultancy called Brooklyn Computer Club. We've now done four major client projects in just over a year and are just starting to talk about working on some apps of our own. So far so good!"

—Buzz Andersen, Developer and Entrepreneur

[willw]

Buzz Andersen

[elixr]

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Making a Negroni with Buzz Andersen

Buzz Andersen (buzz on Elixr) graciously chatted with me (Marc) about his love of cocktails. I know a lot more about consuming cocktails than making them, and I suspect some other Elixr members are in the same boat. So, I asked Buzz to take us through how to make a simple cocktail that uses basic ingredients and tools we may already own. He chose the Negroni.

Ingredients

Gin

Campari

Sweet vermouth

Ice

Orange peel as garnish

Equipment

Mixing glass

Bar spoon or stirrer of some sort

Strainer

Drinking glass (a cocktail glass to serve up, or an old-fashioned glass to serve on the rocks)

Knife or peeler

Steps

Pour 1 oz. each of gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth into the mixing glass.

Add ice to the mixing glass.

Gently stir the contents of the mixing glass for 20 seconds.

Pour the contents of the mixing glass through the strainer into the drinking glass. If serving in an old-fashioned glass, add fresh ice to the old-fashioned glass before straining.

Garnish the drink with a slice of orange peel made using a knife or peeler.

Enjoy!

Buzz also notes that if you get into making the Negroni often, adding a pinch of salt to the mixing glass can soften the edge of the Campari and thus improve the drink.

Apologies that my part of the audio has a ring to it. I need to invest in a good microphone. But, Buzz sounds great and I learned a lot, including the difference between a shaker and jigger!

The Negroni photos were kindly taken by Buzz.

[triciawang]

To me, one of the most interesting non-obvious things about Tumblr, and the secret to a lot of its success, is its supremely flexible approach to identity. Tumblr is somewhat unique as a social network in that not only does it not require Facebook-style symmetric relationships and “real” identities, it also makes it really easy for users to spin off separate identities that can be as closely or loosely related to their main identity as desired. Not that this isn’t possible on services like Twitter, but Tumblr makes it so much easier than anyone else to spin facets of your personality off into separate blogs. I personally have a main blog with my name on it, a photo blog, a cocktail blog, and a number of others that are based on inside jokes or silly topics too inconsequential to mention.

great interview with Buzz Anderson, Director of Mobile Dev at tumblr.   Just for the record - I have 20 tumblrs so far...

Tumblin’: Buzz Andersen, Director of Mobile Development at Tumblr

[merlin]

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Roderick on the Line - Ep. 26: "Go Practice the Car"

MP3 Download

The Problems: John refutes Poe’s telephone; surprising contagion of the beloved vuvuzuvuzela; Roger Daltrey: District Attorney; The ’Barrow Boy’s Patrician Shrug; a balrog in the dwarf mines; comments are still steadfastly disabled; white wizard potential; longevity means finding room in one’s book; John considers removing lady embolisms as a move; how you get the Center Square; Vincent Price’s productive eyebrows; why Van Halen’s making nothing off those damned coke mirrors; John identifies Merlin’s liquids and many songs about pirates; Triumph of the Poutine; the trouble with thinking; the night John’s pillows watched over him; inflammable roach clips; a rockabilly song about dragons; A Brief History of Unnavigable Carnival Mud; initiation into the family coven; John considers some costly boots for his kit; and, our first biological interlude.

Why posted here?

Our program is very helpful, and more people should be listening to it.

That photo is from John's junior prom

Hey, beefranck and Buzz shout-outs. Nothin' wrong with that.

[pixelunion-staff]

Tumblin': Buzz Andersen, Director of Mobile Development at Tumblr

Buzz Andersen is what we in the design world call "a total badass." After co-creating the hugely successful Birdfeed Twitter client, and working on both OS X and Soundtrack Pro at Apple, Buzz came aboard the Tumboat in late 2011 to lead the platform's mobile division. Equal parts philosopher and programmer, Andersen's approach to and reflections on his work stand as an incredible example to anyone working in a web-related field.

Cornered for a few fleeting moments outside the Tumblr hive of whimsy, Buzz discussed meta-currents in design, the often misunderstood role of apps, and Tumblr's facilitation of a new romantic self. Put your thinking socks on and join us for this very special edition of Tumblin'.

You have a panel coming up at SxSW entitled "The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web?" Other than the obvious (your position as Tumblr's Director of Mobile development), what sparked your interest in organizing it?

I've been developing native software for the Mac since 2002 and for the iPhone since 2008, and I'm as much of an Apple fanboy as the next guy, but I find the current state of affairs in mobile development pretty crazy and a bit unsustainable. Really since the introduction of the iPhone, but particularly after the advent iPad, this concept of "apps as content" has gained a lot of currency, and now every media company in the world feels compelled to be in the business of developing native software as a distribution channel. Despite the press's tendency to portray this trend as futuristic, I actually think of it as a bit retrograde--particularly since we've actually been evolving an incredibly sophisticated medium for content presentation and distribution for over 15 years now: the web.

I think a lot of what we're trying to do with the panel is give the media and business folks who attend SXSW a bit more perspective on the difference between native apps and web apps--how they have radically different capabilities, development cycles, design needs, strengths, and weaknesses. Ideally we will help people understand when it's a win to invest the significant time and money necessary to build a compelling native mobile product, and when their needs would actually be better served by a top notch mobile web app.

Apropos of Khoi Vinh's analysis, you recently remarked on the "fussy, post-Apple wave of 'high design' in tech products" as having a kind of dialectical relationship with accessibility and "breathing room." Could you elaborate a bit more on how the currently heightened emphasis on "high design" has affected both mobile and native software development?

I think there are basically two poles of thought about design in the startup business: the Google School (where UX researchers and data wonks aspire to build minimalist, rationalist interfaces that adapt constantly to users) and the Apple School (where intuitive, perfectionistic auteur-visionaries are thought to produce gorgeous, perfect objects of desire users never even knew they wanted). Lately, after a long period of consensus on the Google approach (bolstered by the "Lean Startup Model") and an accompanying emphasis on methods like A/B testing, it seems to me that the success of the iPhone and the "appification" of the web is swinging the industry's polarity a bit more toward the Apple philosophy.

This is great in many ways—I personally dislike the Google approach and have little very desire to work on products designed that way. It's nice to see what has essentially become dogma in the startup business called into question by Apple's astounding success.

However, I think people have a tendency to internalize successes like Apple's in a somewhat shallow way, and it seems to me that the conversation in the startup community increasingly equates novelty and visual flair with good design. Not to knock people who are doing interesting work and trying to push the envelope, but I think a lot of products are becoming overnight sensations at least in large part on the strength of flashy designs that get tech product types buzzing but, in my experience, often don't age or serve the user as well as less exotic solutions.

"Most people perceive Tumblr as a beautiful, well-designed product, but it never calls too much attention to itself. A lot of the history of Tumblr's design has been a process of stripping things down to showcase the content as much as possible."

What's more, I think Khoi is right that designers of content-driven social products in particular need to strike a careful balance between creating aesthetically compelling experiences and providing users a canvas for their expression. One of the things I love about Tumblr is that our designers, Peter Vidani and Zack Sultan, do such a great job of walking that line. Most people perceive Tumblr as a beautiful, well-designed product, but it never calls too much attention to itself. A lot of the history of Tumblr's design has been a process of stripping things down to showcase the content as much as possible.

My brother Robert, who is the creative lead at Square and the guy behind a lot of the great design culture there, always says that his goal as a designer is to make the user feel like an app is his or her home. I think that's a useful thing to keep in mind for people who are designing any kind of software. You need to make things look good, but it's fundamentally about the user.

Upon even the most cursory perusal of your personal blog, it's clear that you're considerably attuned to the web's social and political dimensions. How do you feel Tumblr has expanded or evolved the way people talk about people and the organizations, floes and networks in which they congregate?

To me, one of the most interesting non-obvious things about Tumblr, and the secret to a lot of its success, is its supremely flexible approach to identity. Tumblr is somewhat unique as a social network in that not only does it not require Facebook-style symmetric relationships and "real" identities, it also makes it really easy for users to spin off separate identities that can be as closely or loosely related to their main identity as desired. Not that this isn't possible on services like Twitter, but Tumblr makes it so much easier than anyone else to spin facets of your personality off into separate blogs. I personally have a main blog with my name on it, a photo blog, a cocktail blog, and a number of others that are based on inside jokes or silly topics too inconsequential to mention.

My blog is linked from the Tumblr staff page now, which means I get an unending stream of random followers. I like to think this gives me a bit of insight into how people are using Tumblr. One of the things that fascinates me is the way a lot of young people seem to use Tumblr, which is basically as a positive, aspirational alternative to the social networking institution they're accustomed to: Facebook. Rather than forcing them to represent themselves as they are, which I think is Facebook's major goal, Tumblr allows them to represent the romantic self (or selves) they wish to be. I think this is a big part of the intense emotional attachment a lot of people seem to have to Tumblr.

Facebook is currently #1 in terms of time spent online, but Tumblr recently became #2. I think this is because they both appeal to intense human desires, but I would argue that of the two Tumblr appeals to the more positive.

You've worked for a considerable variety of larger and smaller companies. Of the many environments and schedules you've inhabited/held, which have you found the most conducive to development work (or work in general)?

Honestly, while it wasn't a perfect place by any means, I think Apple was the best place I've ever worked. I've never seen a company that manages the balance between shipping perfect products and, well, *shipping* at all, better. Apple has an ability to balance long term and short term concerns in product development in a way I simply haven't seen in many other companies. While a lot of people obviously associate Apple with the perfectionism of Steve Jobs, there are also a number of incredibly pragmatic, hard nosed veterans in the organization who hold incredibly complex product development processes together in a way that makes it look easy.

When I tell people about my time at Apple, the people I usually mention as heroes aren't the executives people have heard of, they're people like Ray Chiang, the OS engineer who could debug a kernel panic by merely stating at a series of anonymous hexadecimal addresses, or Brenda Ciccerone, an Apple veteran who miraculously pulled OS X updates together when things looked hopeless by triaging bugs ruthlessly and standing up to anyone who pushed back on her decisions to deny code submissions she deemed too risky. Apple is where I really learned how to ship software, and in my opinion they're better at it than anyone because they have a perfect balance between idealism and realism, design and engineering.

"To me it feels like we're living in a time where institutions are collapsing around us with increasing frequency. This can be a terrifying thing in many ways, but there is also a positive dimension to it: the opportunity to reinvent any number of once invincible industries has never been greater."

You've mentioned the entrepreneurial parallelism between food and design culture (i.e., prevalence of startups, renewed emphasis on novelty, etc.) periodically on your blog. In what other fields do you see similar or related shifts?

To me it feels like we're living in a time where institutions are collapsing around us with increasing frequency. This can be a terrifying thing in many ways, but there is also a positive dimension to it: the opportunity to reinvent any number of once invincible industries has never been greater. One of the reasons I joined Square as the company's eight employee was that I fell in love with the incredibly well-timed vision Jack Dorsey articulated about bringing the values of the web to one of today's most reviled industries: finance.

As Square developed and I became acquainted with more and more small merchants, the power of unlocking excess capacity in the economy by tearing down barriers became increasingly intriguing to me. I was flying out to San Francisco every six weeks or so to visit the Square offices and the city was showing the first signs of what has become a full-fledged street food phenomenon, which Square became increasingly tied to. I was really struck by the ways the mere existence of democratized credit card payments was encouraging people who might never have considered selling their wares to give it a shot, and how it made a number of businesses that once might not have been viable successful.

I think Square is just one example of a trend (including things like Kickstarter, AirBnB, and my friend Chris's new startup Kitchen Surfing) that is all about democratizing industries and unlocking excess capacity in the world. While I have as much trepidation about the future of the US and the world as anyone, these are the things that give me hope that what we've been going through in recent years is the painful painful birth of a new kind of capitalism, not a terrible death.

The threats of increased censorship and diminished privacy dominate current discussion of the web. Forced to make a prediction, what do you think we'll be talking about/battling in ten years?

Wow, that's a tough one. Like a lot of people, I often suspect that the tech industry is cyclical, and it seems to me like one of the big cycles is a movement between open/transparent and closed/opaque. It feels like we've moved into a period where the more or less open values of "Web 2.0" (which replaced the closed early web of AOL and "portals") have given way to the somewhat closed values of Facebook, modern Google, and the Apple App Store. While I don't want to sound like an astrologer or MBA type, it does seem like there is some economic evidence for the existence of something like the "Patterson Cycle,", which posits that the tech industry moves along in 14 year cycles consisting of 8 years of growth followed by 6 years of retrenchment where the serious gains are realized. Maybe the "closed" phase tends to coincide with the retrenchment part of the cycle where companies lock on their gains? If this highly speculative idea happens to be true, it seems likely that we might be witnessing the beginnings of a retrenchment that will eventually give way to a sort of dialectical "Web 3.0" migration back to open platforms, renewed respect for privacy, and an emphasis on transparency (albeit with the standard of privacy permanently shifted).

Then again, what do I know--I'm just a programmer!

Buzz's fountain of genius can be accessed at his personal blog, SciFi HiFi, and @buzz on Twitter.